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IT'S ABOUT SOCIAL RELATIONS |
The health officer 'must be much more than a physician in order to fulfil this task; for he or she must have a knowledge of bacteriology and sanitation, of health administration and statistics, above all of social relationships and social machinery..."
CEA Winslow, 1920
Medical anthropology is the study of those social relationships and that social machinery. It's about uncovering the stories, the real people, and the actual lives behind the numbers.
Medical anthropology is also about how we create the systems which give rise to health and illness, why we've done it that way, and why we justify those systems, even when we know they need to change. Anthropologists just happen to ask the most basic questions to uncover them. More...
Medical anthropology is also about how we create the systems which give rise to health and illness, why we've done it that way, and why we justify those systems, even when we know they need to change. Anthropologists just happen to ask the most basic questions to uncover them. More...
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HOW IT WORKS |
Top row: Medicine is social by nature.
Middle row: Tobacco has a cultural history.
Bottom row: Growing pharmaceuticals from the ground of cultural variety up.
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Tell me about your health this past year.
What has that meant for you? Tell me more. If you were to make one change to get your health back on track, what would that change be? |
Those questions are a taste of where medical anthropology begins. We then connect people's descriptions (qualitative data) to the bigger (quantitative data) picture to discover the 'why' behind the numbers and create robust, inclusive solutions. Sometimes this means theory. Sometimes it means practice. Always, it demands insight.
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For more about how medical anthropology works, including short examples, click here.
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