Showing papers in "Medical Anthropology in 1978"

Part Two: The role of constitutional factors, diet, and infectious disease in the etiology of porotic hyperostosis and periosteal reactions in prehistoric infants and children.

Abstract: A model of analysis incorporating methodological improvements and epidemiological refinements has been employed to investigate the etiology of porotic hyperostosis and periosteal reactions in infants and children from the Libben Site, a Late Woodland ossuary and occupation site from Ottawa County, Ohio. Results of the age‐specific intrapopulational analysis of porotic hyperostosis demonstrate that the skeletal lesion strongly fits the age‐specific distribution of hypochromic microcytic iron‐deficiency anemia in infants and children. The data indicate that the lesion is a response to nutritional stress. Similarly, our findings show that the age‐specific distribution of periosteal reactions strongly coincides with, and appears to be a response to, infectious disease as it occurs in infants and children. More importantly, survivorship and growth data indicate that porotic hyperostosis and periosteal reactions are strongly associated with patterns of infant and child morbidity and mortality, and ther...

Part Two: Patterns of resort in the use of therapy systems and their significance for health planning in South Asia

Abstract: It is generally recognized that indigenous medical practitioners play an important role in providing health care to rural villagers in developing countries. However, not much is known about the extent to which these practitioners continue to be utilized when modern sources of medical aid become available. A rural Primary Health Center zone in South India which is served by a variety of traditional, eclectic, and modern medical practitioners was selected for study. Attention was focused on patterns of resort in the selection of medical aid for a variety of illnesses. It is pointed out that although allopathy is immensely popular in rural India, many types of illness are initially brought to indigenous practitioners. The patterns of resort cited are of regional importance. On the basis of this pilot study, it is suggested that, in addition to studies of availability and access to different types of medical practitioners, studies on resort patterns be carried out throughout India to more completely ...

Part Four: International health care planning from an ethnomedical perspective: Critique and recommendations for change

Abstract: Recent developments in international health are used as a platform for criticizing the biomedical and social science models dominating contemporary international medicine from the standpoint of ethno‐medicine. This critique is advanced both on the grounds of theory and of practical issues in the organization and delivery of clinical and public health services. Implications for cross‐cultural research and for the planning of international health and health care programs are discussed around four specific subjects: consequences of complementing existing models of sickness as disease with models of sickness as semantic illness networks; the desirability of rationalizing and facilitating family‐based therapy; limitations in our knowledge of the productivity of indigenous healers and of their suitability for integration into orthodox health care systems; and the need to teach clinicians and public health planners in non‐Western societies (and when working with ethnic minorities in the West) applied et...

Part Five: Mode of production of medical knowledge

Abstract: Positivist and naturalist accounts of knowledge are compared. The positivist account is rejected and emphasis is given to the social determinants of knowledge. Knowledge is contrasted and ...

Part three: Hispanic drinking after migration: The case of dominicans 1

Abstract: Increased reliance on alcohol and problem drinking is frequently reported for immigrants of minority group status who move to urban areas. However, for recent migrants from the Dominican Republic, alcohol consumption is lower and drinking problems are fewer due to increased economic opportunity and an emerging morality that disparages heavy drinking and reinforces economic incentives.

Part Three: Judging the seriousness of child abuse.

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Part four: Birth and survival patterns in numerically unstable proto agricultural societies in the Brazilian Amazon

Abstract: Demographic characteristics of eight diverse unacculturated tribes of Para state of Brazil are examined. Serial censuses reveal highly unstable patterns and standard demographic procedures based on the assumption of a steady state are not applicable to current data. Postulating that prior to regular contacts with the national culture the population changes in the several tribes were asynchronous, we have used the average of the several tribes as reconstructed for the period prior to 1960 as a basis for analyses. These data indicate that fertility regulation was more important than mortality in determining the selective potential. Variance in male fertility in polygamous tribes was much greater than variance of female fertility or male fertility in monogamous tribes. In general, fertility and mortality rates in the Para tribes were more like other Brazilian tribes and the !Kung of Africa than like the Yanomama of Venezuela.

Part one: Class and sociability among urban workers: A study of the bar as social club

Abstract: (1978). Part one: Class and sociability among urban workers: A study of the bar as social club. Medical Anthropology: Vol. 2, No. 4, pp. 9-30.

Part four: Women and alcohol in an Indian settlement

Abstract: The author describes two aspects of alcohol in the lives of the women in a Nevada Indian settlement: their drinking behavior and their techniques for coping with men's drinking. In a folk taxonomy, informants identified five styles of drinking behavior practiced by women, and they classified each adult female into one of these styles. The behavior associated with each drinking style is described and incidence rates are presented. A majority of the women seldom, if ever, drink; most of the women who drink practice one of the four styles classified by informants as “can handle it,” indicating the inappropriateness of applying the drunken Indian stereotype to the women of this Settlement. The women's methods for coping with men's drinking are then described. It is suggested that the indirect effects of alcohol on women greatly overshadow the direct ones and that their methods for dealing with the effects of men's alcohol use probably deserve even more attention than women's drinking.

Part three: Saints, scholars, and schizophrenics—madness and badness in western Ireland

Abstract: Schizophrenia is a major health‐care problem in the “Isle of Saints and Scholars.” This paper analyzes the particularly high vulnerability of the rural Irish to psychiatric hospitalization within the framework of “labeling theory"—that is, through an examination of community definitions of normal and abnormal behavior, variations in diagnostic preference and usage, and cultural and historical attitudes toward treatment and hospitalization in the Republic.

Part One: Ethnomedicine and medical science

Abstract: (1978). Part One: Ethnomedicine and medical science. Medical Anthropology: Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 11-24.

Part two: A preliminary reconnaissance into the persistence and explanation of ethnic subcultural drinking patterns

Abstract: (1978). Part two: A preliminary reconnaissance into the persistence and explanation of ethnic subcultural drinking patterns. Medical Anthropology: Vol. 2, No. 4, pp. 31-51.

Part five: Irish ethnicity and alcohol use

Abstract: This paper examines the changing meanings the Irish‐American pattern of heavy drinking has undergone from the nineteenth century to the present: a first stage heavy drinking was symbolic of Irish‐A...

Part One: Occupational perceptions of the causes and consequences of child abuse/neglect.

Abstract: This paper examines common and divergent conceptions of child abuse and child neglect held by child welfare functionaries. Probate court judges, teachers, police, nurses and social workers were asked to identify the causes and manifestations of the "battered-child syndrome" in a self-administered questionnaire. Analysis of the data revealed that four distinct cognitive patterns exist in the identification of this social problem for each of these occupations. The four patterns are: child abuse, child neglect, psychological rejection and uncontrolled behavior. This factor interpretation remained largely consistent across occupational groups and deviations from these patterns were explained in the context of differing work experiences and in terms of social structural differences. Language: en