Journal•ISSN: 0745-5194
Medical Anthropology Quarterly
Wiley-Blackwell
About: Medical Anthropology Quarterly is an academic journal published by Wiley-Blackwell. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Health care & Medical anthropology. It has an ISSN identifier of 0745-5194. Over the lifetime, 1443 publications have been published receiving 42992 citations.
Topics: Health care, Medical anthropology, Population, Politics, Medicine
Papers published on a yearly basis
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TL;DR: In this paper, the deconstruction of received concepts about the body is discussed and three perspectives from which the body may be viewed: (1) as phenomenally experienced individual body-self; (2) as a social body, a natural symbol for thinking about relationships among nature, society, and culture; and (3) as body politic, an artifact of social and political control.
Abstract: Conceptions of the body are central not only to substantive work in medical anthropology, but also to the philosophical underpinnings of the entire discipline of anthropology, where Western assumptions about the mind and body, the individual and society, affect both theoretical viewpoints and research paradigms. These same conceptions also influence ways in which health care is planned and delivered in Western societies. In this article we advocate the deconstruction of received concepts about the body and begin this process by examining three perspectives from which the body may be viewed: (1) as a phenomenally experienced individual body-self; (2) as a social body, a natural symbol for thinking about relationships among nature, society, and culture; and (3) as a body politic, an artifact of social and political control. After discussing ways in which anthropologists, other social scientists, and people from various cultures have conceptualized the body, we propose the study of emotions as an area of inquiry that holds promise for providing a new approach to the subject.
2,091 citations
TL;DR: This article provides the fullest examination of this new concept to date, including a review of relevant new literature and recent research finds concerning coinfection and synergistic interaction of diseases and social conditions at the biological and population levels.
Abstract: The world of public health has undergone dramatic changes since the emergence of AIDS in the early 1980s. The appearance and global spread in recent years of wave after wave of new and renewed infectious diseases and their entwinement with each other and with the social conditions and biopsychological consequences of disparity, discrimination, and structural violence has produced a new significant threat to public health internationally. The term syndemic has been introduced recently by medical anthropologists to label the synergistic interaction of two or more coexistent diseases and resultant excess burden of disease. This article provides the fullest examination of this new concept to date, including a review of relevant new literature and recent research finds concerning coinfection and synergistic interaction of diseases and social conditions at the biological and population levels.
904 citations
TL;DR: It is argued that this form of basic research is an essential precursor to culturally effective interventions in clinical as well as community settings.
Abstract: In this article we delineate a systematic approachfor incorporating qualitative methods in research on primary prevention. Using examples from our studies of both smoking and cessation processes, we describe our procedure in four consecutive stages: (]) interviews and fieldnotes, (2) case studies or life histories, (3) discourse and content analyses to identify emergent issues and themes which are subsequently standardized as codes, and (4) the interpretation of sociocultural patterns and idioms of bodily experience. The relevance of qualitative methods in primary preventive medicine is discussed with examples from our own research on smoking. We argue that this form of basic research is an essential precursor to culturally effective interventions in clinical as well as community settings.
306 citations
TL;DR: The meaning of metaphor is then to be found not in representation but in presentation as discussed by the authors, i.e., modes of action or ways of life, which can clarify the tensions between the essential irrationality of illness experience and the biomedical presumption of rationality.
Abstract: Illness experience is articulated through metaphors that are grounded in—and constrained by—both bodily experience and social interaction. The bodily grounding of metaphor is based on the hierarchical elaboration of sensorimotor equivalences. The social grounding of metaphor resides in the pragmatics of language where context and intention are inseparable from meaning. Metaphors allow for inventive play, despite the dual constraints of body and society, by requiring only piecemeal correspondences to the world through ostension. The meaning of metaphors is then to be found not in representation but in presentation—modes of action or ways of life. Clinical examples illustrate how a semantics of metaphor can clarify the tensions between the essential irrationality of illness experience and the biomedical presumption of rationality.
302 citations
TL;DR: The author examines suffering engendered by the socially constituted nature of illness through the delegitimation of illness experience in chronic fatigue syndrome, which merits further exploration as a category for experience-near analysis of suffering in medical anthropology.
Abstract: The author examines suffering engendered by the socially constituted nature of illness through the delegitimation of illness experience in chronic fatigue syndrome. Cultural meanings of physical and mental illness are shown to be reflected in interactions with others to construct an illness reality in which chronic fatigue syndrome is defined as either nonexistent or psychosomatic. Disconfirmation of the subjective experience of illness leads to suffering arising from the threatened stigma of psychological disorder, the alienation resulting from a decision to keep the illness secret, and the shame of being wrong in one's definition of reality. Patients also develop strategies for contesting the definition of chronic fatigue syndrome as “not real.” Delegitimation merits further exploration as a category for experience-near analysis of suffering in medical anthropology.
268 citations