2nd Edition

Critical Medical Anthropology

By Merrill Singer, Hans Baer Copyright 1995
    406 Pages
    by Routledge

    406 Pages
    by Routledge

    The purpose of this book is to provide an introduction and overview to the critical perspective as it has evolved in medical anthropology over the last ten years. Standing as an opposition approach to conventional medical anthropology, critical medical anthropology has emphasized the importance of political and economy forces, including the exercise of power, in shaping health, disease, illness experience, and health care.

    SECTION A: Orientation
    Introduction
    Medical Anthropology and its Transformation
    The Critical Gaze
    Postmodernism Medical Anthropology: A Critique

    SECTION B: The Macro-Social Level
    Health-Related Issues in Socialist-Oriented Societies: Ideals, Contradictions, and Realities
    Studying Up: The Political Economy of Nuclear Regulation

    SECTION C: The Intermediate-Social Level
    The American Dominative Medical System as a Reflection of Social Relations in the Larger Society
    AIDS and the Health Crisis of the U.S. Urban Poor
    The Drive for Professionalization in British Osteopathy

    SECTION D: The Micro-Social Level
    Medical Hegemony, Biomedical Magic, and Folk Medicine: Reproductive Illness among Haitian Women
    Prophets and Advisors in African-American Spiritual Churches: Therapy, Palliative, or Opiate?

    SECTION E: The Individual Level
    Confronting Juan García's Drinking Problem: The Demedicalization of Alcoholism
    Cure, Care and Control: Agency and the Structure in the Clinical Encounter

    SECTION F: Directions
    How Critical Can Clinical Anthropology Be?
    Critical Praxis in Medical Anthropology
    Topic Index
    Name Index

    Biography

    Merrill Singer, Hans Baer