In this widely-praised study, Carol Laderman provides a vivid picture of the daily life of rural Malays as she focuses on their dietary practices and the ritual and medical aspects of childbirth procedures. Apprenticed to a village midwife and a local shaman, she was able to observe a traditional culture adapting to modern practices.

Dialogue between a medical anthropologist and a Cherokee linguist about health, well-being, and environmental issues Sounds of Tohi: Cherokee Health and Well-Being in Southern Appalachia is the result of almost two decades of work by medical anthropologist Lisa J. Lefler and Cherokee elder and traditionalist Thomas N. Belt. The narrative consists of a dialogue between them that displays traditional Indigenous knowledge as well as the importance of place for two people from cultures and histories that intersect in the mountains of Southern Appalachia. Together, Lefler and Belt decolonize thinking about health, well-being, and environmental issues through the language and experiences of people whose identity is inextricably linked to the mountains and landscape of western North Carolina. Lefler and Belt discuss several critical cultural concepts that explain the science of relationships with this world, with the spirit world, and with people. They explore tohi, the Cherokee concept of health, which offers a more pervasive understanding of relationships in life as balanced and moving forward in a good way. They converse about the importance of matrilineality, particularly in light of community healing, the epistemologies of Cherokee cosmography, and decolonizing counseling approaches. The discussions here offer a different way of approaching the issues that face Americans in this difficult time of division. Lefler and Belt share their urgency to take action against the wholesale exploitation of public lands and the shared environment, to work to perpetuate tribal languages, to preserve the science that can make a difference in how people treat one another, and to create more forums that are inclusive of Native and marginalized voices and that promote respect and appreciation of one another and the protection of sacred places. Throughout, they rely on the preservation of traditional knowledge, or Native science, via Native language to provide insight as to why people should recognize a connection to the land.

The Bushbuckridge region of South Africa has one of the highest rates of HIV infection in the world. Having first arrived in the area in the early 1990s, the disease spread rapidly, and by 2008 life expectancies had fallen by 12 years for men and 14 years for women. Since 2005, public health facilities have increasingly offered free HAART (highly active antiretroviral therapy) treatment, offering a degree of hope, but uptake and adherence to the therapy has been sporadic and uneven. Drawing on his extensive ethnographic research, carried out in Bushbuckridge over the course of 25 years, Isak Niehaus reveals how the AIDS pandemic has been experienced at the village-level. Most significantly, he shows how local cultural practices and values have shaped responses to the epidemic. For example, while local attitudes towards death and misfortune have contributed to the stigma around AIDS, kinship structures have also facilitated the adoption and care of AIDS orphans. Such practices challenge us to rethink the role played by culture in understanding and treating sickness, with Niehaus showing how an appreciation of local beliefs and customs is essential to any effective strategy of AIDS treatment. Overturning many of our assumptions on disease prevention, the book is essential reading for practitioners as well as researchers in global health, anthropology, sociology, epidemiology and scholars interested in public health and administration in sub-Saharan Africa.

Our bones can reveal fascinating information about how we have lived, from the food we have eaten to our levels of activity and the infections and injuries we have suffered. Elizabeth Weiss introduces readers to how lifestyle-in complex interaction with biology, genes, and environment-affects health in this distinctive tour of human osteology, past and present. Centering on health issues that have arisen in the last fifty to sixty years rather than thousands of years ago, Paleopathology in Perspective is organized around particular bone traits such as growth patterns, back pains, infections, and oral health. Each chapter explains one category of traits and reviews data drawn from both ancient and more contemporary populations to explore how global trait trends have changed over time. Weiss also considers the likely causes of these changes-for example, the growth of obesity, increased longevity, and greater intensity of childhood sports. Taking a long view of bones, as Weiss clearly demonstrates, provides clues not just about how ancient humans once lived, but also how biology and behavior, lifestyle and health, remain intrinsically linked.

In this important collection, prominent scholars who helped to establish medical anthropology as an area of study reflect on the field's past, present, and future. In doing so, they demonstrate that medical anthropology has developed dynamically, through its intersections with activism, with other subfields in anthropology, and with disciplines as varied as public health, the biosciences, and studies of race and ethnicity. Each of the contributors addresses one or more of these intersections. Some trace the evolution of medical anthropology in relation to fields including feminist technoscience, medical history, and international and area studies. Other contributors question the assumptions underlying mental health, global public health, and genetics and genomics, areas of inquiry now central to contemporary medical anthropology. Essays on the field's engagements with disability studies, public policy, and gender and sexuality studies illuminate the commitments of many medical anthropologists to public-health and human-rights activism. Essential reading for all those interested in medical anthropology, this collection offers productive insight into the field and its future, as viewed by some of the world's leading medical anthropologists.
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Contributors." Lawrence Cohen, Didier Fassin, Faye Ginsburg, Marcia C. Inhorn, Arthur Kleinman, Margaret Lock, Emily Martin, Lynn M. Morgan, Richard Parker, Rayna Rapp, Merrill Singer, Emily A. Wentzell

"Deep China" investigates the emotional and moral lives of the Chinese people as they adjust to the challenges of modernity. Sharing a medical anthropology and cultural psychiatry perspective, Arthur Kleinman, Yunxiang Yan, Jing Jun, Sing Lee, Everett Zhang, Pan Tianshu, Wu Fei, and Guo Jinhua delve into intimate and sometimes hidden areas of personal life and social practice to observe and narrate the drama of Chinese individualization. The essays explore the remaking of the moral person during China's profound social and economic transformation, unraveling the shifting practices and struggles of contemporary life.

The ways in which people respond to sickness differ greatly from society to society. In this book anthropologist and epidemiologist Robert A. Hahn examines how Western and non-Western cultures influence the definition, experience, and treatment of sickness. Hahn begins by developing a definition of sickness that is based on the patient's perception of suffering and disturbance rather than on the physician's assessment of biomedical signs. After reviewing the principal theories that account for the forms of sickness and healing found in different historical and cultural situations, he explores the relevance of both anthropological and epidemiological approaches to sickness, focusing on the persistent gap between white and black infant mortality in the United States. Hahn then describes contemporary Western medicine as it might be seen by a visiting foreign anthropologist. He delineates the culture of Western medicine and portrays the world of one physician at work, traces the evolution of obstetrics since 1903 by analyzing the principal textbook-Williams Obstetrics-through its first eighteen editions, and explores the gulf between physicians and their patients by examining the accounts of physicians who have written about their own illnesses. He concludes by proposing ways in which some of the ills of contemporary Western medicine might be remedied by applying anthropological principles to medical training and practice.

In this first English-language study of popular and scientific responses to tuberculosis in nineteenth-century France, David Barnes provides a much-needed historical perspective on a disease that is making an alarming comeback in the United States and Europe. Barnes argues that French perceptions of the disease--ranging from the early romantic image of a consumptive woman to the later view of a scourge spread by the poor--owed more to the power structures of nineteenth-century society than to medical science. By 1900, the war against tuberculosis had become a war against the dirty habits of the working class.
Lucid and original, Barnes's study broadens our understanding of how and why societies assign moral meanings to deadly diseases.

This book is a comprehensive introduction to the methodological basis of population health research, and a critical assessment of theoretical issues affecting the quality of research on health and behaviour. Research into the many factors that shape human health or illness, has traditionally emphasized experimental design and the statistical effects of specific factors. While due attention is paid to such methods, the contributors emphasize the importance of theory-guided, multi-method approaches for research into the complex forces affecting health, health-related behaviour and the effectiveness of health services. Throughout, the value of analytical models of population health is related to their utility in informing and building theoretical knowledge.

Until now our knowledge of African health and healing has been extensive but fragmented. Here in eighteen essays is the first comprehensive account of disease, health,and healing practices in the African continent. The contributors all emphasize the social conditions linked to ill health and the development of local healing traditions, from Morocco to South Africa and from the precolonial era to the present. Several chapters illustrate how the most basic facts of everyday life encourage the spread of disease and chape the possibilities of survival. Other discuss a variety of healing practices: drums of affliction in Bantu-speaking societies, Muslim humoral medicine, and biomedicine as practiced in hospitals and dispensaries. The editors provide introductory overviews explaining why and how health and disease are related to historical, economic, and political phenomena.

Widespread throughout Latin America, susto is a folk illness associated with a broad array of symptoms. It is considered by susceptible populations to be a sickness caused by the separation of soul and body which is precipitated by a supernatural force. Most studies of culture-bound diseases have relied on descriptive approaches that focus on pathologies derived from medical textbooks. This study takes an interdisciplinary approach, looking for explanations of susto in the interaction of social, physiological, and psychological factors.

More than ten million children suffer from severe acute malnutrition globally each year. In Uganda, longstanding efforts to understand, treat, and then prevent the condition initially served to medicalize it, in the eyes of both biomedical personnel and Ugandans who brought their children to the hospital for treatment and care. Medicalization meant malnutrition came to be seen as a disease—as a medical emergency—not a preventable condition, further compromising nutritional health in Uganda. Rather than rely on a foreign-led model, physicians in Uganda responded to this failure by developing a novel public health program known as Mwanamugimu. The new approach prioritized local expertise and empowering Ugandan women, blending biomedical knowledge with African sensibilities and cultural competencies. In The Riddle of Malnutrition, Jennifer Tappan examines how over the course of half a century Mwanamugimu tackled the most fatal form of childhood malnutrition—kwashiorkor—and promoted nutritional health in the midst of postcolonial violence, political upheaval, and neoliberal resource constraints. She draws on a diverse array of sources to illuminate the interplay between colonialism, the production of scientific knowledge, and the delivery of health services in contemporary Africa.

This book examines various aspects of ethnomedicine and tribal healing practices, including its importance for inclusion and integration from a health systems perspective. Tribal healing practices is an under-studied component in healthcare system, health policy and health systems research. The book consists of original research papers based on empirical studies done by anthropologists, sociologists, public health practitioners and research scientists in various parts of India. It discusses issues of non-codified folk healing, with a focus on the therapeutic ideas and practices of tribal communities, located in anthropological theory and methods. It has a balance of empirical papers, review and theoretical papers, not only explaining 'what is inside the healing practices' but also touching upon the question of 'why' and delving into 'what should be' looking into the possibility to apply it for a larger good i.e., health care for all. This book discusses several important issues related to legitimacy, evidence and efficacy, recognition, certification and integration, protection and preservation, bio-piracy and bioprospecting, benefit sharing and intellectual property rights, sustainable use of medicinal herbs and conservation of nature and natural resources, biodiversity and possibilities of mainstreaming tribal healing. It is of interest to students and researchers from medical anthropology, medical sociology, cultural geography, liberal studies, tribal studies, ecology, sustainability and development and public health.

More than ten million children suffer from severe acute malnutrition globally each year. In Uganda, longstanding efforts to understand, treat, and then prevent the condition initially served to medicalize it, in the eyes of both biomedical personnel and Ugandans who brought their children to the hospital for treatment and care. Medicalization meant malnutrition came to be seen as a disease-as a medical emergency-not a preventable condition, further compromising nutritional health in Uganda. Rather than rely on a foreign-led model, physicians in Uganda responded to this failure by developing a novel public health program known as Mwanamugimu. The new approach prioritized local expertise and empowering Ugandan women, blending biomedical knowledge with African sensibilities and cultural competencies. In The Riddle of Malnutrition, Jennifer Tappan examines how over the course of half a century Mwanamugimu tackled the most fatal form of childhood malnutrition-kwashiorkor-and promoted nutritional health in the midst of postcolonial violence, political upheaval, and neoliberal resource constraints. She draws on a diverse array of sources to illuminate the interplay between colonialism, the production of scientific knowledge, and the delivery of health services in contemporary Africa.

Margaret Lock explicitly compares Japanese and North American medical and political accounts of female middle age to challenge Western assumptions about menopause. She uses ethnography, interviews, statistics, historical and popular culture materials, and medical publications to produce a richly detailed account of Japanese women's lives. The result offers irrefutable evidence that the experience and meanings--even the endocrinological changes--associated with female midlife are far from universal. Rather, Lock argues, they are the product of an ongoing dialectic between culture and local biologies.
Japanese focus on middle-aged women as family members, and particularly as caretakers of elderly relatives. They attach relatively little importance to the end of menstruation, seeing it as a natural part of the aging process and not a diseaselike state heralding physical decline and emotional instability. Even the symptoms of midlife are different: Japanese women report few hot flashes, for example, but complain frequently of stiff shoulders.
Articulate, passionate, and carefully documented, Lock's study systematically undoes the many preconceptions about aging women in two distinct cultural settings. Because it is rooted in the everyday lives of Japanese women, it also provides an excellent entree to Japanese society as a whole.
Aging and menopause are subjects that have been closeted behind our myths, fears, and misconceptions. Margaret Lock's cross-cultural perspective gives us a critical new lens through which to examine our assumptions.

AIDS. Ebola. "Killer microbes." All around us the alarms are going off, warning of the danger of new, deadly diseases. And yet, as Nancy Tomes reminds us in her absorbing book, this is really nothing new. A remarkable work of medical and cultural history, The Gospel of Germs takes us back to the first great "germ panic" in American history, which peaked in the early 1900s, to explore the origins of our modern disease consciousness. Little more than a hundred years ago, ordinary Americans had no idea that many deadly ailments were the work of microorganisms, let alone that their own behavior spread such diseases. The Gospel of Germs shows how the revolutionary findings of late nineteenth-century bacteriology made their way from the laboratory to the lavatory and kitchen, with public health reformers spreading the word and women taking up the battle on the domestic front. Drawing on a wealth of advice books, patent applications, advertisements, and oral histories, Tomes traces the new awareness of the microbe as it radiated outward from middle-class homes into the world of American business and crossed the lines of class, gender, ethnicity, and race. Just as we take some of the weapons in this germ war for granted--fixtures as familiar as the white porcelain toilet, the window screen, the refrigerator, and the vacuum cleaner--so we rarely think of the drastic measures deployed against disease in the dangerous old days before antibiotics. But, as Tomes notes, many of the hygiene rules first popularized in those days remain the foundation of infectious disease control today. Her work offers a timely look into the history of our long-standing obsession with germs, its impact on twentieth-century culture and society, and its troubling new relevance to our own lives.

"Attached Files" is a selection of lectures and papers written by Imre Lazar, a medical anthropologist with twenty-five years of experience, situated at the crossroads and frontiers of several disciplines, including anthropology, health sciences, religious studies, human ecology, and environmental ethics. The shared focus, connecting these borderlands into a common semantic network, is the problem of the synergic logic of human bonds and attachment embodied by somatic, social, institutional and symbolic structures. The first part of the book deals with pluralism and the enculturation of the medical practice and its anthropological perspectives. The concept of attachment, metaphorized by the title, also provides a common ground to envisage cultural history, philosophy, literature, and biomedical sciences in terms of synergic human agency and its obstacles. The book integrates various strands of anthropology, such as the evolutionary and the symbolic, and the materialist and the idealist. The book will be useful for those interested in the fields of medical anthropology, health psychology, religious studies, human ecology, ecophilosophy, and environmental ethics.

Medical anthropologists, medical sociologists and health educationalists have assumed that 'systems of medical knowledge' held by indigenous peoples and by Westerners alike are generally uniform and consistent. Over the last few years it has become evident that this is not so: frequently members of social groups, and their healers, do not have a clearly established rationale for health beliefs and medical practices. This book collects together some recent works in medical anthropology which argues that there are limits to local health-related knowledge, whether in the mind of the informants themselves or in the analytical models of the anthropologist.

Medical practitioners and the ordinary citizen are becoming more aware that we need to understand cultural variation in medical belief and practice. The more we know how health and disease are managed in different cultures, the more we can recognize what is "culture bound" in our own medical belief and practice.

The Encyclopedia of Medical Anthropology is unique because it is the first reference work to describe the cultural practices relevant to health in the world's cultures and to provide an overview of important topics in medical anthropology. No other single reference work comes close to marching the depth and breadth of information on the varying cultural background of health and illness around the world. More than 100 experts - anthropologists and other social scientists - have contributed their firsthand experience of medical cultures from around the world.