The Anthropology of Medicine: From Culture to Method / Edition 3

by Daniel Moerman, Lola Romanucci-Ross, Laurence R. Tancredi

Overview

This long-awaited revision of what has now become the classic text in medical anthropology contains a wealth of new material on subjects as diverse as aging, creativity, and ideology. Originally cited in American Anthropologist as must reading for all medical anthropologists, physicians, advanced medical anthropology students and advanced medical students, this new edition should prove twice as valuable. It is both a comprehensive introduction to the rapidly growing field of medical anthropology and a state-of-the-art reference work. The authors bring new perspectives to our understanding of both Western and non-Western medicine, from the biochemical and physiological aspects of health care in preindustrialized cultures to cultural and ideological factors inherent in past and present Western medical care. New chapters focus on ethnobotany, placebo and pain, shamanism, and psychiatry.

The contributors to this volume examine the acculturation process of healer, physician, and patient in diverse cultural settings. They explore the social and cultural context of medical events as well as the process of medical thought and problem solving. Medicine, they illustrate, embraces or is embraced by both the cultural and biological dimensions of mankind. From this perspective they show how human belief, knowledge, and action structure the experience of disease and affect ways in which doctors, healers, and patients experience illness and influence the matrix of decision making. This book is essential for students and professionals in anthropology, medicine, and all social science.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780897895163
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	09/23/1997
Edition description:	3RD
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.85(d)
Lexile:	1390L (what's this?)

About the Author

LOLA ROMANUCCI-ROSS is Professor of Family and Preventive Medicine and Anthropology at the University of California, San Diego. A pioneer in the field of medical anthropology, she has written widely on the subject. She is the author of several other books, including One Hundred Towers: An Italian Odyssey of Cultural Survival (1991) and Mead's Other Manus (1988), both published by Bergin & Garvey, and the third edition of Ethnic Identity: Creation, Conflict and Accomodation (with George De Vos).

DANIEL E. MOERMAN is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan, Dearborn. He is the author of numerous articles on ethnobotany and the definitive work on the medicinal use of plants by Native Americans.

LAURENCE R. TANCREDI is clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at New York University. He is author of numerous articles and books on legal issues in medicine and medical ethics. He is also in the practice of psychiatry in New York City.

Table of Contents

Preface: The Cultural Context of Medicine and the Biohuman Paradigm
Medical Systems and the Uses of Choice
Creativity in Illness: Methodological Linkages to the Logic and Language of Science in Folk Pursuit of Health in Central Italy by Lola Romanucci-Ross
Aztec and European Medicine in the New World, 1521-1600 by Clara Sue Kidwell
Phantoms and Physicians: Social Change Through Medical Pluralism by Libbet Crandon-Malamud
Empirical Analyses of Non-Western Medical Practices and Medical Ecology
Poisoned Apples and Honeysuckles: The Medicinal Plants of Native America by Daniel E. Moerman
Herbal and Symbolic Forms of Treatment in the Medicine of The Lowland Mixe by Michael Heinrich
The Evolution of Human Nutrition by Barry Bogin
Zoonoses and the Origins of Old and New World Viral Diseases—New Perspectives by Linda M. Van Blerkom
Malaria, Medicine, and Meals: A Biobehavioral Perspective by Nina L. Etkin and Paul J. Ross
Embodied Mind; Metaphors of Pain, Placebo, and Symbolic Healing
The Impassioned Knowledge of the Shaman by Lola Romanucci-Ross
Anarchy, Abjection, and Absurdity: A Case of Metaphoric Medicine among the Tabwa of Zaire by Allen F. Roberts
Physiology and Symbols: The Anthropological Implications of the Placebo Effect by Daniel E. Moerman
Narratives of Chronic Pain by Robert Kugelmann
The Effect of Ethnicity on Prescriptions for Patient Controlled Analgesia for Post Operative Pain by Bernardo Ng, Joel E. Dimsdale, Jens D. Rollnik, and Harvey Shapiro
Modern Medical Inquiry and Culture Change
Stress and Its Management: The Cultural Construction of an Illness and Its Treatment by Robert Kugelmann
Science of Mind in Contexts of a Culture by Laurence R. Tancredi
The "New Psychiatry": From Ideology to Cultural Error by Lola Romanucci-Ross
The Aging: Legal and Ethcial Personhood in Cultural Change by Laurence R. Tancredi and Lola Romanucci-Ross
The Extraneous Factor in Western Medicine by Lola Romanucci-Ross and Daniel E. Moerman
"Medical Anthropology": Convergence of Mind and Experience in the Anthropological Imagination by Lola Romanucci-Ross, Daniel E. Moerman, and Laurence R. Tancredi
Index

Editorial Reviews

3 Stars from Doody

The third edition of this book provides the reader with a transcultural trip through the art and science of healing, with updated chapters on research and method as applied to medical anthropology. Its presumptive purpose is the fusion of cultural and Western medicine for the purpose of conceptual analysis in order to integrate biology and the behavioral sciences into a "biohuman science." The editors feel that this can be achieved by the blending or unification of biomedicine and medical anthropology. Although suitable for a very broad readership, the book will have its greatest appeal to a limited number of physicians and researchers in specific fields of medicine, certain public health professionals, anthropologists, social-psychologists, and various levels of students of these professions. This simply constructed book provides readers with a wealth of references. The limited number of tables and graphs are concise and well done. The charts and tables on the zoonoses, the relationship between animal and human viral diseases, nutrition, and herbal medicine are exceptional and unlikely to be found in such concerted fashion elsewhere. This book supplies the reader with an interesting and fascinating exposition into the importance of numerous cultural influences upon the development of medicine and medical care. It provides good reflective thought on the interaction between physician and patient and implies a passionate need for future discourse and study of the "anthropology of medicine," itself somewhat of a metaphor.

Basil Rudusky