History of Medical Anthropology

Medical Anthropology ANTH 2301 History of Medical Anthropology Despite being a relatively recent discipline, medical anthropology has a long history in the four-fields of American anthropology and is closely related to the study of religion by early European anthropologists. The growth of medical anthropology was also greatly aided by Franz Boas's holistic methodology. Boas's study included an examination of the "race theory" prevalent in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th century. This idea postulated that an individual's ascribed racial category and ethnic heritage influenced specific physical features and behavioural traits. By examining the physiology and general health of immigrant families in New York City in 1912, Boas questioned this presumption. Boas discovered that human biological traits varied widely among ethnic groups, and that social variables like diet and parenting styles had a significant impact on how people developed and remained healthy. He pointed out that generational changes in biology were connected to cultural modifications in childrearing and nutrition, which are frequently a component of the immigrant experience. Boas disproved notions that social behaviours originate from biological inheritance by presenting actual evidence from his own original sources. This data also demonstrated how local environments—natural, modified, and social—have an influence on shaping cultural and physical consequences. This basis stood in sharp contrast to the underlying racism of social evolutionism, the preeminent theory of anthropology at the time. Some of Boas's pupils carried on some of his ideas, including Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, and Edward Sapir. Their distinctive research approaches have influenced medical anthropology ever since. Psychological anthropology was founded on the research of Benedict on cultural personality, Mead on childrearing and adolescence, and Sapir on psychology and language. The work of British psychiatrist and anthropologist W. H. R. Rivers (1901), who investigated the inheritance of sensory capacities and disabilities among Melanesian populations while taking part in the Torres Strait island expedition in 1898, preceded their entry into psychological anthropology. He became quite respectful of his Melanesian study subjects and used the results of his studies to refute the myth of the "noble savage." He showed that the Melanesian senses were formed similarly to the British by a common biological process of heredity and environmental effects, indicating that their mental ability was the same as that of Europeans. The anthropology of religion, a branch of anthropology that examines a variety of facets of health, is also the source of medical anthropology. The study of religion as an anthropology examines how people generate and carry out spiritual beliefs as well as how these beliefs are applied to society as a means of social control. Health and health outcomes are the topic of several well researched major frameworks in the anthropology of religion, including taboos of health, shamanic healing, rituals of healing, health beliefs, cultural symbolism, and stigma. E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Victor and Edith Turner, and Mary Douglas were among the prominent early religious anthropologists who studied topics including taboo, pollution, healing rites, and misfortune and injury. In medical anthropology, Evans-Pritchard's research with the Azande people of North Central Africa remains seminal. The chapter "The Notion of Witchcraft Explains Unfortunate Events" from the book Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande is particularly significant since it presents the concept of causality in all of its multifaceted cross-cultural manifestations. The idea of explanatory models, which we shall discuss in detail later in this chapter, was directly affected by this chapter. Victor and Edith Turner's research centred on pilgrimages, ritual healing, and socially prescribed morality. Purity and Danger ([1966] 2002) by Mary Douglas explored the ideas of taboo and contamination in addition to rituals meant to bring about purity. Her work is still relevant today, especially for medical anthropologists studying the effects of stigma associated with disease on patients' experiences with their illnesses. The Second World War significantly altered the way anthropologists conducted their research. During and after the war, several of Boas's students provided assistance to the governments of the United States and Britain. In the years following World War II, anthropologists worked more and more to assist people in improving their health outcomes, concentrating on both public and private health projects. The World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Nations were founded in direct relation to these public health initiatives. During this time, the human rights declaration included provisions pertaining to health and well-being, and the goal of biomedical research shifted to "conquering" infectious diseases. The field of medical anthropology was formally established in the late 1970s. The release of George Foster and Barbara Anderson's medical anthropology textbook in 1978 is one significant event. But since the end of World War II, a large number of applied anthropologists and academics in related health professions, such social epidemiology and public health, have been working on cross-cultural health studies. Among them are John Cassell, Erwin Ackerknecht, Benjamin Paul, and Edward Wellin. A large number of these pioneers were physicians who saw the drawbacks of a purely biomechanical understanding of health and illness. Through multidisciplinary anthropological applications and the practical use of medical anthropology in government policy and healthcare, medical anthropologists have broadened the discipline since the 1980s. Although the anthropologist's involvement in this work changes often, it usually focuses on integrating biological knowledge and cultural subtlety into policy and human-centered care. Applied anthropologists who work in hospitals, nonprofit organisations, and government agencies like the World Health Organisation (WHO), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are included in the area of medical anthropology today. Scholars that focus on solving complicated problems and investigate the intricate connection between human culture and health are known as academic medical anthropologists.