Department of Behavioural Sciences

Division of Humanities for Health Care

Medical Anthropology
2013-2014 Year 1st Semester

The object of medical anthropology is the human being in the context of health and disease, in
the healing processes and in the health-care system.
The basic method of medical anthropology is historic-hermeneutical in the sense that man is
investigated by this discipline in historical and cross-cultural relations; it is an integrative
study and in this role it uses the contributions of different forms of knowledge (philosophical
anthropology, social philosophy, cultural anthropology, psychoanalysis, sociology, etc.); the
problems of health-illness is discussed in socio-economic dynamics; it deals with biomedical
approach as a cultural product and in this way it draws the attention to the relation between
individual experience, cultural meaning and social structure.
The medical anthropology semester consists of 15 hours study; a series of seminars organised
bi-weekly in two-hour blocks.
Method:
Student should actively participate in seminars and everyone should present a short lecture
which deals with issues listed below the titles of topics. (Suggested readings can also be found
there.)

Topics:
1, Introduction I: technical and methodological issues of the course
2, Introduction II: medical anthropology as a part of medical humanities
3, Medicine and culture
-

How can culture participate in construction of diseases?

What does culture-bound syndrome mean?
Is medicine (medical knowledge) international?
Is it possible in the field of medical knowledge a point of view from nowhere?
What does it mean that medicine is a historical phenomenon?

- R.E. Bartholomew, B. Radford: Latah: Strange mental Disorder or Exotic Custom?,

in: Hoaxes, Myths, and Manias, Prometheus Books, New York, 2003. 93-104.
- R.E. Bartholomew, B. Radford: Genital-Shrinking Scares, in: Hoaxes, Myths, and
Manias, Prometheus Books, New York, 2003. 123-134.
- Lynn Payer: Is Medicine International? and Cultural Bias in Medical Science, in:
medicine and Culture, Henry Holt and Co., New York, 1996. 34.
- A historical approach to medical knowledge in: Medical Knowledge: Doubt and
Certainty, ed. C. Seale, S. Pattison, B. Davey, Open University Press, 2001. Chapter 3,
43-53.

4, Health and ill health in cultural context

-

Are different types of ill-health naturally given or culturally constructed

phenomena?
What are the differences between disease, illness and sickness?
How have different aspects of health been changing during history?
Do health and illness have the same meanings in different cultures?
Does Western culture have the only proper and right approach towards health and
illness?

- Arthur L. Caplan: The Concepts of Health, Illness, and Disease, in: Companion
Encyclopedia of the History of Medicine Vol. 1, ed. W. F. Bynum and Roy Porter,
Routledge, London and New York, 2001. 233-248.
- H. R. Wulff, P. C. Gotzsche: The Disease Classification, in: Rational Diagnosis and
Treatment, Blackwell Science, 2000, 39-62.

5, Traditional, Natural and alternative medicine

-

What kinds of Weltanschauung (image of world) serve as backgrounds for

different medical ideologies and systems?
How human being is defined by complementary and alternative (CAM) and
modern medicine?
What is the attitude of modern medicine towards its predecessors?
Why is CAM so popular today?
How can culture influence placebo effects?

- Health and healing in an age of science, in: Medical Knowledge: Doubt and
Certainty, ed. C. Seale, S. Pattison, B. Davey, Open University Press, 2001. Chapter 2.
14-42.
- B.B. OConnor, David J. Hufford: Understanding Folk Medicine, in Healing Logics,
ed. E. Brady, Utah State University Press, Logan, 2001. 13-35.
- Mark R. Tonelli, Timothy C. Callahan: Why Alternative Medicine Cannot be
Evidence-based, Academic Medicine, Vol. 76. No. 12 12 December 2001. 1213-1220.

6, Body in Culture and Society

-

How is body-image influenced by cultural norms and values?

How does body-mind problem appear in different cultures and historical periods?
What kind of body-images can be found in culture of modern medicine?
Why is female body so special in Western culture and medicine?
What are the characteristics of medicalization?

- Tuberculosis, Blood, Hysteria, in: Medical Knowledge: Doubt and Certainty, ed. C.
Seale, S. Pattison, B. Davey, Open University Press, 2001. Chapter 4; 5; 6, 54-85, 86109, 110-133.
- Emily Martin: Medical Metaphors of Womens Bodies: Menstruation and
Menopause, Medical Metaphors of Womens Bodies: Birth in: The Woman in the
Body, Open University Press/ Milton Keynes, 1996. 27 67.
- Medicalisation and surveillance, in: Medical Knowledge: Doubt and Certainty, ed.
C. Seale, S. Pattison, B. Davey, Open University Press, 2001. Chapter 8. 151-168.

7, Pain, Suffering and Death

-

What are the differences between pain and suffering?

How does culture influence modes of pain and suffering?
How have traits of death dying been changing in different periods of Western
culture?
Why has death been becoming a taboo today?
What kind of rituals of death and dying exist?

- Simon J. Williams Gillian Bendelow: Pain and the dys-appearing body, in: The
Lived Body, Routledge, New York, 1998. 155 - 170.
- Byron J. Good: The body, illness experience, and the lifeworld: a phenomenological
account of chronic pain, in: Medical Anthropology, A Course Reader, Compiled by
Pter Molnr and Attila Bnfalvi, Debrecen 1998. III/50 - 59.
- Ivan Illich: Death against death, in: Medical Anthropology, A Course Reader,
Compiled by Pter Molnr and Attila Bnfalvi, Debrecen 1998. III/21 - 37.
- Tony Walter: Modern death: Taboo or not taboo, Sociology, vol. 25 no. 2, (May
1991), 293-310.

8, Final test and essay

Requirement for the final grade:
A presentation on a chosen topic + a test/essay on the last seminar
Course books:
Cecil G. Helman: Culture, Health and Illness, Fifth Edition, Hodder Arnold, London, 2007.
Chapters: 2; 4; 5; 6; 7; 9; 10; 11.
Michael Winkelman: Culture and Health Applying Medical Anthropology, Jossey Bass, San
Francisco, 2009. Chapter 2; 5; 6;
Reading Books:
Roy Porter: Blood and Guts. A Short history of Medicine, Allen Lane, The Penguin Press,
2002.
Medical Anthropology, A course reader (manuscript) ed. Pter Molnr Attila Bnfalvi,
Debrecen, 1998.
Medical Knowledge: Doubt and Certainty, ed. C. Seale, S. Pattison, B. Davey, Open
University Press, 2000.