Study Guide - Midterm Spring 20204

 Study Guide to Medical Anthropology Concepts

-Note that the midterm will cover medical anthropological precepts including definitions, methodology, cross-cultural aspects of health and illness, types of medicine systems, definitions and conceptions of health and illness, the relavance of inequality in health and illness.

-The exam will be a combination of short answer and multiple choice with one longer essay. You may bring your notes to class, but I would suggest you use notetaking as a study methods so you are not overwhelmed during the exam.

You should review all the following posts:

Illness Narratives -1/3

Susan Sontag: Illness as Metaphor 2/13

Infectious Inequality- Paul farmer 2/13

Mountains Upon Mountains 2/19

Healers and Healing professions 2/20

What's so alternative about alternative medicine 2/22

Body, Movement and medicine 2/22

Vital Forces and medicine (Humoral) 2/22

Spirit Medicine 2/22

Humeral Medicine example -Ayurveda (detailed) 3/4

Spirit Medicine Example - Hatha Yoga (detailed) 3/4

PLEASE NOTE ANY ETHNOGRAPHIC EXAMPLES WITHIN EACH BLOG POST.

In the order of coverage... important concepts (by chapter above):

• Definition of medical anthropology, its goals, history, and perspectives. Make sure that you know any key terms
• Methodology in medical anthropology
• Modern focus on APPLICATION of anthropological knowledge for the improvement of the quality of life for those who are studies

• What are the metaphors we use to understand illness in western culture?
• What does Sontag say about the "military metaphors" we use? Why do we apply them to some illnesses and not others?
• What are alternative metaphors used in other cultures?
• Why are  illnesses like TB, AIDS, leprosy, ebola and Cancer stigmatized?

• Who was Paul Farmer? Who is Arthur Kleinman?
• What did Paul Farmer mean by "infectious inequality"? "structural violence"?
• What are Kleinman's 10 questions? Why are they at the foundation of illness narratives? 
• What is the significance of poverty to illness? 
• Why does Farmer work in places like Haiti, Russian prisons? rural South America and Africa?
• What significant strategies for successful health did Partners in Heakth (PIH) devise to counter the arguments made by the WHO? Why is this significant?

• What are the different healers and healing professions cross culturally?
• How are these consistent with the social and political structure and cosmology (worldview) of the culture?
• Why can these healing traditions co-exist is some cultures?
• What are the possible relationships between practitioner and patient in each tradition?
• What is the difference between "healing" and "curing"?

• What is "alternative" medicine and how is it distinct from mainstream medicine? 
• Is it possible for alternative medicine to become part of mainstream medicine? How? 
• What is CAM (complimentary and alternative medicine"? How is it utilized in biomedicine (allopathy)?
• How do people choose betweem treatment options? What factors come into play?
• Is alternative medicine an industry? Explain.

• How is the body understood in different medical systems?
• How is movement seen as a vital aspect of healing in some traditions?
• What is the importance of the senses in healing?

• What is humoral medicine and what are vital forces?
• What is health based upon in humoral systems (balanace)?
• Know examples of humoral systems
• Know the history of humoral systems in the west and any remnants of these systems which exist in contemporary healing.

• What is the basis of "spirit medicine"
• How do social relations figure prominently in spirit medicine?
• What is the role of the supernatural and the natural in medical systems?
• What is energy medicine?
• What are examples of spirit and energy medicine
• what are the different types of spiritual entities?
• What are these important in understanding illness?

GENERAL:

• know ethnographic examples where possible
• know the relationship between the supposed causes of illness and their prescribed treatments
• Understand the purpose and perspective of medical anthropology and how it differs from biomedicine
• know the different concerns between a doctor an d a medical anthropologist.