SA 101 Lecture 9: Week 9_ Culture and Illness

• School: Simon Fraser University
• Department: Sociology and Anthropology
• Course: SA 101
• Professor: Bascom Guffin

Document Summary

Medical anthropology = a sub-discipline of anth concerned w the ways health, illness, and the body are entrenched within sociocultural and political dimensions of human activity. Eg. illness can be outcome of structural violence incl poverty, hunger, discrimination. Eg. disease can be biological weapon like british colonialists giving smallpox- infected blankets to indig pops. Health and illness do not exist independent of the social contexts in which they emerge and develop. Humans give meaning to health and illness thru historically embedded authoritative ideas and practices. Influence of sociocultural values on the concept of disease. 18th cent europe and america: disease onanism caused epilepsy, blindness, vertigo, loss of hearing, headache, impotency, memory loss, rickets, and irregular action of the heart. 19th cent: woman"s personality and physiology were completed controlled by her ovaries. Cartesian dualism = a notion formulated by french philosopher-mathematician. Rene descartes that separates mind (or soul) from body, spirit from matter, non- physical from physical, unreal from real.