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School of Archaeology and Anthropology · ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences
This course is a survey introduction to advanced topics in the social scientific and humanistic study of health and medicine as it relates to culture. It is a discussion-based course focusing on theoretical and methodological questions in medical anthropology research and applied work in the health field. We begin by addressing how to employ ethnographic research to illuminate critical concerns about the social, political, economic, environmental, and historical context of embodiment, health, disease, illness experience, and therapeutic efficacy. Throughout this course, students will be exploring a selection of the wide range of subject matter and geographic regions that encompass medical anthropology. We will begin with the cultural conventions of biomedicine situated in the West and then incorporate some of the healing practices and medical afflictions around the world studied by medical anthropologists. Overall, the thematic topics include: theories of disease causation and healing efficacy; medicalization and the scientific gaze; production of medical knowledge; mental health; public health discourse and risk; the internationalization of pharmaceutical research; the possibilities and perils of new medical technologies; emergent forms of everyday health practices; the ethics of medical tourism; and health inequities. The objective is to provide an overview of theoretical and applied social scientific approaches to the study of culture, health, and medicine.
In person - 130 hours of total student learning time made up from: a) 24 hours of contact over 12 weeks of class discussion; and b) 106 hours of independent student research, reading and writing. Online - 130 hours of total student learning time over 12 weeks made up from listening to recorded discussions each week, readings, research and online activities.
Preliminary Reading Baer, Hans A., Merrill Singer, and Ida Susser, 2013. Medical Anthropology and the World System: Critical Perspectives, Third Edition. Westport, CT: Praeger. Good, Byron J., 1994. Medicine, Rationality, and Experience: An Anthropological Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lock, Margaret, and Vinh-Kim Nguyen, 2010. An Anthropology of Biomedicine. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Sargent, C.F., and T.M. Johnson, 1996. Medical Anthropology: Contemporary Theory and Method, Revised Edition. Westport, CT: Praeger