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Medical Anthropology (Special Lecture I, II)

Latest update: 20 March, 2024 (Wed)

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1. Overview

For international health, especially for cooperation and development, understanding diversified cultural background is crucially important. Any aid without understanding tends to become a kind of cultural invasion, and it may result in tragic outcomes for the local people. This lecture thus outlines the basic concepts and methodologies of medical anthropology, followed by several examples.

2. Plan

The lecture is done in the first semester on Thursday, 14:50-16:20 at GSICS Presentation Room and online via Zoom.

Please check BEEF+ to get the access information of Zoom.

Since 2014, debates on the several topics has been held, where the basic information is given and the sides are assigned in the end of previous week. After the debate, voting to judge the winner is to be done via chat for online participants and anonymous voting sheet for face-to-face participants, then the next week's topic is explained.

• [11 April] Overview: history of the medical anthropology concept (handout)
• [18 April] What is health? Applied medical anthropology and health care (handout)
• [25 April] Disease, illness, sickness and the sick role (handout)
• [2 May] Sick role and patient role in detail (handout)
• [9 May] Cultural competence in health care (handout)
• [16 May] No debate, lightening talks by all participants. Cultural systems models (handout)
• [23 May] Debate on "Should we try to change the indigenous people's superstructure including traditional belief or superstition" (handout for medical systems and medical pluralism/syncretism).
• [30 May] Debate on the mass-media and/or internet use as a popular sector of medical systems; Handout for transcultural psychiatry and indigenous psychology (handout)
• [6 June] Debates on the public health intervention policy and cultural normalcy / Handout for traditional/herbal medicine (handout)
• [13 June] Debates on the pharmaceutical companies' "bio-piracy" / Medical-ecological approaches to health (handout)
• [20 June] Debates on the possibility of global common moral / Political economy and critical medial anthropology (handout)
  Additional reference papers on this topics: Curry OS et al. (2019) "Is It Good to Cooperate? Testing the Theory of Morality-as-Cooperation in 60 Societies" Current Anthropology, 60(1), Ertör-Akyazi P, Akçay Ç (2021) "Moral intuitions predict pro-social behaviour in a climate commons game" Ecological Economics, 181, Bocian K et al. (2021) "Moral tribalism: Moral judgments of actions supporting ingroup interests depend on collective narcissism", Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 93
• [27 June] Debates on the forced community involvement of healthcare / Psychobiological dynamics of health (handout)
• [4 July] Debates on the refusal of medical treatment based on religious/cultural belief / Shamanic paradigm of ethnomedicine (handout; For aboriginal shamanism, see this page and this paper)
• [11 July] Debates on shamanism / Life and death in relation to bioethics (handout - life and death, Next week's debates topic: Should physician assisted death be legalized in Japan?)
• [18 July] (Debate only)

3. Evaluation

Based on presentation and discussion.

4. Reference

Winkelman M (2009) Culture and Health: Applying Medical Anthropology. Jossey-Bass, John-Wiley and Sons. (Instructor Companion Site)

Debbie Newman, Ben Woolgar, ed. (2014) Pros and Cons: A Debater's Handbook. 19th ed., Routledge.

5. Office hour

Please send me e-mail to contact.

6. Message to the students

Done in English.

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