I highly recommend people interested in the broader area of health, culture, and environment to read McElroy, Ann, and Patricia K. Townsend, 2004 Medical Anthropology in Ecological Perspective, 4th edition, Westview Press. Dr. McElroy has worked with the Inuit, among other people. Amazon.com or BN.com probably has copies.
As she states in her course syllabus,
The primary objective of the course is to think about health problems outside the framework of standard biomedical concepts, that is as ecological, evolutionary, and cultural systems rather than as merely products of disease dynamics. A second objective is to compare various societies in terms of their patterns of health and disease, their ecological systems, and their beliefs about (and management of) illness, and to think about how changes in health care must incorporate local concepts of health and disease.
http://pluto.fss.buffalo.edu/classes/apy/mcelroy/04syllabus.htm
related resources—
Med Anthropol. 1992 Mar;14(1):35-52. Biocultural synthesis in medical anthropology. Armelagos GJ, Leatherman T, Ryan M, Sibley L.
Abstract here
Biocultural Dimensions of Environment and Health
Bumsted, M. Pamela, Karen S. Young, and Leon H. Tafoya 1994 Biocultural Dimensions of Health and Environment. In John S. Andrews, Howard Frumkin, Barry L. Johnson, Myron A. Mehlman, Charles Xintaras, and Jeanne A. Bucsela, eds. Hazardous Waste and Public Health: International Congress on the Health Effects of Hazardous Waste. pp. 245-252. Princeton: Princeton Scientific Publishing Co. Inc.”
http://13c4.wordpress.com/2006/01/11/ biocultural-dimensions-envt/
click logo for Grassroots Science projects. Join us
1 Response to “Medical Anthropology in Ecological Perspective”