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We argue here for approaches we have termed critical biocultural that lie at the intersection of critical medical and biocultural studies of health. The sources of inequalities, whether they link to political oppression, poor access to markets, structured barriers to land ownership, or failed education and health-care systems, are not trivial. The root causes of poverty or inequality shape the forms they take, discourses and practices, efforts to alleviate the problem, and these are all key to a more complete and “critical” biocultural approach in medical anthropology.

The global health problems we face now and in the future are endless, but as Richard Feachem (2000) stated in the first issues of the Bulletin of the World Health Organization for the twenty-first century, addressing the health consequences of social inequalities is the most important global health task for the twenty-first century. We need a full range of anthropological perspectives to meet this task, and biocultural perspectives are particularly important for specifying the biological as well as social dimensions linking inequalities and health. Addressing these issues will call on us to expand our perspectives in new directions and build new collaboration across disciplines. Indeed, “integrating biological and socio-cultural perspectives in concrete and project-oriented situations” (Hvalkof and Escobar 1998, p. 443) may be the best means of achieving a biocultural synthesis.