Читать книгу A Companion to Medical Anthropology онлайн

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Applied medical anthropology is full of interesting dualities, theoretical competitions, and correspondences. Two of the most commonly addressed paradigms are the “biomedical paradigm” which embodies a strong orientation toward positivism and modernism (linearity, logic, evolutionary change, and progress through scientific research), and American individualism, which embodies the ideals of self-determinism and free will (resulting in a focus on psychosocial dynamics such as self-efficacy, individual responsibility, and competence). A good deal of applied medical anthropology is a dynamic balance between universalism (from the search for biomedical certainties to international classifications of diseases, syndromes, and conditions) and particularism or cultural (and individual) relativism in which everyone participates in a unique life experience and constantly constructs and reconstructs their perception of reality through a post-modern or neo-liberal lens.

This chapter explores the eclectic nature of applied medical anthropology theory, methods, applications, and opportunities. The following sections address or exemplify several important contributions and challenges that applied medical anthropology has contributed to medical anthropology in general and anthropology as a whole. These include the importance of theory in applied medical anthropology as it is challenged by other theoretical viewpoints from other disciplines; the numerous contributions that medical anthropology has made in the development of highly useful research methods while also expanding the methodological tool kits of the other social and biomedical sciences and humanities; examples of the relationship between midrange theory and applied medical anthropology methods; and the important central place of ethics in applied medical anthropology.