Читать книгу A Companion to Medical Anthropology онлайн

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While the application of medical anthropology theory and methods continues to grow at a rapid pace, in many ways, the distinction between applied medical anthropology and any other form of medical anthropology is a false dichotomy, or an unnecessary distinction. All forms of medical anthropology are framed by the key cultural theoretical (or a-theoretical) paradigms and are exploring strong positions within key cultural contexts (Page and Trotter 1999). The methods that are used to create, assess, expand, challenge, or demolish existing theories are identical. Both approaches are susceptible to external debates and challenges of anthropology’s cross-cultural paradigms, and are susceptible to anthropology’s internal critiques, debates, and synthetic movements. Perhaps the single difference that is important to applied medical anthropologists, and to the communities they work with, and the sponsors for their projects is the fact that applied projects are deliberately targeted at solving problems, rather than simply producing cultural descriptions that may result in serendipitous or accidental or unintended consequences. This level of intentionality is important to many of the stakeholders that are engaged in improving the human health conditions on a local or global level.