The fully revised new edition of the defining reference work in the field of medical anthropology
A Companion to Medical Anthropology, Second Edition provides the most complete account of the key issues and debates in this dynamic, rapidly growing field. Bringing together contributions by leading international authorities in medical anthropology, this comprehensive reference work presents critical assessments and interpretations of a wide range of topical themes, including global and environmental health, political violence and war, poverty, malnutrition, substance abuse, reproductive health, and infectious diseases. Throughout the text, readers explore the global, historical, and political factors that continue to influence how health and illness are experienced and understood.
The second edition is fully updated to reflect current controversies and significant new developments in the anthropology of health and related fields. More than twenty new and revised articles address research areas including war and health, illicit drug abuse, climate change and health, colonialism and modern biomedicine, activist-led research, syndemics, ethnomedicines, biocommunicability, COVID-19, and many others. Highlighting the impact medical anthropologists have on global health care policy and practice, A Companion to Medical Anthropology, Second Edition:
- Features specially commissioned articles by medical anthropologists working in communities worldwide
- Discusses future trends and emerging research areas in the field
- Describes biocultural approaches to health and illness and research design and methods in applied medical anthropology
Addresses topics including chronic diseases, rising levels of inequality, war and health, migration and health, nutritional health, self-medication, and end of life care Part of the acclaimed Wiley Blackwell Companions to Anthropology series, A Companion to Medical Anthropology, Second Edition, remains an indispensable resource for medical anthropologists, as well as an excellent textbook for courses in medical anthropology, ethnomedicine, global health care, and medical policy.
Table of Contents
Notes on Contributors ix
Introduction 1
Part I: Theories, Applications, and Methods 7
1 Re/Inventing Medical Anthropology: Definitional Struggles and Key Debates (Or: Answering the Cri Du Coeur) 9
Elisa J. Sobo
2 Critical Biocultural Approaches to Health and Illness 26
Thomas L. Leatherman and Alan H. Goodman
3 Applied Medical Anthropology: Praxis, Pragmatics, Politics, and Promises 49
Robert T. Trotter, II
4 Research Design and Methods in Medical Anthropology 67
Clarence C. Gravlee
Part II: Contexts and Conditions 93
5 Culture and the Stress Process 95
William W. Dressler
6 Global Health 109
Craig R. Janes, Jennifer A. Liu, and Kitty K. Corbett
7 Syndemics in Global Health 126
Merrill Singer and Emily Mendenhall
8 The Ecology of Health and Disease 145
Patricia K. Townsend
9 The Medical Anthropology of Water and Sanitation 160
E. Christian Wells and Linda M. Whiteford
10 Medical Anthropology of Political Violence and War 180
Barbara Rylko-Bauer
11 Medical Anthropology at the End of Life 198
Ron Barrett
Part III: Health and Behavior 213
12 The Anthropology of Reproduction 215
Elise Andaya and Mounia El Kotni
13 Anthropological Approaches to Migration and Health 230
Heide Castañeda
14 Current Approaches to Nutritional Health in Medical Anthropology 245
Deven Gray, David Himmelgreen, Nancy Romero-Daza, and Charlotte Noble
15 Cancers’ Multiplicities: Anthropologies of Interventions and Care 260
Lenore Manderson
16 Anthropology and the Study of Illicit Drug Use 275
J. Bryan Page
17 Revisiting Generation Rx: Emerging Trends in Pharmaceutical Enhancement, Lifestyle Regulation, Self-Medication, and Recreational Drug Use 295
Gilbert Quintero and Mark Nichter
Part IV: Healthwork: Care, Treatment, and Communication 315
18 Ethnomedicines: Traditions of Medical Knowledge 317
Marsha B. Quinlan
19 Medical Pluralism: An Evolving and Contested Concept in Medical Anthropology 342
Hans A. Baer
20 Biotechnologies of Care 358
Ruth Fitzgerald and Julie Park
21 Medicine: Colonial, Postcolonial, or Decolonial? 373
César Ernesto Abadía-Barrero
22 The Politics of Communicability 388
Charles L. Briggs
Part V: The Road Ahead 407
23 When Workers’ Health is Public Health: The Structural Complicity of State Public Health Policies on Covid-19 Spread in Meat-Processing Plants and Minority Communities 409
Sandy Smith-Nonini
24 Climate Change and Health: Anthropology and Beyond 429
Merrill Singer, Eleanor Shoreman-Ouimet, and Ashley L. Graham
Index 442
