1. Culture
Provide the lecture definition of culture, using quotation marks and providing an
in-text citation; then explain this definition.
2. Ethnocentrism and cultural relativity
Provide the lecture definitions of ethnocentrism and cultural relativity, using
quotation marks and providing an in-text citation. Then discuss the difference between
them.
3. Illness as a cultural construction
According to lecture, what does it mean to say that illness is a cultural construction?
Define (with citation), demonstrate understanding, then provide a
short example from lecture that clearly illustrates the concept.
Lecture:
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Lecture 1 Introduction to Culture, Health, and Power
Welcome! As noted in the syllabus, this course explores ideas about health, illness, and
treatment across cultures and how to communicate more effectively with people from other
cultures and subcultures (and even one’s own!). This also involves deconstructing some of
our ideas about Western biomedicine. We will draw on a selection of health-related issues
that are useful in everyday life and also specifically benefit students interested in careers in
health professions or cultural anthropology. The primary focus is to develop tools that help us
understand health, illness, practices, and treatments in context—that is, health issues will be
considered in relation to culture, social identities, social structures, and social agents and
their agendas. For example, we consider how gender, race, and class affect health, and the
role of political-economic contexts. This interdisciplinary, international course draws on
anthropology, US biomedicine, public health, health sciences, and political ecology.
Please take a moment to poke around the website to get a feel for the course, and introduce
yourself on the discussion board. I will introduce myself here: I am a cultural and medical
anthropologist with interdisciplinary interests and experience. My geographic area of
expertise is Brazil, but I have also conducted research in Guatemala and Angola (you will
see Brazil in this course). I am particularly interested in social identity and inequality—for
example, how race/ethnicity, socioeconomic class, gender, and sexuality are constructed in
different cultures/societies and affect people’s lives and opportunities. I also specialize in
childhood and youth studies as well as race, and I am currently conducting a research project
regarding race and foster care in Central Illinois.
At the University of Arizona, I was trained in medical anthropology. I took five graduate
courses in medical anthropology, reading about 600-700 pages per class per week. So I
decided to cram all of this information into a single 400-level course… Just kidding! But you
will notice that medical anthropology, which is central to this course, is a very broad field, of
which we will get a (hopefully tasty) sampling in this class.
Getting started
I hope you enjoy the course, and find it useful in your lives. Since this course centers around
applying anthropological tools to health and other health-related disciplines, let’s begin with
some of the basic concepts and terms. They are part of a toolkit that we will be building and
applying. Note that there is quite a bit of variety in how terms are defined by different people.
I will be supplying particular definitions to serve as tools for the work at hand. (In other words,
don’t look for definitions online, and even be careful using terms from the textbook, which has
many authors; use mine from the lectures so you have the right tool for the job.)
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What is anthropology?
Anthrop-ology is the study of people (the roots mean people + study). That’s a pretty big
topic, and there are a lot of ways of knowing about people, so anthropology has four main
areas, called “fields.” Americans keep these four fields together in one anthropology
department; in Europe, they are divided into separate departments and associated with
different colleges (social sciences, natural sciences, and humanities).
(1) Archaeology: Most people have heard of archaeology, which focuses on learning about
people through studying their artifacts (stuff, things). Usually people think about digging
up ancient ruins and studying their homes, tools, burials, instruments, bowls, jewelry, etc.—
all their stuff—to see what they can learn about a culture. This is correct, but archaeology
also involves the study of recent and contemporary artifacts and what they say cultures.
(2) Physical/biological anthropology: Many have heard about physical anthropology, also
called biological anthropology, which is learning about people through studying bodies
(human bodies, but also the bodies of other primates, for comparison). Forensics is an
example. People might study a body to find out as much as possible about a person (gender,
age, injuries, how and when they died, etc.) This is helpful to police investigations concerning
individuals. Physical anthropology is also helpful to understanding whole cultures and how
they lived—what they ate, the work they performed, diseases, parasites, injuries, how they
tended to die and at what age. Physical anthropology often goes hand-in-hand with
archaeology. Obviously, it also goes hand-in-hand with approaches within medical
anthropology, because both are concerned with the body, health, and culture.
(3) Linguistic anthropology: Linguistic anthropology is a third field, involving the study of
language in a broad sense—spoken, written, and even nonverbal communication. Linguistic
anthropologists learn about people through studying communication.
(4) Cultural anthropology
And then there’s cultural anthropology, which is focused on learning about people through
studying cultures. In my graduate school, medical anthropology was considered a subset of
cultural anthropology. Now the question is…
What is culture?
If we brainstormed this question, we would probably come up with a list that includes
clothing, food, dance, music, traditions, values, celebrations, history, beliefs, religions,
languages, and other factors. At a basic level, all of these characteristics can be summarized
as “patterns in thought and behavior.” In other words, within a culture there is a tendency for
people to think certain ways and behave certain ways. Now, it’s just patterns—tendencies—
because people within a culture have their differences. We have our own individual
personalities. We have individual experiences that shape us. We have different role
expectations (within a culture, one might expect men and women to think and behave
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differently, or expect younger and older people to think and behave differently). We also
belong to subcultures within our culture. But there are still patterns in thought and behavior
that characterize the culture.
Now, if I have my very own way of thinking and acting, do I have my own culture? No. That
would just make me strange. The idea is that culture has to be shared with a group. So now
our basic definition of culture is “shared patterns in thought and behavior.”
Did you know that in the past, people thought that environments (desert, woodlands, tropics,
etc.) created races and cultures? In other words, they thought that culture was innate,
biological, something you were born with. Of course, that’s an outdated notion. Imagine
somebody born of Thai parents in Thailand but raised in a White, English-speaking family in
Illinois—what culture and would the child have? Would you expect the child to spontaneously
speak Thai? Of course not. The child would learn the culture and language of its family.
Culture is not biological; it is learned. So now our definition of culture is “learned, shared
patterns in thought and behavior.”
But we can’t forget the stuff—the tools, the food, the clothes, the jewelry—the material
culture, or artifacts! So let’s add on for our final definition:
“Culture is learned, shared patterns in thought and behavior, and artifacts.”
Whew. But one last point about culture for this week: We tend to take it for granted. Because
we tend to learn our culture at a young age, and share it with a lot of people, we tend to think
we just think and act “normally.” It’s only when we meet somebody from another culture that
we notice culture at all. For those who are part of a cultural majority, their own culture tends
to be “invisible” to them, but they notice the culture of others (and maybe call it “ethnic”). For
those who are part of a cultural minority, elements of their own culture and the culture of
others are much more obvious.
How does this relate to health?
Culture and medical anthropology
What does this all have to do with medical anthropology? Well, within a culture we tend to
learn and share many thoughts and behaviors regarding health, illness, and treatment—as
well as material culture (pills, shots, tests, machines, etc.). Our assumptions about health,
illness, and treatment are sometimes “invisible” to us—we think they are normal, common
sense. Other times, we are keenly aware of the source of our knowledge, our lack of
knowledge, and conflicting messages. But what we know and the way we go about seeking
information are very much a part of our culture.
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Thus we may say that health, illness, and treatment are culturally constructed. That is,
ideas about health, illness, and treatment are wrapped up in culture, created by the culture,
interpreted by members of the culture. These ideas and practices are not universal, but
rather particular to a culture. This is not to say that different cultures cannot share ideas
about health, illness, or treatment, or that individuals or groups within a culture agree on all
aspects of health, illness, and treatment. It means simply means that there are patterns in
thought and behavior within cultures.
If ideas about health, illness, and treatment are all wrapped up in culture, then we cannot
hope to understand an aspect of health without paying attention to the cultural context. That
goes for ourselves, and for “others.” That is, we need to understand Thai culture in general to
understand Thai conceptions and treatment of malaria. And we cannot hope to design an
appropriate oral rehydration program for Guatemalan children without understanding
conceptions of infancy and childhood, gender roles in health care, and access to potable
water.
On the flipside, we need to question our own assumptions about health, illness and treatment
in mainstream USA by understanding how they came about and how they fit into our culture.
In this course, we will work on developing a more emic perspective (insider’s view) on other
cultures, as well as a more etic perspective (outsider’s view) of our own culture. Guess
which is more difficult?
How to learn about other cultures
“Epistemology” is often defined as “the philosophy of knowledge;” this definition has never
done much for me! I find it more useful to think about epistemology as how you know—what
counts as knowledge, ways of knowing. Do we know from reading books, listening to elders,
experience and observation, gut instinct, subtle feelings, conducting an experiment, a leap of
faith…? There are many ways of knowing.
Fieldwork/participant observation, holism, cultural relativity, and historical particularism
describe contemporary epistemology in anthropology—they are the main ways that
anthropologists establish knowledge, producing and sharing information that they trust as
reliable. In this course, we will continually strive to apply anthropological ways of knowing to
our studies of health, illness, and treatment.
The history of anthropology provides a very good Do/Don’t list for learning about other
cultures. The deep, dark history of anthropology, I should say, because it is rather shameful
in its origins. The next pages provide a highly stylized comparison of 19th and 20th century
anthropology that makes the main points clear, followed by notes on 21st century
anthropology.
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19th Century Anthropology (bad anthropology!)
By the 19th century (1800s), major powers in Europe had colonized populations on all
continents. In the process, they killed, enslaved, and exploited people in their program to
take over land and materials. Thanks to all this travel, they were seeing people from lots of
different cultures, and they wondered how people in different places got to be so different
from themselves (and each other).
At the time, anthropologists tried to learn about other cultures by reading materials generated
by other Europeans who traveled. They read whatever they could get from traders,
missionaries, the military, slave traders, merchants, etc. Note that these sources are NOT
written by anthropologists and not intended to serve anthropologists. The anthropologists did
not generate the data—they didn’t leave home. They sat in their university offices in their
armchairs and read. This is why we call them armchair anthropologists. We can consider
armchair anthropology a method of research in the 19th century.
The anthropologists used information from others’ reports to study cultural elements. That is,
they separated out isolated cultural elements and put them in charts and tables as a means
of describing and comparing cultures. They did not try to understand how the cultural
elements fit into the other culture as a whole; rather, they wanted to see which culture had
which elements—a comparative method called checklist anthropology.
These checklists worked well with their primary theory: unlinear cultural evolution. This
theory is a misunderstanding and misapplication of Darwin’s theory of evolution to culture.
According to this theory, all cultures “evolve” along one single continuum. In other words, all
cultures evolve in the same manner. If cultures are different, it is because they are at
different stages of evolution: Savagery Barbarism Civilization. So-called “savagery”
evolves into “barbarism” evolves into “civilization.” Thus anthropologists would look at the
characteristics of a culture (using the checklists) and determine where the culture fell on the
continuum of “development.”
Of course, these European anthropologists placed themselves in the “civilized” category.
Nobody else came close. Europeans had this idea that other cultures were not as good as
European cultures; rather, they were ‘inferior,’ ‘less developed.’ These Europeans were
ethnocentric. Ethnocentrism means that you think your culture is the best; it also means that
you compare everybody else to it—you use your own culture as a gold standard. If European
cultural traits defined “civilized,” then anybody different from them could not be “civilized,”
and thus were considered “inferior.” Ethnocentrism is not a theory, but it is an orientation.
19th century anthropology had a pretty handy-dandy way of justifying European exploitation.
This way of seeing the world was pretty darn convenient for the powerful. They could say that
members of other cultures were inferior so it was okay to exploit them. It was even okay to
kill them, since they were just bringing down the human race anyway. Enslaving them was
actually doing them a favor—let them get a taste of “civilization”!
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20th Century Anthropology (better anthropology!)
Fortunately, anthropology changed a lot in the 20th century. In the early 1900s,
anthropologists in both the US and Europe began to challenge the theories and methods of
anthropology. Much of the shift in 20th century anthropology is due to the work of Franz Boas,
considered the father of modern anthropology. Basically, he (and others) took anthropology
by storm, overturning 19th century theories and methods.
20th century anthropologists discarded the notion that that is one path of evolution that
passes through increasing stages of complexity and culminates in European-style culture.
They recognized the idea of unilineal evolution as ethnocentric. One culture is not more
complex, more evolved, or better than another; cultures are simply different. They are
different because they have different histories—location and events influence cultures and
their change over time. (Like psychology—we each react differently to situations because of
our past, and our past leads us along different paths, different trajectories.) This concept is
called historical particularism: each culture is the product of its own particular history. If
you want to understand a particular culture, you have to understand its particular history.
Cultures evolve (change over time) in many directions, taking different paths (not one single
path of evolution). Again, one is not better than another. One is not more “evolved” than
another. Historical particularism is a theory of 20th century anthropology.
Boas really emphasized is the importance of fieldwork. He felt very strongly that to know a
culture, you have to actually go and live in it for a long time! You cannot rely on random
reports by merchants and colonels and such. You must go there and get to know the whole
culture—observe, participate, speak the language, talk to people! These days, “the field” can
be far away or down the block. The systematic study of a culture in the field is called
ethnography or ethnographic fieldwork. When you write it up, the manuscript is also call an
ethnography. Good ethnographic work relies on participant observation, meaning that you
not only observe but also do what the people you are studying do, as much as possible; you
need to participate in the culture. Fieldwork, ethnography, and participant observation are
central to 20th century methods.
Understanding the whole culture is critical. You shouldn’t try to pick it apart into cultural
elements, or compare the bits with European or other cultures as a standard. You must get to
know how the culture works as a system, how the parts of a culture fit into the whole. This is
the holistic approach. The idea is that once you understand the culture as a whole, you can
understand the parts. You can’t understand the parts out of context. Holism is an important
20th century theory that influences methods.
Important note: When we talk about holism in this class, we are NOT talking about
mind and body, nor are we talking about using herbs and such; rather, we are talking
about the person within a cultural, ideological, practical, historical, political, and/or
economic context.
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When you understand how elements of a culture fit into the whole culture, you see that the
culture makes sense. That is, the culture makes as much sense as any other culture. This is
cultural relativity, the cornerstone of modern anthropology. Being a cultural relativist means
that you approach all cultures with respect, knowing that no culture is any better, more
sensible, more “advanced,” or more “evolved” than another. One culture is not better than
another; they are simply different. One culture makes as much sense—and nonsense—as
another. Being a cultural relativist does NOT mean that you accept everything about another
culture. All cultures have elements we don’t like or agree with—even our own. Cultural
relativity is a critical orientation in 20th century anthropology and beyond.
Historical particularism, fieldwork/participant observation, the holistic approach, and cultural
relativity (20th century anthropology) form the basis of our Anthropological Toolkit.
You will be asked to use these tools on exams.
19th Century 20th Century
Armchair anthropology Fieldwork, participant observation
Checklist anthropology Holism
Unilinear evolution Historical particularism
Ethnocentrism Cultural relativity
21st Century Anthropology
Of course, anthropology is an ever-evolving discipline and the late 20th century and early 21st
century have brought significant changes as well. While the four core elements of 20th
century tenets remain, they are joined by an emphasis on
eliciting multiple perspectives from different members of a culture;
recognizing that our own identities and experiences influence our powers of
observation and analysis, so that we must employ safeguards and strategies to
minimize our own biases;
new standards of research ethics; and
an abiding commitment to apply our skills to improve lives in an appropriate and
effective manner.
We will begin this course by comparing the way different anthropologists carry out fieldwork
and incorporate context in their studies, and how their different methods lead to different
findings (different knowledge). We will draw on an emic (insider’s) perspective to help us
evaluate their findings as well, through reading the excerpt of a diary.
