Introducing Medical Anthropology: A Discipline in Action [Paperback]

Merrill Singer (Author), Hans Baer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 16, 2007 | ISBN-10: 0759110581 | ISBN-13: 978-0759110588 | Edition: 1

This new text provides students with a first exposure to the growing field of medical anthropology. As such, it is guided by three unifying themes. First, medical anthropology is actively engaged in helping to address pressing health problems around the globe through research, intervention, and policy-related initiatives. Second, illness and disease cannot be fully understood or effectively addressed by treating them solely as biological in nature; rather, health problems involve complex biosocial processes and resolving them requires attention to range of factors including systems of belief, structures of social relationship, and environmental conditions. Third, through an examination of health inequalities on the one hand, and environmental degradation and environment-related illness on the other, the authors emphasize the need for a comprehensive medical anthropology that integrates biological, cultural, and social factors, in order to understand the origin of ill health and to contribute to more effective and equitable health care systems.

Editorial Reviews

Review

An excellent text for use in undergraduate medical anthropology courses. It reviews the basic perspectives, concepts, and debates in the field in a more comprehensive fashion than many other comparable works. As the book itself is only of moderate length, it can be easily and productively paired with a set of book length, ethnographic case studies and relevant articles. (Harold Odden )

Recommended. (Choice )

About the Author

Merrill Singer is a medical anthropologist at the Center for Health, Intervention and Prevention, University of Connecticut. He is the author or co-author of ten books, including Unhealthy Health Policy and Medical Anthropology and the World System. Hans Baer is a lecturer in the School of Social and Environmental Enquiry, and the Centre of Health and Society at the University of Melbourne. His books include Encounters with Biomedicine: Case Studies in Medical Anthropology, Toward an Integrative Medicine, and Medical Anthropology and the World System.

Product Details

• Paperback: 252 pages
• Publisher: Altamira Press; 1 edition (September 16, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0759110581
• ISBN-13: 978-0759110588
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.9 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #797,697 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I am a medical anthropologist, although I did not set out to be one. I am a public health drugs and AIDS researcher, although I did not set out to do that either. Careers are not planned, often you just stumble into them, like relationships. So fall well! I was born to working class parents who were raised in the shadow of Pittsburg's steel mills, but I was primarily raised in Los Angeles. In fact, I am a "Valley Boy," but when I first moved there one could still find muddy horse farms and vast orange groves instead of endless small stuccoed homes, corner shopping plazas, and more cars than is good for any planet suffering from global warming. I went to community college without the slightest idea I would one day be considered a scholar. But imagining myself as an author of books then was rather unlikely. I wanted to be a social worker back then; then the Vietnam War happened and woke me up. I have not been back to sleep in that sense since. My books reflect lessons first learned during that war and in the many wars since. As well, they reflect lessons on poverty and social injustice first learned working for the United Farm Worker's Union and lessons about social equality from the Civil Rights movement. I am, in addition to all of the above, a father of two. Both college student now. Like most parents, I love them more than they will ever know. As my friend Patty Marshall is inclined to say "life is rich." To which my more cynical side always replies "but I am not." Now I live in Connecticut.