Medical Anthropology: A Biocultural Approach Book Pdf
Kian Trip
This essay presents an effort to incorporate the "environment" into critical medical anthropology. Rather than relying upon the multifactorial approach characteristic of medical ecology or biocultural approaches in medical anthropology, it urges critical medical anthropologists to turn to the burgeoning literature on eco-Marxism, eco-socialism, or political ecology in their efforts to develop a political ecology of health. Given that political ecologists generally advocate democratic eco-socialism as a meaningful alternative to the capitalist world system, this essay also presents a critical examination of the environmental record of post-revolutionary societies.
The biocultural medical anthropology component of the doctoral program examines interactions among sociocultural and biological determinants of adaptation, especially with regard to physical and psychological health.
Biocultural medical anthropology, a specific approach within the more general subfield of medical anthropology, strives to understand why people grow and develop as they do and why they may be at risk for health problems. It is part of the largest and fastest-growing subfield within anthropology and is increasingly relevant to research and training across a number of areas, from applied health sciences and transcultural psychiatry to epidemiology and community health development. Biocultural anthropologists attempt to use research findings for the benefit of communities as well as care providers.
Our central approach is to combine the biological and cultural aspects of medical anthropology. This biocultural perspective on health and illness is essential to the study of the topics in which the department specializes: cultural and biological influences on health and mental health; treatment choice and healing; reproductive health; how culture shapes physiology; fetal and childhood growth and development; and paleopathology, among others.
Engaging books help students and the broader public to understand the biocultural approach in anthropology. Biocultural approaches lend themselves to both academic and popular engagement, and also to controversy. Questions about human nature, the impact of culture, and human diversity and variation fascinate readers, and they serve to attract the interest of the wider public. The books in this section provide good introductions to the holistic approach of anthropology from a variety of perspectives. Fuentes 2012, Holmes 2009, and Pagel 2012 work well from a more biological anthropology perspective. Joralemon 2010 and Sobo 2012 come from medical anthropology. Goodman, et al. 2012; Pollan 2006; and Small 1999 tend to concentrate more on the cultural side of the biocultural approach, and these works cover race, eating, and parenting in order.
The Department of Anthropology at Washington State University invites applications for a permanent, full-time, nine-month, tenure-track Assistant Professor position in Pullman, WA. We seek to hire a medical anthropologist grounded in biocultural approaches, and methods; regional focus is open. It is anticipated that the successful candidate will begin the appointment on August 16, 2024.
Abstract:Violence and trauma are nestled in human rights violations worldwide. Since the 1980s, several international and domestic organizations have formed to conduct investigations following instances of political unrest and sociocultural violence. These inhumane events are evidenced by structural violence, an invisible trauma that exacerbates societal discrepancies within a population and can manifest harm to marginalized groups. Structural violence can be observed in both living individuals and through the treatment of human remains. Individuals who are missing or remain unidentified from violent outbreaks are often from marginalized groups. Therefore, a biocultural approach is necessary as it emphasizes the interplay between biology, environment, and culture. Recent work on human rights violations in the Americas has focused on fatalities due to increased migration at the US/Mexico border. Multiple organizations from the United States and other countries have developed strategies to assist in the recovery, identification, and repatriation of migrants. We aim to highlight the biocultural approach in these humanitarian actions, especially the practice of forensic anthropology, with structural violence and humanitarian identification efforts related to the missing and unidentified persons found along the US/Mexico border.Keywords: forensic anthropology; structural violence; missing persons; migration; biocultural approach; identification
Biocultural or biosocial anthropology is a research approach that views biology and culture as dialectically and inextricably intertwined, explicitly emphasizing the dynamic interaction between humans and their larger social, cultural, and physical environments. The biocultural approach emerged in anthropology in the 1960s, matured in the 1980s, and is now one of the dominant paradigms in anthropology, particularly within biological anthropology. This volume gathers contributions from the top scholars in biocultural anthropology focusing on six of the most influential, productive, and important areas of research within biocultural anthropology. These are: critical and synthetic approaches within biocultural anthropology; biocultural approaches to identity, including race and racism; health, diet, and nutrition; infectious disease from antiquity to the modern era; epidemiologic transitions and population dynamics; and inequality and violence studies. Focusing on these six major areas of burgeoning research within biocultural anthropology makes the proposed volume timely, widely applicable and useful to scholars engaging in biocultural research and students interested in the biocultural approach, and synthetic in its coverage of contemporary scholarship in biocultural anthropology. Students will be able to grasp the history of the biocultural approach, and how that history continues to impact scholarship, as well as the scope of current research within the approach, and the foci of biocultural research into the future. Importantly, contributions in the text follow a consistent format of a discussion of method and theory relative to a particular aspect of the above six topics, followed by a case study applying the surveyed method and theory. This structure will engage students by providing real world examples of anthropological issues, and demonstrating how biocultural method and theory can be used to elucidate and resolve them.
Molly K. Zuckerman is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Middle Eastern Cultures at Mississippi State University. The author of numerous peer-reviewed publications employing the biocultural approach, Dr Zuckerman also teaches graduate and undergraduate introductory courses in anthropology and biological anthropology, osteology, diet and nutrition, and human behavior and disease.
Debra L. Martin is the UNLV Barrick Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Her expertise is in the biocultural approach as it can be applied to understanding poor health, inequality and violence. She has published four co-edited volumes, three co-authored volumes, and over 100 chapters and peer-reviewed articles on biocultural approaches in anthropology.
While biocultural anthropologists are found in many academic anthropology departments, usually as a minority of the faculty, certain departments have placed considerable emphasis on the "biocultural synthesis". Historically, this has included Emory University, the University of Alabama, UMass Amherst (especially in biocultural bioarchaeology) [6] [7], and the University of Washington [8], each of which built Ph.D. programs around biocultural anthropology; Binghamton University, which has a M.S. program in biomedical anthropology; Oregon State University, University of Kentucky and others. Paul Baker, an anthropologist at Penn State whose work focused upon human adaptation to environmental variations, is credited with having popularized the concept of "biocultural" anthropology as a distinct subcategory of anthropology in general.[12] Khongsdier argues that biocultural anthropology is the future of anthropology because it serves as a guiding force towards greater integration of the subdisciplines.[13]
Biological anthropologists approach medical anthropology through an evolutionary and biocultural framework that focuses on human biological variation among ancient and contemporary populations; culture change, migration, and health; skeletal biology and diet; and human adaptation to environmental and sociocultural stressors. Dr. Corina Kellner is a bioarchaeologist and biological anthropologist who studies the diet, health, and migration patterns of prehistoric people in Peru. Dr. Kellner runs The Paleodiet Laboratory which provides facilities and equipment for processing archaeological soils, water, plants, fauna, and human tissues for stable isotope analysis. Dr. Melissa Liebert is a biocultural anthropologist and human biologist who studies the effects of culture change and economic development on health outcomes among indigenous populations in Ecuador. Dr. Liebert runs The Human Biology Laboratory which includes facilities and equipment for database management and the storage and preparation of various biological samples (e.g., saliva, dried blood spots, urine) for laboratory-based analysis of stress physiology, immune function, and cardiovascular health.
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