Transcript Medical Anthropology: The Ecology of Health and Disease

Social Facts, Cultural Prescriptions and Ethno-Psychiatry
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Definition of Medical Ecology
Relation of Medical Ecology in the
study of culture of healing
Cases of Medical Ecology
The “Mindful Body”
 Body as a social construct
 Body and mind continuum
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Medical anthropology studies human
health in a variety of environmental and
cultural concerns from isolated tribal
peoples to urban communities. A subfield
called MEDICAL ECOLOGY views health
and disease as reflections of relationships
within a population
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Medical Ecology considers health to be a
measure of how well a group of people has
adapted to the environment
 Medical Ecology looks at health and its
implication to the modification of the
environment.
 Thus, medical ecology utilizes
multidisciplinary approach to consider a
wide range of human solutions to
environmental problems and the health
repercussions of those solutions.
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Anthropology
• Health Belief Systems
• Cultural prescriptions
Ecology
• Environmental factors affecting
health
• Holistic approach
Medicine
• Clinical investigation and interventions
• Biomedical approach
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CASES IN
MEDICAL
ECOLOGY
1.
Subanun Tribe,
Zamboanga del Norte
(Western Mindanao),
Philippines
2.
Yonomano Tribe,
Brazil
3.
Inuit (Eskimos) in
Alaska, Greenland
and Northwest
Canadian Territories
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ECOLOGICAL FACTORS
Most of the population
practice swidden
farming in the
mountainous interiors
 Subanuns are full time
farmers
 Subanuns are
naturalists – they believe
that their existence is
close to nature
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ANTHROPOLOGICAL
FACTORS
Communal relationships
No much social
hierarchy
 Special statuses are few
in number
 No gender segregation –
men and women do
farming and rearing of
children
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MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL FACTORS
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All Subanuns are
herbalists (memulun)
In the sphere of making
decisions about disease,
differences in individual
skill and knowledge receive
recognition but there is no
formal status of
diagnostician or even, by
Subanun conception, of
curer
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There are 186 “disease
names”
There are religious
specialists or mediums
(belian) whose job is to
maintain communications
with the very important
supernatural constituents
of the Subanun universe.
Mediums hold curing
ceremonies and are
channels for the divine
healing
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Brazil, South America
“Disease is greedy, it wants to eat
people, it is a glutton. It is too string
for the shaman; there are not in this
world, shamans strong enough to
stand up to it.”
- Davi Kopenawa, a YanomamI
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ECOLOGICAL FACTORS
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Yanomami villages are set
up in small bands or tribes
of 40 to 350 people.
Yanomami daily life
revolves around gardening,
collecting wild foods,
collecting firewood, making
crafts, fetching water, and
gossiping and visiting with
each other.
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ANTHROPOLOGICAL FACTORS
The Yanomami are
horticulturalists.
Approximatley 80-90% of the
Yanomami diet is cultivated
from gardens; the remaining
percentage is from hunting
 Yanomami technology is
basic, such as a pole and
vine bridge. Their tools are
devised from materials that
can be made immediately
available from their
environment.
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Each village has the
necessary technology to
sustain itself without outside
influence. The introduction
of these time-saving
elements have an effect on
each segment of their
cultural fabric - from
marriage, political alliance,
to warfare.
 Yanomami social process is
predominantly concerned
with the formation of groups
and the regulation of
intergroup relations through
alliance and warfare.
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MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL FACTORS
 The Shaman are masters that enter the realm between the
human, spirit and animal worlds with the use of a
powerful hallucinegic drug called ebene.
 In Yanomami culture, only men become Shamans and are
called shabori or hekuri.
 Men separate into different groups and blow the brownishgreen powder into each other’s nostrils using a hollow
three-foot tube. This hallucinogenic drug is very
important in telling of myths that surround religious
beliefs.
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Religious beliefs that encompass the Yanomami
culture are extremely complex. According to
their belief, there are four levels of reality.
The Yanomami believe things tend to fall
downward to a lower layer. The duku ka
misi, or top layer, is thought to be most
pristine and tender. The Yanomami believe
that many things originated in this layer. It
is only considered as having a vague
function in everyday life. The next layer
down, called the hedu ka misi, is known as
the sky layer. It has trees, gardens, villages,
animals, plants, and most importantly, the
souls of the deceased. Everything that
exists on earth is said to have a counterpart
on the third layer. The bottom surface of
the layer is said to be what the Yanomami on
earth actually see: the visible sky. Stars and
planets are attached to the bottom surface
and move across it on their individual trails.
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The Yanomami attribute most deaths, besides those caused by
another human or animal, to hekura.
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Any village member who is ill is sent away with the children
because the smoke can contaminate them.
 If many people die of an epidemic, the bodies are taken to the forest
and hung in the trees to decompose. A few weeks later, the
remaining flesh is scraped from the bones and the bones are
burned and the ashes stored for drinking later.
 Many myths in the Yanomami culture describe how the animals
and spirits are transformed into humans. When these original
people died, they turned into spirits or "hekura."In this context no
badabo means "those who were in the beginning of time."
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ECOLOGICAL FACTORS
Daily life for the Inuit included peril and
hardship. With ferocious animals, hostile
storms, deceptive ice, frigid waters, frequent
hunting accidents, and endless bitter
temperatures, the Inuit had much to endure
and much to be weary of.
 The typical, historical Inuit would be lucky to
live past 60.
 The Inuit were traditionally hunters and
fishermen, living off the Arctic animal life.
They hunted, and still hunt, whales, walruses,
caribou, seals, polar bears, musk oxen, birds,
and in lean years any other less commonly
eaten animals such as foxes.
 The Arctic has very little edible vegetation
resulting in a carnivorous diet, although some
Inuit did supplement their diet with seaweed
and other plants.
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ANTHROPOLOGICAL FACTORS
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The division of labor in traditional society had a
strong gender component. The men were
traditionally hunters and fishermen. The women
took care of the children, cleaned huts, sewed and
cooked. However, there are numerous examples of
women who learned to hunt out of necessity and
more recently as a personal choice.
The marital customs among the Inuit were not
strictly monogamous, many Inuit relationships
were implicitly or explicitly sexually open, and
polygamy, divorce and remarriage were fairly
common.
Marriages were often arranged, sometimes in
infancy, and occasionally forced on the couple by
the community. Marriage was expected for a man
as soon as he could hunt for himself, and for
women at puberty.
Family structure was flexible—a household might
consist of a man and his wife or wives and
children; it might include his parents or his wife's
parents as well as adopted children; or it might be
a larger formation of several siblings with their
parents, wives and children; or even more than one
family sharing dwellings and resources. Every
household had a head of household—an elder or a
particularly respected man.
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MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL
FACTORS
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The Inuit traditionally practiced a form
of shamanism based basically on
animist principles.
They believed that all things had a form
of spirit, just like humans, and that to
some extent these spirits could be
influenced by a pantheon of
supernatural entities that could be
appeased when one required some
animal or inanimate thing to act in a
certain way.
The shaman (Inuktitut: angakuq,
sometimes spelled angakok) of a
community of Inuit was not the leader,
but rather a sort of healer and
psychotherapist, who tended wounds
and offered advice, as well as invoking
the spirits to assist people in their lives.
His or her role was to see, interpret and
exhort the subtle and unseen. Shamans
were not trained, they were held to be
born with the ability.
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Inuit religion was closely tied to a
system of rituals that were
integrated into the daily life of the
people.
 These rituals were not terribly
complicated, but they were held to
be absolutely necessary.
 According to a customary Inuit
saying, "The great peril of our
existence lies in the fact that our
diet consists entirely of souls."
 By believing that all things—
including animals—have souls like
those of humans, any hunt that
failed to show appropriate respect
and customary supplication would
only give the liberated spirits cause
to avenge themselves.
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MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY