TERMS AND CONCEPTS:

material culture	sub-culture	Folk illness	biomedicine	ethnomedicine
illness	disease	sickness	medical ecology	morbidity
graded response system	symbolic skins	humoral theory	epidemic	endemic
Hot-Cold Theory of disease	biotic	abiotic	culture component	zoonoses
ethnomedical system	explanatory model	adaptation model	social construction	interactionist
political economy theory	Models of the body	Cyborg	medical pluralism	coprolites
ecosystem model	paleopathology	PCM/PEM	Kwashiorkor	demography
demographic transition	transition models	hybristic stage	host
pathogen	infectious disease	passive immunity	active immunity
acquired immunity	lay theories of illness	porotic hyperostosis	enamel hyperplasia
adaptive pathogen strategies	transmission behaviors	epidemiologic transition

Medical system models:      geographic: local, regional, cosmopolitan
                                          social arena: folk, popular, professional
Study Questions:

1. Explain the three main ways that Brown and Inhorn believe disease affects human biological and cultural evolution.
2. Describe the ecological perspective utilized in medical anthropology. Include the types of data that would be appropriate to collect for such an anthropological analysis of health status.
3. Describe and compare the typical health status and major health problems that would be expected in populations that rely on hunting and gathering (foraging), agricultural, and industrial.
4. Describe the demographic transition theory.
5. Discuss how S. Pfeiffer explains that an understanding of disease in past populations can be relevant to modern, living populations. Do you agree with her? Explain your opinion.
6. What is the difference between endemic, pandemic, and epidemic disease patterns?
7. What changes took place in overall death rate and life expectancy as part of the epidemiologic transition?
8. Identify the kinds of data that would be appropriate to collect for an ecological analysis of health problems.
9. Compare the relative advantages and disadvantages of life in Mali and the U. S. for children with Down syndrome.
10. Why is it so difficult for parents in Mali to recognize mild to moderate malnutrition among children?
11. What sorts of information can archeological remains of a society provide about the lives of the people who left them?
12. What sort of diseases kill children in Mali? What are the various reactions of women to the death of their children in Mali?
13. What are the main differences in critical medical anthropology and biocultural medical anthropology?
14. Using the concept of Explanatory model as proposed by Kleinman compare two conceptualizations of the body.
15. Explain why blood is a potent symbol in many societies and briefly explain and compare blood symbolism and beliefs in two societies.
16. What is the role of context (social, political, economic, and cultural in the origin, diagnosis and treatment of illness.
17. Compare and contrast two lay theories of illness causation.

 
        Video = The Masseuse is the Medium: Bali
Questions:
1. What sectors of health care are there?  Did you identify
2. Who are the patients?  Who are the healers?
3. Consultation:

 cost? / payment
 length
 types of data/ information relevant
 consultation - public or private?
 who attends consultation?
4. What sort of help did Ida Bagus seek?
5. In what ways are the perceptions influenced by:

 individual attributes?, education, cultural background?
6.  How does Ida Bagus view the meaning and significance of his ill health
7. What explanatory model does he use?  Does his wife use? does Jero use?
8. Does Ida Bagus have an illness as well as a disease?/ illness but no disease?/ disease but no illness?
9.  Is the treatment congruent with his EM?
10.  Is there satisfaction with treatment?
  Dancing Skeletons: Discussion Questions  
1. What illnesses/diseases do you recognize in this book?  Are there some that you do not?  Do you

recognize some but know them by different names?  How do you feel about the Malian explanation
for these illnesses?
2. Why  is it more difficult to eradicate malaria than other diseases such as smallpox?  If malaria were

a major cause of death in western, industrialized countries do you think more resources would be
devoted to its prevention and cure?  Are there other situations that parallel this? Explain.
3. Why would the question "Is your child still alive?" be an inappropriate conversation opener in the

U.S.?  What have your experiences with death been?  Do you think your experience is typical for
people in the U.S.? How do your experiences, feelings or beliefs about death differ from those
described for the people of Mali?
4. Do you think the explanation of children turning into snakes is a logical or helpful way for the

Bambara to cope with severely ill or handicapped children?  How do people you know/ or how do
you attempt to explain events you/they can not explain?  How do people in the U.S. (or people you
know) deal with unmerited misfortune?
5. How do you feel about the author's definition of normal?  (Normal is what you are used to).  Why

was it difficult for the parents, and the author at some point, to recognize mild and moderate
malnutrition?
6. What sorts of diseases killed children in northern Mali?  How do women feel about their children's

deaths?  How is it possible for a woman in Mali not to know why or how a child dies?  Is the same
thing possible here?
7. How did the author feel about asking God to let her child, Miranda, live?  How did you feel about her

and her actions?