This unit offers an introduction to medical anthropology and cross-cultural beliefs relating to illness and healing. We consider different notions of disease causality and examine the proposition that good health, and conversely ill health, is never just about the body. Throughout the unit, we look at conditions of disease as having social as well as biological origins and take the point of view that ideas of health and methods of treating illness are deeply lodged in cultural frameworks. Thus we treat healing practices, including Western biomedicine, as inevitably predicated on cultural systems of understanding. How people understand illness and where it comes from, and what they do... -- Course Website
Instructor: Dr Chris Lyttleton
Prerequisites: ANTH150 or 12cp or admission to GDipArtsÂ
