Medicine, Rationality and Experience: An Anthropological PerspectiveBiomedicine is often thought to provide a scientific account of the human body and of illness. In this view, non-Western and folk medical systems are regarded as systems of 'belief' and subtly discounted. This is an impoverished perspective for understanding illness and healing across cultures, one that neglects many facets of Western medical practice and obscures its kinship with healing in other traditions. Drawing on his research in several American and Middle Eastern medical settings, in this 1993 book Professor Good develops a critical, anthropological account of medical knowledge and practice. He shows how physicians and healers enter and inhabit distinctive worlds of meaning and experience. He explores how stories or illness narratives are joined with bodily experience in shaping and responding to human suffering and argues that moral and aesthetic considerations are present in routine medical practice as in other forms of healing. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 94
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... cultural language” (p. 5) and a historical formation. In the latter part of chapter 1, Good argues that, in spite of the many advances in medical diagnosis and therapy, the notion that medical science mirrors nature rests on a culturally ...
... cultural language” (p. 5) and a historical formation. In the latter part of chapter 1, Good argues that, in spite of the many advances in medical diagnosis and therapy, the notion that medical science mirrors nature rests on a culturally ...
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... cultures or in different segments of a single culture have a common reference to biological facts external to ... cultural investigation of illness experience” (p. 134) by examining the phenomenology of these experiences, the ways ...
... cultures or in different segments of a single culture have a common reference to biological facts external to ... cultural investigation of illness experience” (p. 134) by examining the phenomenology of these experiences, the ways ...
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... cultural differences in beliefs about disease or in what medical sociologists have called “illness behavior,” the sense that disease itself is a cultural domain is strongly counter-intuitive. Disease is paradigmatically biological; it ...
... cultural differences in beliefs about disease or in what medical sociologists have called “illness behavior,” the sense that disease itself is a cultural domain is strongly counter-intuitive. Disease is paradigmatically biological; it ...
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... cultural domain - and it is in this sense that he “invented” kinship. In developing his analysis, Morgan distinguished “descriptive” kin terms, cultural categories which correctly reflect natural blood relationships, from ...
... cultural domain - and it is in this sense that he “invented” kinship. In developing his analysis, Morgan distinguished “descriptive” kin terms, cultural categories which correctly reflect natural blood relationships, from ...
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... cultural studies of medical systems, medical anthropology has unique concerns with issues of biology and culture, with human suffering and ritual efforts to manage disorder and personal threat, and thus with the investigation of human ...
... cultural studies of medical systems, medical anthropology has unique concerns with issues of biology and culture, with human suffering and ritual efforts to manage disorder and personal threat, and thus with the investigation of human ...
Contents
a reading of the field | |
How medicine constructs its objects | |
Semiotics and the study of medical reality | |
a phenomenological account of chronic pain | |
The narrative representation of illness | |
Aesthetics rationality and medical anthropology | |
Notes | |
References | |
Author Index | |
Subject Index | |
Other editions - View all
Medicine, Rationality and Experience: An Anthropological Perspective Byron J. Good Limited preview - 1994 |
Medicine, Rationality and Experience: An Anthropological Perspective Byron Good No preview available - 1994 |
Common terms and phrases
activities American analysis anthro argued Arthur Kleinman Azande biology biomedicine blood body care-seeking Cassirer chapter chronic pain claims clinical cognitive concept constituted context critical critique cross-cultural cultural described developed discourse discussion disease disorders distinctive domains elaborated empirical empiricist epilepsy epistemological ethnographic everyday example fainting formulation Foucault healing Health Belief Model human humoral Ibn Sina illness experience illness narratives illness representations individual interpretive practices interview investigating Islamic Islamic medicine issues Kleinman language Lewis Henry Morgan lifeworld literature Mary-Jo meaning medical anthropology medical knowledge medical practice medical systems Meliha models Morgan Lectures natural organized paradigm patients persons perspective phenomenology physician problem psychological rationality reality represent response role schizophrenia seizures semantic networks semiotic sense sickness social sciences society soteriological story structure studies of illness suffering symbolic forms symptoms theoretical theory therapeutic told tradition treatment understanding W. H. R. Rivers writing