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. |
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Those of us who would turn anthropological attention to disease and illness face an analogous problem. ... for the study of disease and its place in biological systems, and social and cultural studies investigating human adaptation and ...
Those of us who would turn anthropological attention to disease and illness face an analogous problem. ... for the study of disease and its place in biological systems, and social and cultural studies investigating human adaptation and ...
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... thus shaping a debate which has been carried on in kinship studies since that time. In the course of these pages it will become clear that similar issues are central to the comparative study of illness and medical knowledge.
... thus shaping a debate which has been carried on in kinship studies since that time. In the course of these pages it will become clear that similar issues are central to the comparative study of illness and medical knowledge.
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These, as well as the philosophical issues at stake in cross-cultural studies of disease and health care, will be central to the discussion to follow. In the 1960s, it was something of an embarrassment to be identified as a medical ...
These, as well as the philosophical issues at stake in cross-cultural studies of disease and health care, will be central to the discussion to follow. In the 1960s, it was something of an embarrassment to be identified as a medical ...
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My own work has advanced a view of illness as a “syndrome of experience,” “a set of words, experiences, and feelings which typically 'run together' for members of a society” (B. Good 1977: 27). Drawing on research on popular illness ...
My own work has advanced a view of illness as a “syndrome of experience,” “a set of words, experiences, and feelings which typically 'run together' for members of a society” (B. Good 1977: 27). Drawing on research on popular illness ...
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Following this critique, Browner and her colleagues outline a research program for medical anthropology, ... addressing the nature of language, subjectivity and social process in cross-cultural studies of illness and human suffering.
Following this critique, Browner and her colleagues outline a research program for medical anthropology, ... addressing the nature of language, subjectivity and social process in cross-cultural studies of illness and human suffering.
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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,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