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 6-10 of 80
Page
... problem. The elements of observation are readily at hand - in our own encounters with fevers and pains, chronic medical conditions, or lifethreatening diseases, and in our experience of the suffering of others. And although we commonly ...
... problem. The elements of observation are readily at hand - in our own encounters with fevers and pains, chronic medical conditions, or lifethreatening diseases, and in our experience of the suffering of others. And although we commonly ...
Page
... problems of medical anthropology. Although evolutionist thinking about kinship systems is hard for us to intuit, making Morgan seem very much a nineteenth-century figure, thinking of systems of medical knowledge as ... problem of belief 3.
... problems of medical anthropology. Although evolutionist thinking about kinship systems is hard for us to intuit, making Morgan seem very much a nineteenth-century figure, thinking of systems of medical knowledge as ... problem of belief 3.
Page
... problems in terms of belief and behavior, and often reproduce our common-sense views of the individual and society. After years of teaching and carrying out research in medical settings, I am more convinced than ever ... problem of belief 5.
... problems in terms of belief and behavior, and often reproduce our common-sense views of the individual and society. After years of teaching and carrying out research in medical settings, I am more convinced than ever ... problem of belief 5.
Page
... problem will be licked. Educate the patient, medical journals advise clinicians, and solve the problems of noncompliance that plague the treatment of chronic disease. Investigate public beliefs about vaccinations or risky health ...
... problem will be licked. Educate the patient, medical journals advise clinicians, and solve the problems of noncompliance that plague the treatment of chronic disease. Investigate public beliefs about vaccinations or risky health ...
Page
... of contemporary biomedicine. A person's complaint is meaningful if it reflects a physiological condition; if no such empirical referent can be found, the very meaningfulness of the Medical anthropology and the problem of belief 9.
... of contemporary biomedicine. A person's complaint is meaningful if it reflects a physiological condition; if no such empirical referent can be found, the very meaningfulness of the Medical anthropology and the problem of belief 9.
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