The Meaning Context of Illness and Care: Reflections on a Central Theme in the Anthropology of Medicine

Abstract

The past 15 years have witnessed the coming of age of medical anthropology (cf. Lieban, 1977). Although its lineaments can be traced back to Virchow, only recently has medical anthropology become a substantial undertaking within anthropology and begun to receive serious, if still very limited, attention in the health sciences. To my mind, there are at present several more or less distinctive medical anthropologies. For example, there is an anthropology of health beliefs and health maintenance and preventive practices; and there are specialized anthropological interests in nutrition, aging, comparative medical systems, population, and stress. But in this paper, I will review a different subject, namely, anthropological investigation of illness experience and clinical work (1).KeywordsClinical RealityIllness BehaviorMeaning ContextIllness EpisodeMedical AnthropologyThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.