Critical Biocultural Approaches in Medical Anthropology
Critical Biocultural Approaches in Medical Anthropology
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医学人类学中的批判性生物文化方法
DOI：
10.1002/9781444395303.ch2
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发表时间：
2011
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
A. Goodman
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
T. Leatherman;A. Goodman
人类的健康和福祉是生物文化的。因此，可以预期的是，生物文化的健康观点，即考虑到生物和文化之间的许多重叠、联系和交叉的观点，将在医学人类学中占据中心地位。事实上，人类健康和疾病是交织在一起的生物文化过程的概念，通过各种人文和科学观点得到最好的理解，具有作为一项基本原则的地位。然而，随着占主导地位的生物医学观点阐明了还原的生物学机制和解释，医学人类学越来越多地将重点放在健康的社会文化和政治方面，这些方面在我们看来同样重要，但往往被忽视。对生物学的背离是可以理解的，但也是不幸的。在当今的全球资本主义时代，不平等和贫困日益加剧，冲突、饥饿、营养不良和疾病的水平高得令人无法接受，因此需要进行研究，将人类生物学和健康与社会、文化和政治经济动态联系起来。医学人类学中的生物文化方法可能会更全面地理解大规模的政治经济过程是如何“深入到皮下”的。本章讨论过去二十年出现的生物文化方法，旨在加强关键医学人类学中对生物学的关注。这些努力的目标不是将健康和疾病简化为生物学术语和机制；相反，它是将人类生物学和健康视为内在的社会性和
Human health and well being is biocultural. Thus, it might be expected that biocultural perspectives on health, ones that consider the many imbrications, linkages, and intersections between biology and culture, would occupy a central place in medical anthropology. Indeed, the notion that human health and illness are interwoven biocultural processes, best understood through a variety of humanistic and scientific perspectives, has status as a foundational principle. However, as dominant biomedical perspectives illuminated reductive biological mechanisms and explanations, medical anthropology increasingly became more focused on the often ignored and in our view equally important, socio-cultural and political aspects of health. The turn away from the biological is understandable, but also unfortunate. In our current era of global capitalism, growing inequalities and poverty, and unacceptably high levels of strife, hunger, malnutrition, and disease, there is a need for research that links human biology and health to social, cultural and political–economic dynamics. Biocultural approaches in medical anthropology can potentially provide a fuller understanding of how large scale political–economic processes “get under the skin.” This chapter addresses biocultural approaches that have emerged over the past two decades that aim to enhance the focus on biology in critical medical anthropology. The goal of these efforts is not to reduce health and illness to biological terms and mechanisms; rather, it is to see human biology and health as inherently social and