Doctoral Dissertation Research: Veterinary Medicine in Anthropological Perspective: Ethnoveterinary Care and Human - Animal Relationships

人类和动物有着长期的、进化上相关的持续互动的历史。事实上，几千年来人类和他们的宠物的共同进化打开了一个有趣的问题，涉及到人类和动物相互提供或相互获取的成本和收益。这一博士论文研究项目调查了与主人决定为他们的动物提供昂贵的兽医护理相关的因素，以了解动物的概念如何影响兽医护理。除了在人类学研究方面培训一名博士生外，该项目的发现还可以通过更好地理解和预测他们的人类客户如何看待他们的患病动物并与之互动，从而为兽医有效地阻止疾病传播提供信息和便利。该项目将其发现广泛地传播给学术界、非专业人士和动物内科医生受众。该项目提供了新的人类学研究，考察动物护理文化，即民族兽医。这项研究测试了关于医学(医学人类学)和人与动物相互作用(民族动物学或人类学)的人类学理论和概念，并使用认知人类学来确定关于动物疾病和健康的显著文化模型(思维框架)。它使用人种学观察和采访方法，包括调查、自由列出、半结构化采访、动物剪影的身体地图，以及自我管理的视频日志。这些数据揭示了不同的人与动物活动如何与关于动物疾病的不同文化模型或概念倾向联系在一起，包括人们如何构思疾病原因、生理和症状，以及适当的治疗反应。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Humans and animals have long, evolutionarily relevant, histories of sustained interactions. Indeed, millennia-long demonstrated co-evolution of humans and their pets opens fascinating questions involving the costs and benefits that humans and animals provide to or exact from each other. This doctoral dissertation research project investigates factors associated with owners’ decisions to provide costly veterinary care to their animals to understand how concepts of animals impact veterinary care. In addition to training a doctoral student in anthropological research, this project’s findings can inform and facilitate veterinarians’ effective interception in disease spread, by better understanding and anticipating how their human clients perceive and interact with their sick animals. The project disseminates its findings broadly to academic, lay, and animal physician audiences. This project offers novel anthropological research examining the culture of animal care, i.e., ethnoveterinary medicine. The research tests anthropological theories and concepts regarding medicine (medical anthropology) and human-animal interaction (ethnozoology or anthrozoology), and uses cognitive anthropology to identify salient cultural models (frameworks for thinking) about animal disease and wellness. It uses ethnographic observational and interview methods, including surveying, free-listing, semi-structured interviews, body mapping with animal silhouettes, and self-administered video journaling. The data reveal how differing human-animal activities connect with different cultural models, or conceptual tendencies, about animal sickness, including how people conceive of disease causes, physiology and symptoms, and the appropriate treatment responses.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.