1. Understanding and appreciating human cultural diversity:

Contributions of cultural anthropology to medical and health education

Abstract

  Cultural anthropology is the systematic study of humankind everywhere, both in the past and the present. It focuses on the study of different ethnic and cultural groups throughout the world. With a meaning-centered approach, medical anthropologists have developed “explanatory models,” schemata for understanding illness representations by patients and families and by medical practitioners. This approach to illness representations has provided clinicians with broader perspectives on what illness means to people in their particular social and cultural settings. Cultural anthropology provides another approach that further broadens the view of human behavior by considering social and political contexts, such as the globalization of health-care systems and medical practice and the increased application of pharmacoeconomics. Culture is not just a set of rules influencing human behavior; it also includes local activities performed with practical knowledge, both creatively and improvisationally. We should study culture in situ, as these activities are performed in a particular social field.