Medical Anthropology (KSK_155)
About Study Course
Objective
The objective of the course is to provide the knowledge and skills to discuss changing understandings, practices and experiences of health, illness and medicine and their interaction with the socio-cultural, economic and political environment.
Prerequisites
Prior knowledge in classical and contemporary anthropological theories is desirable. Ability to read academic texts in English.
Learning outcomes
Students are familiar with the multifaceted nature of medical anthropology and understand how anthropology provides methodological and conceptual frameworks beyond biomedicine that help to appreciate the experience of diseases and disorders as well as the epistemological dimensions of disease categories. Students understand the impact of inequalities on health and availability of health care, the colonial development of anthropology and biomedicine, and the close relationship between modern medicine and politics. Students are familiar with issues such as inequalities in health care, the social nature of disease, compliance, biological citizenship, biopolitics, etc.
The student is able to explain how health and disease are influenced by individual, social, political and cultural dimensions by comparing and contrasting specific cases, drawing on the literature covered in the course.
The student is able to describe specific contexts and situations in which concepts such as embodiment, social suffering, compliance, resistance can help to understand the experience of disease and the progression of healing/treatment.
The student is able to articulate the ways in which medical knowledge and practice operate at different scales (individual, family, local, global) using scientific examples.
Students are able to read analytically high-quality academic social science literature covering topics such as health, medicine, disease, inequality and political economy in a complex manner.
Students are able to express verbally and in writing a reasoned, example-based perspective on issues related to health, medicine and political economy.
Students are able to make competent judgements and discuss the social, cultural, global and local political-economic processes influencing and shaping health and disease. Students are competent to discuss the relationship between health, medicine and political economy, understanding the impact of inequalities and discrimination on health and the controversial historical development of biomedicine.
