There are not many areas that are more rooted in both the biological and social-cultural aspects of humankind than diet and nutrition. Throughout human history nutrition has been shaped by political, economic, and cultural forces, and in turn, access to food and nutrition has altered the course and direction of human societies. Using a biocultural approach, the contributors to this volume investigate the ways in which food is both an essential resource fundamental to human health and an expression of human culture and society. The chapters deal with aspects of diet and human nutrition through space and time and span prehistoric, historic, and contemporary societies spread over various geographical regions, including Europe, North America, Africa, and Asia to highlight how biology and culture are inextricably linked.
Based on qualitative and quantitative studies in the United States and Puerto Rico, this book demonstrates the significant effect of patients' and health care providers' ethnic and cultural backgrounds on chronic pain.
It is generally recognized today that the United States has a need to contri bute to the improvement of health throughout the world. The need stems from the interrelationships that exist between the health of Americans and the health status of the rest of the people on "Spaceship Earth." Disease does not respect national boundaries, and the frequency of travel and trade between countries increases each year. It further relates to the opportunities found in international settings to help solve health problems more effec tively and efficiently. This includes the unique human resources that are found throughout the world as well as certain natural ecological conditions that cannot be duplicated in the United States. The United States also has a responsibility to contribute to improved health status. Our tradition of humanitarianism alone supports such a re sponsibility, but our comparative wealth of technical and financial re sources dictates a requirement to participate. Modern political realities de fine relationships between developed and developing countries that will not allow us to isolate ourselves from the compelling health needs of a majority of the world's population.
The second section of the text separateley covers disease of: the North American Indians; Latin America; the Japanese; the Chinese; Finland and Scandinavia; Britain and Western Europe; Eastern Europeans; black Africans; the Jews; isolated groups; and aging populations. Illustrations and tabular data are presented throughout the text, and literature citations are appended to each text chapter.
This book synthesizes the flourishing field of anthropology of infectious disease in a critical, biocultural framework, advancing research in this multifaceted area and offering an ideal supplemental text.
Biocultural or biosocial anthropology is a research approach that views biology and culture as dialectically and inextricably intertwined, explicitly emphasizing the dynamic interaction between humans and their larger social, cultural, and physical environments. The biocultural approach emerged in anthropology in the 1960s, matured in the 1980s, and is now one of the dominant paradigms in anthropology, particularly within biological anthropology. This volume gathers contributions from the top scholars in biocultural anthropology focusing on six of the most influential, productive, and important areas of research within biocultural anthropology. These are: critical and synthetic approaches within biocultural anthropology; biocultural approaches to identity, including race and racism; health, diet, and nutrition; infectious disease from antiquity to the modern era; epidemiologic transitions and population dynamics; and inequality and violence studies. Focusing on these six major areas of burgeoning research within biocultural anthropology makes the proposed volume timely, widely applicable and useful to scholars engaging in biocultural research and students interested in the biocultural approach, and synthetic in its coverage of contemporary scholarship in biocultural anthropology. Students will be able to grasp the history of the biocultural approach, and how that history continues to impact scholarship, as well as the scope of current research within the approach, and the foci of biocultural research into the future. Importantly, contributions in the text follow a consistent format of a discussion of method and theory relative to a particular aspect of the above six topics, followed by a case study applying the surveyed method and theory. This structure will engage students by providing real world examples of anthropological issues, and demonstrating how biocultural method and theory can be used to elucidate and resolve them. Key features include: Contributions which span the breadth of approaches and topics within biological anthropology from the insights granted through work with ancient human remains to those granted through collaborative research with contemporary peoples. Comprehensive treatment of diverse topics within biocultural anthropology, from human variation and adaptability to recent disease pandemics, the embodied effects of race and racism, industrialization and the rise of allergy and autoimmune diseases, and the sociopolitics of slavery and torture. Contributions and sections united by thematically cohesive threads. Clear, jargon-free language in a text that is designed to be pedagogically flexible: contributions are written to be both understandable and engaging to both undergraduate and graduate students. Provision of synthetic theory, method and data in each contribution. The use of richly contextualized case studies driven by empirical data. Through case-study driven contributions, each chapter demonstrates how biocultural approaches can be used to better understand and resolve real-world problems and anthropological issues.
Conveys the importance of diverse cultural knowledge for evaluation of patient outcomes, understanding persons in clinical settings, and appropriate responses during the nurse/client interaction.
We become ill in ways our parents and grandparents did not, with diseases unheard of and treatments undreamed of by them. Illness has changed in the postmodern era—roughly the period since World War II—as dramatically as technology, transportation, and the texture of everyday life. Exploring these changes, David B. Morris tells the fascinating story, or stories, of what goes into making the postmodern experience of illness different, perhaps unique. Even as he decries the overuse and misuse of the term "postmodern," Morris shows how brightly ideas of illness, health, and postmodernism illuminate one another in late-twentieth-century culture. Modern medicine traditionally separates disease—an objectively verified disorder—from illness—a patient's subjective experience. Postmodern medicine, Morris says, can make no such clean distinction; instead, it demands a biocultural model, situating illness at the crossroads of biology and culture. Maladies such as chronic fatigue syndrome and post-traumatic stress disorder signal our awareness that there are biocultural ways of being sick. The biocultural vision of illness not only blurs old boundaries but also offers a new and infinitely promising arena for investigating both biology and culture. In many ways Illness and Culture in the Postmodern Age leads us to understand our experience of the world differently.
This book presents a comprehensive account of differences in the frequencies of various diseases among a wide range of racial and ethnic groups throughout the world today. It provides epidemiologists, physicians, sociologists, and anthropologists with a methodological framework for understanding the concepts of race and ethnic group, the use of these concepts in epidemiology, and the interpretation of epidemiologic studies of disease. The volume includes information on the physical anthropology of major racial/ethnic groups, as well as chapters on genetic diseases, infectious and parasitic diseases, cardiovascular diseases, cancers, and many other chronic disorders. Each chapter provides descriptive information on the relative frequencies of diseases and the methods used in studies, as well as a systematic discussion of the interpretation of the racial and ethnic differences described, which may arise from such factors as errors in measurement or socioeconomic differences between groups. Genetic and biological factors are also considered, and many individual studies are summarized and critically appraised. The text is ideal for graduates and undergraduates alike, while the authors non-technical approach is easily accessible to general readers with an interest in the subject.
