Merrill Singer - A Companion to Medical Anthropology

The Blackwell Companions to Anthropology offers a series of comprehensive syntheses of the traditional subdisciplines, primary subjects, and geographical areas of inquiry for the field. Taken together, the series represents both a contemporary survey of anthropology and a cutting edge guide to the emerging research and intellectual trends in the field as a whole.

1. A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology edited by Alessandro Duranti

2. A Companion to the Anthropology of Politics edited by David Nugent and Joan Vincent

3. A Companion to the Anthropology of American Indians edited by Thomas Biolsi

4. A Companion to Psychological Anthropology edited by Cornerly Casey and Robert B. Edgerton

5. A Companion to the Anthropology of Japan edited by Jennifer Robertson

6. A Companion to Latin American Anthropology edited by Deborah Poole

7. A Companion to Biological Anthropology edited by Clark Spencer Larsen

8. A Companion to Medical Anthropology edited by Merrill Singer and Pamela I. Erickson

Forthcoming

A Companion to Cognitive Anthropology edited by David B. Kronenfeld, Giovanni Bennardo, Victor de Munck, and Michael D. Fischer

This edition first published 2011
2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

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List of Figures

Figure 4.1 Qualitative and quantitative data and analysis

Figure 4.2 A continuum of research questions and methods of data collection and analysis

Figure 4.3 Inductive and deductive modes of reasoning in the cycle of research

Figure 4.4 Basic research design options in medical anthropology and neighboring disciplines

Figure 4.5 Successive free lists: analysis of relations between illnesses and symptoms

Figure 5.1 A systems model of policy process

Figure 5.2 Whats a medical anthropologist to do? A continuum of engagement in the policy process

Figure 10.1 Transmission pathways of fecal-oral disease

Figure 10.2 Aedes egypti distribution in the Americas

Figure 17.1 Results from the 2001 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse: Volume I. Summary of National Findings, 2002

Figure 20.1 The USA Dominative Medical System

Figure 20.2 Types of regulatory systems impacting upon medical pluralism

List of Tables

Table 3.1 Key excerpts from the American Anthropological Association Statement on Ethics

Table 4.1 Basic probability and nonprobability sampling designs

Table 4.2 Stratified quota sampling design for semistructured interviews on experiences of racism among AfricanAmericans in Tallahassee, FL

Table 4.3 Commonly used methods of data collection in medical anthropology

Table 5.1 The three streams in policy communities: who are they, what concerns them, and what they do to promote public policy

Table 19.1 Notable culture-bound syndromes

Table 22.1 Ethnographic examples of manners by category

Table 22.2 Three technology-based communication modalities and methods

Table 22.3 The ABCs of etiquette

Table 22.4 New rules of engagement

Notes on Contributors

George J. Armelagos is a biological anthropologist at Emory University in Atlanta Georgia. His research involves diet and disease in prehistory. He is the co-author of Consuming Passions: The Anthropology of Eating (with Peter Farb) and co-editor of Paleopathology at the Origins of Agriculture (with Mark N. Cohen) and Diseases in Populations in Transition (with Alan C. Swedlund). He received the Franz Boas Award for Exemplary Service from the American Anthropological Association in 2008 and the Charles Darwin Award for Lifetime Achievement from the American Association of Physical Anthropology in 2009. He was awarded the Viking Fund Medal from the WenerGren Foundation in 2005.

Hans A. Baer is a Senior Lecturer in the Development Studies Program, School of Philosophy, Anthropology, and Social Inquiry, and the Centre of Health and Society at the University of Melbourne. He has been a visiting professor at Humboldt University in Berlin, the University of California, Berkeley, Arizona State University, George Washington University, and the Australian National University. Baer has conducted research on the Hutterites in South Dakota, the Levites (a Mormon sect), African American Spiritual churches, complementary and alternative medicine in the United States, UK, and Australia, socio-political and religious life in East Germany, and conventional and complementary HIV clinics in a Western USA city. He has published 11 books, and published some 130 book chapters and journal articles. Some of his books include Critical Medical Anthropology (with Merrill Singer), Medical Anthropology and the World System: A Critical Perspective (with Merrill Singer and Ida Susser), Biomedicine and Alternative Healing Systems in America: Issues of Class, Race, Ethnicity, and Gender, Toward an Integrative Medicine, and Introducing Medical Anthropology