Ut over ”illness” og ”disease”

En faghistorisk introduksjon til medisinsk antropologi

Abstract

In this article I introduce readers to the history of medical anthropology. Medical anthropology is a subfield within social anthropology that has the cultural dimensions of health and illness as its main research interest and focus. Similar to studies within the medical humanities, medical anthropology considers the human body and its capabilities and restrictions to be primarily cultural constructions. In this article I discuss medical anthropology’s theoretical relevance for the broader field of medical humanities. I focus primarily on the so-called interpretative and critical perspectives, and suggest a revitalization of Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Margaret Lock’s (1987) model of the three bodies as a reconciliatory approach between the two perspectives. Rather than approaching illness and disease from either the perspective of phenomenology or social constructivism, I believe that the model enables studies which acknowledge the interrelations between macro and micro processes in the shaping of local medical knowledge, meaning and experience. This, in my opinion, is necessary in order to bridge some of the gaps between the medical humanities and social medicine. With this in mind, the objective of the article is to challenge what I believe to be preconceived perceptions of so-called insurmountable divergences between humanistic and social medical understandings of health.