2010 Course Handbook
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ANTH202: Illness and Healing
This unit offers an introduction to medical anthropology and cross cultural beliefs relating to illness and healing. We consider different notions of disease causality and examine the proposition that good health, and conversely ill health, is never just about the body. Throughout the unit, we look at conditions of disease as having social as well as biological origins and take the point of view that ideas of health and methods of treating illness are deeply lodged in cultural frameworks. Thus we treat healing practices, including Western biomedicine, as inevitably predicated on cultural systems of understanding. How people understand illness and where it comes from, and what they do about it when it does occur, tells us a lot about how different societies understand people and their place in the world. Specific topics include: cross-cultural approaches to bodily and mental disorders; the social construction of illness; somatisation and the role of symbolism in healing; shamanistic practices; emotions and embodiment; science and biomedicine; gender and health; alternative medicine; health promotion and regulation; and new infectious diseases.
| Credit Points: | 3 |
| Contact Hours: | 3 |
| When Offered: | D2 - Day; Offered in the second half-year X2 - External study; Offered in the second half-year |
| Staff Contact(s): | Dr Chris Lyttleton |
| Prerequisites: |
ANTH150 or 12cp or admission to GDipAnth |
| Corequisites: | |
| NCCW(s): | ANTH274 |
| Unit Designation(s): | |
| Assessed As: | Graded |
| Offered By: | Department of Anthropology |
Timetable Information
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