Medical ethnology

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The medical anthropology , as medical anthropology and medical anthropology designated (English medical anthropology ), is a field of anthropology (international customer or social and cultural anthropology). Unlike the ethnomedicine (ethnomedicine) , traditionally mainly to the comparative study of medical systems is concerned (see traditional medicine ), examines the medical anthropology medical phenomena such as health, illness and healing as a social phenomena in the culture.

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Following on from Anglo-Saxon Medical Anthropology , which, in contrast to ethnomedicine, also deals with pathodemography (relationships between the frequency and distribution of diseases) and is one of the strongest research directions in cultural and social anthropology in the USA and Great Britain, medical ethnology examines all these phenomena that are culturally related to disease, health, and healing. It is based on ethnological theories and methods that focus on the thematic subjects of medical ethnology - i.e. that is, health and medicine-related ideas, practices and experiences in their social and cultural diversity. In this way, it distinguishes itself from the field of ethnomedicine , which is shaped to a greater extent by approaches from biomedicine or psychiatry and psychology and which makes ethnological methods usable primarily for these disciplinary fields. Furthermore, medical ethnology is characterized by its comprehensive view of the cultural and social diversity of illness, health and healing: It examines these topics in a global comparison and thus in particular advances the cultural implications of “biomedicine” (also called “western medicine” or "Conventional medicine" called ") into the focus.

The expansion of medical ethnology in the German-speaking area was particularly supported by the activities of the Medical Anthropology working group in the German Society for Social and Cultural Anthropology e. V. , which was established in 1997 in Frankfurt a. M. and which has been involved in the development and expansion of medical-ethnological research and teaching in German-speaking countries ever since. The members of the working group examine health and medicine-related phenomena on the basis of ethnological theory and method and have presented their research in a series of conferences and anthologies: The focus of their work is on culturally varying interpretations of health, illness and healing, as well as the local, national and global power structures in which the actions and thoughts of individual persons and larger social units in relation to these fundamental issues of human experience are embedded.

With the outbreak of the Ebola epidemic in West Africa in 2014, the Medical Anthropology group started the medical ethnology blog, which has since published articles in German and English on the subjects of the body, health and healing in a globalized world. Since 2020 the blog has been a co-initiator of the "Witnessing Corona" series, which deals with the cultural and social dimensions of the Covid-19 pandemic .

Examples of medical-ethnological research

Today, medical anthropologists work and research in different regional and thematic contexts: For example, they follow the path of globally circulating biomedical drugs and technologies and focus their attention on both political and economic framework conditions (e.g. in the form of international trade agreements) and cultural ones conditional and locally-specific processes of appropriation and reinterpretation of these technologies.

Other researchers are investigating the worldwide spread and commercialization of traditional or alternative medicine such as Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) or Ayurvedic healing art and the relationship between these forms of medicine and biomedicine .

Further research is devoted to the topics of health, illness and healing in the context of flight and migration : Here, too, the close connection between structural and political prerequisites - e.g. B. in the form of legal regulations on health care for asylum seekers - and the subjective experience of (physical, psychological and social) impairment, threats, well-being and security taken into account.

Finally, a fourth example of medical and ethnological research is the investigation of technological, ethical and political aspects of so-called assisted reproductive technologies : Here, for example, the consequences and dilemmas that arise due to differently restrictive national legislations for couples who wish to have children through in vitro Trying to fulfill fertilization and surrogacy , as well as for women who, for various reasons, bear children for mostly unknown "intended parents". In this case, too, individual experiences are related to political and often economic processes on a national and global level, through which these experiences are shaped.

Institutionalization of medical ethnology in German-speaking countries

The Medical Anthropology working group in the German Society for Social and Cultural Anthropology cooperates closely with Medical Anthropology Switzerland, the Medical Anthropology Europe network within the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) and the Medical Anthropology Young Scholars Network within EASA and includes them Activities are therefore closely linked to international debates in medical ethnology.

Medical anthropology is now represented in research and teaching at the following universities in German-speaking countries, where it sometimes forms its own focus in the respective study programs (both BA and MA): University of Basel, Free University of Berlin, Justus Liebig University of Gießen, Ruprecht- Charles University of Heidelberg, Westphalian Wilhelms University of Münster, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, University of Vienna.

Career prospects for ethnologists with medical-ethnological knowledge arise, for example, in the area of ​​international cooperation; in non-governmental organizations active in the field of health promotion; in the area of ​​migration work; and also in adult education (e.g. in imparting intercultural competence for health care workers).

literature

  • Hansjörg Dilger , Bernhard Hadolt: Medical Ethnology . In: Bettina Beer , Hans Fischer (ed.): Ethnology. Introduction and overview. 7th, revised and expanded edition. Reimer, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-496-02844-4 , pp. 309-329.
  • Winfried Effelsberg: Intercultural Conflicts in Medicine. Medical anthropological considerations. In: Würzburg medical history reports. Volume 3, 1985, pp. 29-40.
  • Katarina Greifeld (ed.): Medical ethnology. An introduction. Reimer, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-496-02859-8 .
  • Bruni Ludwig, Beatrix Pfleiderer-Becker: Materials for ethnomedicine. Bensheim 1978 (= spectrum of the Third World , 15), especially p. 11.
  • Thomas Lux (Ed.): Cultural Dimensions of Medicine. Ethnomedicine - Medical Anthropology. Reimer, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-496-02766-5 .
  • Nikolaus Münzel: Brief introduction to ethnomedicine. In: Würzburg medical history reports. Volume 3, 1985, pp. 5-9, especially p. 5.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Nikolaus Münzel: Brief introduction to ethnomedicine. In: Würzburg medical history reports. Volume 3, 1985, pp. 5-9, pp. 5 and 9.
  2. ↑ Angelika Wolf, Viola Hörbst (ed.): Medicine and globalization. Universal claims - local answers , Lit Verlag, Münster 2003, ISBN 3-8258-5655-0
  3. ↑ Angelika Wolf (Ed.): Medicine-Ethnological Challenges. The AG Medical Anthropology in the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Völkerkunde e. V. , special issue " Curare , journal for ethnomedicine and transcultural psychiatry" 27, 1 + 2, VWB, Berlin 2004, ISBN 978-3-86135-688-2
  4. ↑ Hansjörg Dilger, Bernhard Hadolt (Ed.): Medicine in Context. Illness and health in a networked world , Peter Lang Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 2010, ISBN 978-3-631-57839-1
  5. ↑ Blog: Medical Ethnology: Body, Health and Healing in a Globalized World. (ISSN: 2509-6931) Medical Anthropology working group in the German Society for Social and Cultural Anthropology
  6. ↑ Medical Anthropology Switzerland: http://www.sagw.ch/en/seg/commissions/MAS.html
  7. ↑ Medical Anthropology Network within the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA): http://www.easaonline.org/networks/medical/
  8. ↑ Medical Anthropology Young Scholars Network: http://www.mays-easa.org/