Curing and Healing: Medical Anthropology in Global Perspective

Throughout history and throughout the world today, problems of health, sickness, and medical treatment have been intimately interwoven with social, cultural, and political life generally. Medical anthropology deals with these problems from a biocultural perspective, recognizing the deep connections between cultural patterns, historical change, and life processes. This book draws on a rich array of ethnographic cases from around the world to demonstrate the complexities of ideas and practices that surround the health of the human body, and how health is impacted by the beliefs and practices of the community. The authors make particular use of new materials from their field areas among the Hagen and Duna people in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea.

The book is intended as a textbook useable for both anthropology courses and courses for medical students. The topics covered include a survey of earlier works in medical anthropology, regimens of bodily treatment, sex and reproduction, medical pluralism, doctor-patient communication, epidemiology, ethnopsychiatry, illness and the emotions, and how diseases such as AIDS have altered the ways in which individuals see themselves and 'traditional' practices alter to accommodate new diseases.

Andrew Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart are a husband and wife anthropological team who work in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea and the Lowlands of Scotland.