The Parallel Lives of Biocultural Synthesis and Clinically Applied Medical Anthropology

Authors

  • Leigh Hayden

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15173/nexus.v19i1.202

Abstract

In this paper, I give a brief history of the development of the school of critical medical anthropology (CMA) and trace its influences on both biocultural synthesis and clinically applied medical anthropology. I show how CMA has had a profound influence on biological and medical anthropology and how it has shaped our understandings of the relationships between biology and economics. I argue that although a critical perspective of health and well-being has been an important and necessary addition to both biological anthropology and clinically applied medical anthropology. we ought to be careful to trace how rather than simply assert that economics influence biology and health. I also argue that CMA's political economic perspective utilizes a narrow understanding of culture, and that biocultural synthesis could do well to look beyond a materialist view of culture and engage other theoretical schools in cultural anthropology. Finally. I show one such potential line of engagement between the disciplines by paralleling the concept of adaptation in biological anthropology to the concept of complicity in medical anthropology.

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Published

2006-01-01

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Section

Articles