About Medical Anthropology
The course explores cross-cultural survey of cultural diversity and similarity in the interpretation of health, illness and healing systems. It examines the interrelationship of culture, society and health from local and global perspectives, and comparative examination of cross-cultural healing systems in Ethiopia and the interactions of western and traditional healing systems. It deals with conceptual and methodological issues related to health/illness; the socioeconomic and cultural dimensions of HIV/AIDS, and other known epidemics, with particular emphasis on the social and cultural factors that contribute to their spread. The course makes out into the complex interaction between culture, society, health and disease; the role of anthropology in medicine; the history, applications, concerns, theories and limitations of medical anthropology; and the role of medical anthropologists in our contemporary society. It studies the social and cultural dimensions of epidemiology: diseases and developments, social and cultural dimensions of epidemiology, social-cultural underpinnings of health-care seeking behaviors, and health beliefs. Institutionalized ways of dealing with misfortunes and diseases, roles and places of indigenous medical practice, the IKS of health and disease management will be studied.