Final Exam Review: Medical Anthropology & Globalization

A healing system whose theories and clinical practices are based on modern biological science. Often emphasizes technology for diagnosis and treatment. Emphasizes formal training and credentialing of medical practitioners. Synonyms include Western medicine and cosmopolitan medicine.

Used to describe medical systems outside of biomedicine that have significant popular adherence. Most often used to describe practices in a complex society, especially the U.S. Complementary means fit together with....Alternative means another approach...Examples include chiropractic or osteopathic healing, faith healing, Ayuverdic healing, megavitamin therapies, special diets, herbal medicine, curanderismo

Cultural or personal belief that an affliction or misfortune is caused by another person or being. Examples include sorcery, witchcraft, evil eye, spirit possession, and angry spirits or gods.

Cultural of personal belief that an affliction or misfortune is caused by something impersonal or in the environment. Examples include bodily humors (fluids) out of balance, bad karma, bad air (miasmas), getting wet and cold, germs, and pathogens.

A naturalistic theory of disease causation found in many societies from China, to India, to Europe and Latin America, that illness is due to an imbalance in the humors, or fluids, in the patient's body. Imbalance may be due to too much heat or cold, for example.

Study of the causes of a disease or condition.

The prevalence, belief in, or use within society, culture, or ethnic group of more than one healing system. Examples: biomedicine plus one or more forms of ethnomedicine, folk healing, or alternative medicine.

Literally curing, in Spanish, referring to syncretic healing traditions, widespread in the Americas, based on the combinations of Catholic religious philosophies and practices with indigenous beliefs and practices concerning health, illness, and healing. Also influenced by 19th century French and other European such spiritist practices and modern Protestant Christianity, Afro-Cuban Santeria, Hindu and Buddhist practices, and New Age philosophies. Varies regionally; especially influential in areas such as Mexico and Peru.

Literally holiness, in Spanish, referring to syncretic Afro-Cuban divination and healing traditions with roots in West African religous and healing practices, especially those of the Yoruba of Nigeria, Congo, and Angola; combined with Catholic religious philosophies and practices. Continues to spread with the Cuban diaspora in the United States.

Also called voodoo or hoodoo in Southern American English. Refers to syncretic Haitian divination and healing traditions with roots in West African religious and healing practices, especially those of Yoruba of Nigeria, Congo, and Angola; combined with Catholic religious philosophies and practices.

The study of diet and nutrition in cultural context. Often involves study of the relation of diet and nutritional status to the health of an individual or population, especially a cultural or ethnic group. Often uses quantitative methods such as analyses of dietary surveys, food recalls, or anthropometric data.

Measurement of the human body. Examples include use of triceps skinfold thickness measurements to determine percentage of body fat and weight for age and weight for height measurements of children to determine degree of wasting or stunting, evidence of undernutrition; and body mass index (BMI), a measure of obesity.

Not enough food

Literally, bad diet or bad food. Often used to mean not enough food.

Individual's stature is significantly below population norms for height. Implies chronic (longterm) undernutrition.

Individual's body weight is significantly below population norms for weight. Implies acute (short-term, current) undernutrition.

The study of food in cultural context, often emphasizing the cultural meanings of food and diety. Often uses interpretations of qualitative data such as participant observation.

The transfer of organisms, including food plants (cultigens) and disease-causing bacteria, viruses, and parasites (pathogens) between the Old World (Eurasia, Pacific Islands, and Africa) and the New World (North and South America) in the period beginning at European contact (starting with Columbus in 1492) and continuing today (as with the epidemics of malaria and measles among the Yanomamo).

Cultivated food plants

Disease-causing bacteria, viruses, parasites

The study of patterns of health and disease in a population

In epidemiology, a concentration of cases in a particular time and place

First recorded case of a new or emerging outbreak or epidemic of disease

A collection of diseases or symptoms

Newly visible disease or syndrome caused by an unknown or newly identified pathogen, e.g. a virus or bacteria

Illnesses that have been transmitted to human via animal hosts. Influenza is now known to infect other animals, such as pigs (e.g. swine flu) and birds (e.g. avian flu) Occasionally, a new strain evolves (mutates) in an animal host that has the ability to infect humans (animal-human transmission).

Percentage of diagnosed cases of a disease or syndrome that result in death

An emerging infectious disease caused by a previously unknown virus, whose symptoms include severe hemorrhages. Several clusters of disease emerged in the late twentieth century in Central Africa. Ebola has a high fertility rate, indicating that the virus may be a recent mutation or recently transmitted to human hosts.

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, an emergine infectious disease caused by a previously unknown virus. First identified in Hong Kong (2003), but precise point of origin unknown.

Human immunodeficiency virus, first isolated in 1984; the virus that causes AIDS. Genetic and historical evidence indicate that it was zoonotic and may have first been transmitted to chimpanzees to humans in rural Central Africa as early as 1930. There are dozens of variants of HIV, and the virus has the ability to mutate rapidly, making the search for effective vaccines more challenging.

Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome. A collection of diseases and symptoms resulting from infection with HIV and characterized by a dramatic decrease in the patient's immune response systems. It is still incurable, but in many cases may be managed through treatment with anti-retroviral drugs and careful monitoring of health staus and immune function. HIV/AIDS can still be considered an emerging infectious disease.

Study of the characteristics of a population

Ability to give birth (for an individual), or birth rates, of a population

Travel or relocation from one region or one country to another. The term is often used to refer to permanent relocations from rural to urban areas or across international borders.

Illness

Death, of an individual, or death rates, of a population

Refers to "pro-birth" policies, usually of a national government (e.g. the former Soviet Union or USSR)

Refers to "anti-birth" policies, usually of a national government (e.g. the People's Republic of China's one child per family policy)

The shift in the pattern of fertility and mortality (births and deaths) in a population following the significant drop in the infant and child mortality rate. Within less than a generation, the fertility rate declines significantly as well. The explanation is that it is no longer necessary to have as many children with the expectation that only some of them will survive into adulthood.

The study of diet and health in cultural context, often using biomedical or quantitaive analyses in combination with analyses of related aspects of society and culture.

The study of food and diet in cultural context and holistic perspective. Overlaps with nutritional anthropology. Combined term is the anthropology of food and nutrition.

The intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occuring many miles away and vice versa

The increasing world-wide integration of markets for goods, services, and capital that bega to attract special attention in the late 1990's. Also used to encompass a variety of changes that were perceived to occur at about the same time, such as an increased role for large incorporations in the world economy and increased intervention into domestic policies and affairs by international institutions such as the IMF, WTO, and World Bank. Also, the domination of economic affairs and commerce by the United States.

Cultural group of agropastoralists living in Southern Sudan. Famous in anthropology due to research of E.E. Evans-Pritchard. Restudy by Sharon Hutchinson, UW Madison

Cultural group of agropastoralists living in Southern Sudan, with territory adjacent to Nuer

Cultural group of agropastoralists living in Western Kenya. Origins believed to be in Southern Sudan. Tribal affiliation of Barack Obama.

Refers to linguistically related cultural groups originating around the Upper Nile River, living in Sudan and Western Kenya. Traditionally pastoralists and agropastoralists. Includes Nuer, Dinka, and Luo

Strategy that combines herding and agriculture

Migrants who have been forcibly displaced, or are in fear of their lives, who have traveled across an international border, often to avoid armed conflict, retaliation, or political persecution

Involuntary migrants who have been moved within one country, often to avoid armed conflict or retaliation. (IDP)

Movement across national boundaries by an ethnic group or individual

Going back to one's country of origin after spending a significant period in another country

Moving back and forth regularly between one's country of migration and country of origin

Population movement in which a first wave of migrants arrives, then attracts relatives and community members. Often results in the formation of ethnic enclaves within a host country

Payments, often refers to payments across international borders by migrants. The transfer of money or goods by a migrant to family back home

Contact zones between two or more cultures, where new cultural forms may result from intercultural contacts

IMF, an international, quasi-governmental body set up near the end of World War II to help regulate the global economy

An international, quasi-governmental body set up to help regulate the global economy

Literally, multi-sided. The World Bank and IMF are multilateral organizations, with many member nations who fund them and share responsibility for policy decisions

Term used by opponents to describe barriers to unrestricted trade between countries. These barriers are usually described by their supporters as protecting specific sectors of the home country's economy or industries

Refers to commerce or trade unrestricted by barriers, especially barriers erected by government policies

Conditions of loans by IMF, World Bank to developing countries, imposed as "austerity" measures. These usually include directions to privatize ownership of resources and infrastructure (e.g. natural resources, utilities, phone system, airlines), decrease the size of civil service/number of government employees, lift trade barriers (leading to freetrade and open markets), and decrease government spending on health and education

Work or economic activity outside the formal sector, not officially registered by authorities, and sometimes illegal. Economic activity that is outside of government regulation and lacks formal social recognition or benefits, as when goods are bartered, exchanged, or sold unregulated by formal institutions. Examples include: barter, unreported cash income from babysitting, snow shoveling, nannying; buying or selling at garage sales, flea markets; unlicensed/untaxed street vending, etc. Also known as the underground economy.

Sociologist Saskia Sassen's terms for the two levels of the global economy and of global circulation. Upper circuits include global financial markets, institutions, capital flows, and multi-national corporations. Sassen argues the lower circuits include undocumented international migrants, informal labor markets, black markets, etc.

Nation-states with an elaborate industrial and consumer-based cash economy

Also known as Less Developed Countries, LDCs, or underdeveloped countries. Nation-states or territories with less pervasive industrial and consumer-based economic sectors and less integration into the global cash economy. These countries have lower gross national products (GNP), and their populations may also rely on subsistence, barter, and internal markets.

The process of transforming an undeveloped country to a developed one, often with the assistance of foreign aid or of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Most political and economic definitions of progress in development have emphasized raising the country's GNP, and thus its greater involvement in the global economy.

Directed change to achieve improved human welfare.

A model of change based on the belief in the inevitable advance of science and Western secularism and processes, including industrial growth, consolidation of the state, bureaucratization, market economy, technological innovation, literacy, and options for social mobility (Miller 2008)

Refers to development in the 1950's of high-yielding varieties of staple crops such as wheat and rice with the goal of increasing crop yields and reducing hunger.

Subfield of anthropology concerned with bringing cultural analyses and ethnographic perspectives to the theory and practice if development. Often considered a subfield of applied anthropology.

The application of anthropological perspectives and research methods to practical human problems and concerns. Covers a wide range of topics and applications, and all subfields of anthropology.

The healing system of an ethnic or culture group, including philosophies, beliefs and practices relevant to health, illness, and healing.

The application of anthropological perspectives and research methods to business problems. A type of applied anthropology carried out by employees or contractors working for corporations. Data and results are generally proprietary and not publicly distributed.

The study of cultural life of cities and of people who live in cities; study of cities and their zones of cultural influences.

Subcontracting a process, such as an aspect of manufacturing, clerical support, or service, previously integral to a company to a third party. Often used to refer to functions outsourced across international boundaries to a contractor, or contracting company, in a country with lower labor costs or wearker workplace regulations.

A service center whose operators are trained to respond to calls from costumers. Call centers are increasingly outsourced to contractors in locations distant from other corporate operations, including overseas. India and the Philipines are common, due to their large populations of English speakers and lower wage rates.

Beyond legal; term used by anthropologist Caroline Nordstrom to refer to the blurring of the line between legal and illegal practices in global commerce.

A means of paying off debt with labor by agreeing, through a contract, to set a period of labor for a designated individual or business establishment.

A form of apprentice or bonded labor secured by contract. A form of debt peonage. The apprentice or servant is bound to a master for a set period of years. Early migrants from the British Isles to America and Australia earned their passage by bonding themselves into indentured servitude.

The basic rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled by internationally agreed upon standards.