The study of illness and health care from an anthropological perspective is ___ anthropology.

Medical Anthropology

Medical Anthropology is the study of health and healing from an anthropological perspective. Academic research in medical anthropology draws on different theoretical approaches, with a shared emphasis on increasing our understanding of the diverse ways in which cultural, social, and biological factors influence human experiences of pain, illness, suffering and healing in different settings. In addition, medical anthropology investigates the social, political, and economic contexts in which health behavior and health systems are shaped.

Issues studied by medical anthropologists include, but are not limited to:

  • cultural understandings of bodies and bodily processes;
  • risk and protective dimensions of cultural norms and behaviors;
  • illness experience and social meanings of disease;
  • health effects of human ecologies and adaptive processes;
  • and biosocial factors related to disease distribution and health disparities.

Medical Anthropology also includes applied research geared toward solving specific problems related to the delivery of health care, including improving health care policies and systems, enriching approaches to clinical care, and contributing to the design of culturally valid public health programs in community settings around the world.

Careers

Some careers in this field include:*

  • University Professor
  • Health Education Professional
  • Public Health Researcher
  • Epidemiologist
  • Medical Scientist
  • Health Care Administrator
  • Health Outreach Coordinator
  • Health and Social Policy Analyst
  • Health Care Consultant
  • Social Worker

* Most or all of these require an advanced degree or some additional professional training

Suggested anthropology courses

  • Evolution of Life Histories (306)
  • Global Health in Human History (308)
  • Evolution and Culture (310)
  • Human Population Biology (312)
  • Anthropological Population Genetics (313)
  • Human Growth and Development (314)
  • Medical Anthropology (315)
  • Forensic Anthropology (316)
  • Human Evolution (317)
  • The Anthropology of Reproduction (332)
  • Psychological Anthropology (377)
  • Environmental Anthropology (383)
  • Genetics and Evolutionary Biology (Biological Sciences 210-1)
  • Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (Biological Sciences 210-2)
  • Physiology and Cell Biology (Biological Sciences 210-3)
  • Systems Physiology (Biological Sciences 325)
  • Biology of Aging (Biological Sciences 327)
  • Biological Aspects of Disease (Biological Sciences 340)
  • Population Genetics (Biological Sciences 341)
  • Phylogenetics (Biological Sciences 343)
  • Field Ecology (Biological Sciences 346)
  • Early European Medicine (Classics 342)
  • Economics of Medical Care (Economics 307)
  • Science and Modern Society (History 376-1,2)
  • Medical Sociology (Sociology 355)

Relevant fieldwork and internship placements

  • Laboratory for Human Biology Research
  • Chicago Field Studies
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Social anthropology is the study of human society and cultures through a comparative lens.

Social anthropologists seek to understand how people live in societies and how they make their lives meaningful. Anthropologists are concerned with such questions as:

  • Why do people do what they do?
  • How are societies organised?
  • What are the untold stories we could tell?

Watch the video below to learn more about this subject from Lecturer in Social Anthropology Dr Chika Watanabe.

Ethnographic Research

The most challenging, but also most rewarding part of the course was re-learning how to look at the world through an anthropological lens. We learned how to see every-day practices we took as normal, and deconstructed them to the point of unfamiliarity. It is a very interesting way to look at the world which I continue to do in my work life.

Eleanor Hurley / Former BSocSc Social Anthropology student

Although anthropologists in the 19th and early 20th centuries studied ‘far away’ places and small societies, today they turn their attention to a variety of social contexts, from state bureaucracies in Papua New Guinea to religious belief in the UK. One of the principal goals of anthropology is to ‘make the familiar strange and the strange familiar’.

Studying anthropology gives you an insight into what makes people tick. This knowledge comes from the study of societies over an extended time frame through what is called ethnography, which revolves around long-term fieldwork for a year or longer.

Anthropologists believe that it is only by understanding and sharing people’s everyday lives that we can analyse, tackle, and challenge societal and global issues. That is why we conduct ‘participant observation’, a form of research that is not only about observing phenomena, but more importantly about participating in other people’s daily lives and practices.

Watch the video below to learn more about ethnography from Professor of Social Anthropology Penelope Harvey.

As a second year undergraduate student in Social Anthropology, you will have a chance to conduct your own ethnographic research in Manchester. This is a defiant city seeped in dynamic and diverse histories of labour and suffragette movements, underground music, and multicultural migration.

Anthropology in practice

Contemporary social anthropology tackles an enormous variety of topics. These range from the social implications of new reproductive and information technologies through the analysis of the social meanings of consumer behaviour, to the study of violence, poverty, and the means for resolving conflicts and alleviating human suffering.

Because of its focus on behaviour, social organisation and meaning, anthropology is used in a number of contemporary settings. Companies such as Google and Intel, for example, use anthropologists to understand how people interact with technology.

Anthropological approaches are also increasingly used in the health sector to redesign the patient experience.

If you want to learn more about studying Social Anthropology at The University of Manchester please visit our Courses page to explore our undergraduate courses, master's degrees and PhD programmes.

Discover more

What is anthropological perspective of health and illness?

Medical anthropologists focus on people's life worlds (the subjective experience or phenomenology of sickness and healing), their cultural systems of meaning (e.g., ideas about what causes disease and how it is diagnosed), and the material conditions in which experiences and beliefs are situated (e.g., local disease ...

What is the medical anthropological perspective?

Medical anthropologists focus on the conflict and reconciliation between the individual and society, depicting the health-care system as a means of sociocultural adaptation [13].

What are the 3 perspectives of anthropology?

These perspectives make anthropology distinct from related disciplines — like history, sociology, and psychology — that ask similar questions about the past, societies, and human nature. The key anthropological perspectives are holism, relativism, comparison, and fieldwork.

What are the 4 anthropological perspective?

The key anthropological perspectives are holism, relativism, comparison, and fieldwork. There are also both scientific and humanistic tendencies within the discipline that, at times, conflict with one another.