Medical Anthropology

Medical anthropology is a subdiscipline within anthropology that addresses sociocultural dimensions of health and illness, as well as the epistemologies and practices associated with diverse systems of healing. This entry examines medical anthropology's contribution to the study of the social production of health and illness. Although medical anthropologists move through the terrain of human health in various ways, this entry concentrates on a select few examples of theoretical and methodological contributions to the anthropological understanding of the political economy of health.

According to medical anthropologist Morgan (1987), the political economy of health is “a macroanalytic, critical, and historical perspective for analyzing disease distribution and health services under a variety of economic systems, with particular emphasis on the effects of stratified social, political, and economic relations within ...