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 the world economic system” (p. 132). Political-economic medical anthropologists argue that health-threatening conditions are the result of historically based social, political, and economic systems of inequality. This perspective is bolstered by a methodological and conceptual commitment to the delineation of structures of inequality and their reproduction over time. The political-economic medical anthropology (PEMA) research framework thus engages the notion of change as an important part of the context of health.

PEMA research focuses on ideological and material foundations of inequality by examining the lived experiences of class relations and state-sponsored policies and practices. It expands microlevel, culturally based analyses of health and illness in particular communities or societies by illuminating the broader [Page 660]context through which health phenomena are unevenly distributed among social groups. PEMA research thus explores the interaction among macrosocial forces and microlevel circumstances. As a result, PEMA studies emphasize the multifactorial nature of disease causality.

According to Morsy (1996), power is the central analytical construct within the PEMA framework. Power is a relational concept that describes the privileges of one group and concomitant subordination of others. Analyses of power allow researchers such as Ida Susser to make the connections between material and social resource distribution and structures of social inequality. In turn, focusing on the various and interconnecting dimensions of power enables PEMA scholars to understand population health and sickness as socially produced phenomena.