People, Places & Concepts

Ethnomedicines
Culture-bound syndromes
Cultural idioms of distress
Shaman
Therapeutic management group
Navajo sand painting
Dine
Cross-cultural healing
Disease theory system
Health-care system
Personalist disease systems
Naturalist disease systems
Wounded healer
Personalist practitioners
Naturalist practitioners
Internalizing systems
Externalizing systems
Biological adaptation for sickness and healing (SH)
Illness of God
Illness of human beings
Fabrega
Institution/system of medicine
Foucault/Birth of the Clinic
Clinical gaze

Discussion Questions

1. What are the four ethnomedical typologies presented by Singer/Baer? What are their similarities and differences? How would you compare Das’ analytical framework to the three typologies?
2. How do Singer & Baer’s evolutionary model link disease theories and healing systems to subsistence strategies and sociopolitical organization? Do you find their discussion persuasive?