The Body, Meaning and Symbols in Medical Anthropology Essay

In the course of the study of medicine from an anthropological perspective, there are several themes which are repeatedly encountered. These include the body and its representation, meaning and a person’s response to that meaning, and finally, the symbolic images which construct and shape both meaning and the bodily representation. Each of these themes are addressed throughout medical anthropological texts, and are connected to and build on each other in a variety of ways. The body is the site of medicine, because the body is the site of all cultural practices. As Byron Good states, â€Å"medicine formulates the human body and disease in a culturally distinctive fashion†. (Good, 65) It is the cultural fashion of western medicine to†¦show more content†¦Comaroff tells us, â€Å"nationality, culture and physical type are condensed into the language that...would mature into scientific racism† which would â€Å"imprint the physical contours of stereotyp ic others on the European imagination–and, with them, a host of derogatory associations†. (Comaroff, 309) In turn these associations further objectified the alien African body to the European. Comaroff explains, â€Å"As an object of European speculation, ‘Africans’ personified suffering and degeneracy, their environment a hothouse of fever and affliction.† (Comaroff, 305-306). Thus bodily perception shaped the meaning of the body, and the meaning attached to the body further reinforced bodily perceptions. This self-reinforcing loop of perception and meaning allowed for the European to justify imperialism with the concept of the white man’s burden to advance the supposedly lower races using â€Å"the mutually sustaining regimes of science and empire.† (Comaroff, 306) Comaroff’s essay demonstrates how the meaning we attach to the body contributes how we see it. In fact, meaning plays an important role in both bodily perceptio n and medicine as a whole. Consider, for example, the research elucidated by Daniel Moerman on a cultural phenomenon he defines as â€Å"the physiological or psychological effects of meaning in the treatment of illness†, or as he calls it, â€Å"the meaning response† (Moerman, 77). With examples of surgical placebos such as transmyocardial revascularization,Show MoreRelatedMedical Antropology Essay889 Words   |  4 PagesMedical anthropology addresses the symbolic, narrative, and ethical dimension of healing, medicine and medical technology in many ways. 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