Undergraduate Course: Anthropology of Health and Healing (SCAN10062)
Course Outline
| School | School of Social and Political Science |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 3 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course provides an advanced introduction to the anthropology of health, illness and healing. Students will be introduced to key theories and current debates at the interface of anthropology and medicine through a focus on cross-cultural approaches to illness, pain, healing, the body and care. We will explore how different ways of experiencing and knowing the body, including varied concepts of gender, sexuality, and the life course, can radically alter how people think about and engage with issues of health and healing. This course explores biomedicine as one among many ways of thinking through and constituting personhood, illness and the body. It deals with the challenges that arise when biomedical expertise meets other understandings of illness and suffering; the multiple kinds of care provided in institutional, public, religious and domestic settings; the relationship between curing and healing; and the ways in which people grapple with affliction and uncertainty through narrative, through relationships, and through action. Medical anthropology is not only narrowly concerned with suffering and sickness but examines the significance of wellbeing, health and medicine for all domains of social life. This course therefore explores the centrality of health and healing to social, political, and historical processes in general. |
| Course description |
Not entered
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | Visiting students should have at least 3 Anthropology courses at grade B or above (or be predicted to obtain this). We will only consider University/College level courses. |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2014/15, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: None |
| Course Start |
Semester 1 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Lecture Hours 11,
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 11,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
174 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
This course will be assessed by a combination of (i) a short essay that will serve as a formative feedback event (word-limit: 1500) and (ii) a long essay (word-limit: 3000). The short essay carries a weighting of 30% towards the final overall mark for the course as a whole, and the long essay carries a weighting of 70%. |
| Feedback |
Not entered |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- By the end of the course, students should be able to demonstrate knowledge that covers the key concepts, approaches and debates in medical anthropology. .
- They will have a critical understanding of different theoretical approaches in medical anthropology and how they have changed¿how medical anthropologists conduct empirical research
- They should be able to demonstrate a clear understanding of the following:
- How social understandings of the human body are formed and transformed by healing knowledge and practices.
- How "traditional healers" form their practices in a field of multiple healer-patient relations and why "modernity" has not made non- biomedical forms of healing disappear.
- Why healing performances have an effect on both individual patients and social collectivities.
- Why broader frames of political, economic, and historical analysis are immediately relevant for an understanding of body, illness, and healing.
- How the objectification of the body by medical knowledge can be seen as forms of disciplinary power and control.
- Why the distinction between objectively described "disease" and subjectively perceived "illness" has both strengths and weaknesses.
- How notions of well-being are related to cultural understandings of sickness.
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Keywords | medical anthropology body medicine culture |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Ms Lucy Lowe
Tel: (0131 6)51 5574
Email: Lucy.Lowe@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Lisa Kilcullen
Tel: (0131 6)51 5067
Email: L.Kilcullen@ed.ac.uk |
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