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Can there be a "cultural epidemiology"?
1Department of Anthropology, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, USA.
Medical Anthropology Quarterly
|January 8, 2000
Summary
Epidemiology and anthropology can be allies in studying population health. However, the concept of culture is often oversimplified in medical research, leading to the medicalization of social differences.
Area of Science:
- Social Medicine
- Epidemiology
- Medical Anthropology
Background:
- Historically, epidemiology and anthropology share common goals in understanding human populations.
- Interdisciplinary collaboration between these fields has been limited and faces challenges.
- Cancer epidemiology serves as a specific case study for examining these issues.
Purpose of the Study:
- To explore the potential for interdisciplinary research between epidemiology and anthropology.
- To critically analyze the application of the concept of culture within bioscience and institutional medicine.
- To investigate the consequences of reifying culture as "beliefs" in medical contexts.
Main Methods:
- Participant-observation for nearly two years in an epidemiology department.
- Qualitative analysis of the use of "culture" in a medical research setting.
- Case study focusing on cancer epidemiology in Catalonia, Spain.
Main Results:
- The concept of culture is often reified into "beliefs" within bioscience.
- This reification integrates culture into the naturalist epistemology of Western medicine.
- Culture is medicalized as "difference," frequently substituting for social class.
Conclusions:
- The interdisciplinary alliance between epidemiology and anthropology remains problematic.
- Bioscientific approaches risk oversimplifying and misrepresenting cultural factors in health.
- Medicalization of cultural "difference" can obscure the role of social class in disease patterns.