Master
2023/2024
Introduction to Medical Anthropology in Development
Type:
Compulsory course (Population and Development)
Area of studies:
Public Administration
Delivered by:
Department of Sociology
Where:
Faculty of Social Sciences
When:
2 year, 2 module
Mode of studies:
offline
Open to:
everyone
Instructors:
Ilya Ermolin
Master’s programme:
Population and Development
Language:
English
ECTS credits:
3
Contact hours:
26
Course Syllabus
Abstract
The course will introduce a broad range of medical anthropology topics, theoretical approaches and research techniques by examining case studies. Initially I will introduce the frameworks of general anthropology for those for whom anthropology is well unknown discipline. We will use the concepts of culture, risk and resilience as starting points for follow-up discussion in which we will investigate how cultural forces shape issues of health, illness, pandemic and medicine, how the production of specific knowledge shapes perception of health and illness as individual experience through the language and meaning. We will also discuss the field-based methods used by medical anthropologists – and ethnographers in particular – to study illness experience and medical practice in Russia and other countries. Examples of questions include: What is health in anthropology? What are the types of resilience highlighted in medical anthropology (epidemiology), and what is the difference between those types? How are risk and resilience connected to health (including mental health) and disease and how can this connection be studied in the field? How do local cultural practices shape aspects of illness, sex and death? Do you think risks carried challenges that were not appropriately taken into account by the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP)? Topics to be covered in the course:•Introduction to Medical Anthropology •Medical Anthropology or Epidemiology?•The dilemmas of Сulture and Health•Cognitive Medical Anthropology•Risk, vulnerability, and resilience as pivotal conceptual frameworks •Methods needed to study the link between culture and healthA particular time will be devoted to studying the methods of field study and further concepts of data analysis. We will pay attention to the following methods: free-listing, pile-sorting, cultural consensus analysis, participant observation, ethnographic interviews. Separately we will take Q-sort methodology during the lecture. The methods are supposed to be used while conducting and then writing the research analytical note.
Learning Objectives
- • To provide conceptual and analytical tools for a comprehensive understanding of health, illness and healing.
- • To apply concepts to the analysis of health issues worldwide.
- • Gain skills in methodology on how to deal with culturally based health practices
Expected Learning Outcomes
- The students gain skills to apply conceptual tools to work with different health-related issues.
- • The students acquire the capacity to develop and apply the methods from the cognitive anthropology and ethnography how this applies to health-related issues.
- The students gain knowledge on how to set out arguments and viewpoints effectively and coherently, orally and in writing.
- The students acquire the capacity to work with specific cases (to make a choice of their own).
Course Contents
- Orientation to the course – clarifying expectations.
- Theoretical approaches in medical anthropology
- Сulture and Health: disease v illness, health v healing: difference in views between medical anthropology and epidemiology
- Cognitive Medical Anthropology
- Risk, vulnerability, and resilience
- Disease, health, and inequality
Assessment Elements
- Group presentation1. For each seminar students complete home assignments – respond to theoretical and empirical readings and prepare group presentations. In a group presentation, all members contribute equally, and each contribution builds on the previous one. At the beginning of the course, students split into four working groups and choose the specific area of interest they’d like to study during the course. The lecturer should be informed about the student’s desire to make a presentation in advance before the seminar starts. Presentations presented in class and discussed appropriately are considered the most important in class participation.
- Hometask assignmentEach student should do exercises individually. Students are suggested to carry out exercises based on quantitative methods of cognitive medical anthropology (freelisting and pilesorting) and qualitative methods of participant observation, interviews and informal conversation, etc.
- Final task: 1. Final essay; 2. Oral presentationRequirements to final task, which include the essay and its presentation during the exam session. 1. Final essay Size: not exceed 20 000 printed signs (including spaces) Essay comprises two parts: A. Problem statement and review of discussions over chosen topic. Four is the minimal size of cited texts, it is desirable to include not only classic texts, but the works that have recently been published. B. A summary of the design of the essay (including object, subject, overall goal, objectives, theoretical approach, method (s)) and findings of the research. Research covered by the course can be carried out using various methods approved by the instructor. Field data should meet the minimum requirement of the course (you may choose one of the methods, or to combine a few of them): - freelisting, pilesorting and long interviews (no less than 40 respondents of different age and gender per group, at least five long interviews per group should be conducted to add the pilesorting data) - cultural consensus analysis (could also be performed as a bonus task) - semi-structured or unstructured interviews (no less than five per group) - Short-lasting observation (at least one hour a day for three days in row, different members of group must conduct the observation in different places then discussing the results) Dear colleagues, it is a minimal task therefore if somebody of you wants to do more, you are welcome. The use of other methods and the increase in the size of paper are to be discussed.
Interim Assessment
- 2023/2024 2nd module0.4 * Final task: 1. Final essay; 2. Oral presentation + 0.4 * Group presentation + 0.2 * Hometask assignment
