The Numerous Advantages of Medical Anthropology - Research Paper Example

Anthropology Questions Question Cultural ity is the accumulation of public trust that necessitates the relative autonomy or progressive granting and ability to self-regulate basing on the demonstration of competency and legitimacy by a professional set. Once achieved, it allows medical practitioners, via its abstract body knowledge to describe its own professional truth. In this context, medical anthropologists decide on what is wrong or right and the public agrees with the laid down rules. The uniqueness of cultural authority is that it can have authority without necessarily exercising it. In contrast, social authority is the capacity to command individuals. However, the two basic features of cultural authority, legitimacy, and competency must be attained collectively as one group (Joralemon 18) Whilst people may acquire confined reputation, a profession’s aggregate conveys significant trust warrant and authority. Legitimacy is attained by competent advance of national health. For example, health professionals can provide credible data, recommend and validate medical claims, and should be leaders and be honest always. Social authority is the most suitable in western Biomedicine since most of the communities are driven by superiority complex and a command can work well for them. Question 2 Cultural competence is referred to as a set of harmonious behaviors, policies, and attitudes that merge in an agency, among professionals, or system and enable that system, professions, or that agency to work efficiently in cross-cultural circumstances. Culture in this context is used with a reason that it applies the incorporated pattern of human behavior inclusive of communications, customs, values, thoughts, actions, and institutions of an ethnic, racial, social, or religious group. Competence is a word used here as it implies having the ability to function effectively (Bae 47). In terms of operations, Joralemon defines cultural competence as the combination and transformation of knowledge concerning groups of people and individuals into specific policies, standards, attitudes, and practices used in suitable cultural settings to improve on the quality of services, thus producing better results. Medical anthropologists apply the concept of cultural competence by incorporating dialogue at individual levels, since individuals are the ones who create and endorse culture, who encounter diseases and illness, and who can clarify the variation within what we comprehend as cultures. Dialogue recognizes that culture is not necessarily language, ethnicity, and common tradition as existing discourse suggest, rather that these elements join with political and socioeconomic stratifications to affect individual experiences. Medical anthropologists assume that culture labels the entirety of an individual’s experience of illnesses and continues to show patients how important cultural competency is in giving the most effective and comprehensive medical care for all patients. However, the greatest challenge in their work is that, cultural competence is considered as a technical skill, which can be merely acquired or a matter that can be simply handled by a translator. This challenge is rooted from how medicine defines culture, which contrasts with its present use in anthropology. Culture is regularly made identical with nationality, language, and ethnicity. For example, cultural competence has do’s ad don’ts, which define how to take care of a patient from a specific ethnic background. In a medical setting, cultural competence is an important concept as it equalizes power dynamics in health care that lead to those with limited power, for example those in cultural, linguistic, ethnic, or economic minority to receive a lower quality care. It also helps health providers not to believe that they have a superior and correct value system. For example, some cultures believe that when death is talked about, it accelerates life loss, yet most western health care providers view this as a wrong belief (Joralemon, 57). Question 3 Bioethics play a vital role in medical anthropology such that, it addresses many of the topics and issues that concern healthcare and medicine. For example, bioethics are conscious of the gap between idealized, abstract models of conversant approval and the messy, deficient communication process particularly in research contexts and clinical settings. It is also concerned with how medical routines can take priority over the concerns of defenseless humans. It thus addresses the medicalization of personal experiences and the objectification and depersonalization of particular persons. Bioethics explores the expansion of illness; categorize medicalization processes, and the use of marketing strategies in “selling sickness.” Additionally, bioethics involves normative analysis and gives an attempt of providing guidance to medical anthropologists in the case of policy or commentary development. On the other hand, competent task in bioethics is concerned with understanding and interpreting social worlds and any anthropological research. Bioethics provided by medical anthropology should be followed since patients can come to disagreements with the recommendations provided by health care practitioners, which to them may seem to be at the best of the patient’s interest (Joralemon 88). For example, when a patient disregards a treatment due to cultural or religious views, or if he requests for an unnecessary treatment such as cosmetic surgery or hypochondria, the practitioner should try and balance the patient’s desires for medical needless potential risks over his or her well-versed autonomy in the matter. In such a case, a doctor may prefer the patient’s autonomy since ignoring the will of the patient might harm the professional doctor-patient relationship. Question 4 The concept of self definition varies from one culture to the other, and so this differentiates the way people engage in any type of self activities, such as self expression in that their psychological impacts do differ. The particular nature of the way people express themselves and how various forms of expression influence people tend to be distinct at a higher level determined by the assumptions on the self and it relates to a certain social cultural context. The self can be defined by considering self expression by use of words, actions, or choices. The concept of self on biotechnology has also been discussed by Joralemon when he gives specific views using examples such as the stem cell debates and baby pictures. Rousseau, believed to be the father of social contract stated that man is in his purest self when he is free of societal believes and rules. In this cultural tradition, a human being was meant to exist in this most natural condition. Nature exemplified the strength of an individual, his integrity, and freedom (Joralemon 121). Rousseau affirmed that the society corrupted this inborn freewill and goodness of persons and oppressed their self. By being true and focusing on the self in the visage of societal pressures, people can move closer to the peaceful state of nature. Individuals strive to achieve freedom and happiness through self-reliance and self-integrity, yet self expression empowers one self. The idea of self is defined distinctively across cultures. For example, in individualist cultures, inclusive of US, the most popular sight of the self is the autonomous self that defines an individual as a unique entity, bounded and essentially separate from the social surrounding. Thus, the core principles of self are those from within him, like values, thoughts, feelings, preferences, and beliefs. In more general cultural contexts, for example East Asia, the most shared view of self has always been independent self, which defines a person as a basically relational entity, essentially influenced and connected to its social surroundings. Social relationships defined the self in such cultures. Therefore, the basic objects of a person’s behaviors are not sought internally, but rather externally. Self expression permits people to differentiate themselves from others, reflect personal needs and beliefs, and validate personal self-concepts. Anthropology aims at better understanding and enhancing knowledge of the self through studying its manifestations in actions. Individuals try to enhance and reflect a self image, self-empowerment, and autonomy in their choices. They also define self through preferences for opinions and objects. Choice, in personalized cultures replicates the inner self voice where an object issues with a body (Joralemon 125). Medical anthropologists contribute to concepts of self in debates on certain biotechnologies by situating biotechnology in the working world for it to develop. They can stripe back its veil of objectivity to disclose the play of vested backgrounds in which they find application. Most importantly, they can contribute by exposing the self views that we are at the mercy of biotechnologies, which are beyond control (Joralemon 125). For example, medical anthropologies can make individuals understand the human dynamics responsible for the research that initiates medical anthropologies and best grasp the interplay between technicians, patients, physicians, scientists, and commercial awareness that promote new procedures and machines so that they can comprehend how domesticated biotechnologies are. Question 5 Among the numerous advantages of medical anthropology according to Joralemon is the commitment of applying medical anthropology which in my opinion is the most important. Since we are at the time when global events related to health are continuing to unfold, medical anthropology should be applied and linked to expertise. To give a current example, several health events have taken place worldwide, which directly relate to medical anthropology. There has been a revival of widespread infectious disease in most parts of India, such as renewed discovery of a breast cancer gene, and attempts to create system-level health reforms in US. As we live in the 21st century, more application of medical anthropology in public health globally and nationally is important. For example, anthropologists are being involved in revisions and critique of key schemas for classifying and diagnosing health and how its functions, such as, Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, and international Classification of Disease, (DSM-IV, and ICD-10) respectively, which have big impacts on health policies and on people’s lives. Application of medical anthropology also helps health practitioners to remain committed to critiquing and examining issues related to values in medical practices and their predicament of situating biomedical enterprises in a broader context of modern society (Bae, 132). When people are committed to applying medical anthropology, more attention can be placed on cultural, political, ecological, and biological factors that contribute to issues like the spread of HIV/AIDS, especially among disadvantaged communities. Studies of such medical anthropology can help the non governmental and government agencies to formulate more efficient interventions. Works Cited Bae, Singer. Medical Anthropology and the World System: A Critical Perspective. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey. 1997. Print. Joralemon, Donald. Exploring medical anthropology. New York: Prentice Hall, 2010.Print. Read More