Political economy and critical medical anthropology Sample Clauses

Political economy and critical medical anthropology. Interpretive approaches to exploring illness experiences have been critiqued for not addressing questions of why certain people fall ill in a particular way at a particular time (▇▇▇▇▇ and ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ 2010; Farmer 1997; 1999). According to political economy and critical medical anthropology approaches, asking such “why” questions is essential to avoid victim-blaming in relation to disease: “Many medical anthropologists have incorrectly attributed regional disparities in health to local sociocultural differences without examining the influence of global political-economic inequality on the distribution of disease” (▇▇▇▇▇ and ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ 2010:11). During the development of critical medical anthropology, ▇▇▇▇▇▇ (1989) argued that when biocultural anthropologists considered social forces in their analysis, they were assigned to the “environment,” ultimately serving to reify and legitimize these forces. In contrast, political economy approaches attend closely and critically to historical, political, and socioeconomic forces that shape vulnerability to disease (▇▇▇▇ 1996; ▇▇▇▇▇▇ 1997; ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇, et al. 1993; Singer 1989; ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ 1984). Anthropology is ideally situated to understand and contribute to addressing the power dynamics that constrain health-related behaviors and ultimately shape vulnerability (Farmer 1999; ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ and ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ 2014; Singer 1998). Writing in the context of his ethnographic work on AIDS and tuberculosis in Haiti, as well as drawing on his work as a physician, ▇▇▇▇ ▇▇▇▇▇▇ argued that anthropologists and others have tended to blame poor individuals for their woes: To foreign eyes, the Haitian story has become a confused skein of tragedies, most of them seen as local. Poverty, crime, accidents, disease, death—and more often than not their causes—are also seen as problems locally derived. The transnational tale of slavery and debt and turmoil is lost in the vivid poverty, the understanding of which seems to defeat the analyses of journalists and even many anthropologists, focused as we are on the ethnographically visible—what is there in front of us (Farmer 2004:305). In response, he advanced the concept of structural violence:1 “Structural violence is violence exerted systematically […] In short, the concept of structural violence is intended to inform the study of the social machinery of oppression” (Farmer 2004:307). The concept of structural violence captures the globally and historically-situated social, economic, and political forces that ...