1. ANTH/HSERV 475 Perspectives in Medical Anthropology
Week 4: Wed, 10/20/2010
University of Washington
Alejandro Cerón
Office: Denny Hall 417
Office hours: Wed 11 am -13 pm

2. Outline Today’s Goals: Oral presentations Uses of culture
Link notions of culture and modernity to Med Anth
Oral presentations
Uses of culture
Modernity, modernization
Traditional vrs modern

3. Delta Amacuro, Venezuela
Tucupita
Rural areas, Orinoco river delta

4. Delta Amacuro Indígenas, 2010
Tucupita residents, political campaign 2010

5. Culture (Merriam-Webster)
cultivation, tillage , refinement
the act of developing the intellectual and moral faculties especially by education
expert care and training <beauty culture>
enlightenment and excellence of taste acquired by intellectual and aesthetic education

6. Culture (Merriam-Webster)
a. the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations
b : the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group; also : the characteristic features of everyday existence (as diversions or a way of life} shared by people in a place or time <popular culture> <southern culture>
c : the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution or organization <a corporate culture focused on the bottom line>
d : the set of values, conventions, or social practices associated with a particular field, activity, or societal characteristic <studying the effect of computers on print culture> <changing the culture of materialism will take time — Peggy O'Mara>

7. Culture (Havilland)
Abstract values, beliefs, and perceptions of the world that lie behind people’s behavior, and which are reflected in their behavior.
These are shared by members of a society, and when acted upon, they produce behavior considered acceptable within that society.
Cultures are learned, largely through the medium of language, rather than inherited biologically, and the parts of a culture function as an integrated whole
(Contrast with Williams, Geertz and Biehl et al)

8. Culture is expressed at least at three levels:
Conscious, technical level. Words and symbols play a prominent role
Screened-off, private level. Revealed to a select few and denied to outsiders.
Underlying, out-of-awareness, implicit level.

9. “Clash of cultures” Briggs Chapter 9 Further
“Hebu versus vibrio” (p. 211)
“The division between the ‘two cultures’ of Delta Amacuro…” (p. 222)
Further
“cultures of no culture”
“’billiard ball’ model of culture”
Personality versus culture
The Vaccine War (film from week 2)
Anti-vaccination movement versus public health establishment?

10. Rumors
Briggs Chapter 10
“conspiracy theories centrally involve a theory of power and they tell how an individual or group seized power illicitly” (p. 252)
Rumors as a kind of “somatization” of pathology in the body politic.
Feldman-Savelsberg et al (from week 2)
Rumors vaccination Cameroon

11. Rumors Feldman-Savelsberg et al
Rumor: a specific proposition for belief, passed along from person to person without secure standards of evidence
A form of individual and collective information-seeking when a formal information gap exists (incomplete information or mistrust of official sources)
Emerge in atmosphere of uncertainty and credulity.
Ambiguity and importance are essential elements
Rumor also emerges to explain relationships between groups of unequal political, economic, or social power.

12. Statistical imagination
Chapter 11.
Statistical imagination (p. 265)
Illusion of decontextualization (p. 266)
“Epidemiologists would have us believe that medical statistics are politically neutral reflections of disease distribution because they use scientific, standardized procedures and case definitions…” (p. 266)
Culture of no culture

13. Uses of culture
“Among the findings, it stands out that indigenous women are – both for hospital and non-hospital deaths – the most vulnerable group. In Guatemala, the indigenous population is 48% of the total population, and lives in rural areas or marginal areas of the major cities; in general the indigenous population is characterized by extreme poverty and low levels of education, which are factors that, in combination with other disadvantageous cultural aspects of indigenous people, are limitations for access to health care facilities, all of which make them a high risk group. Regardless of the actions undertaken to improve these women’s health, this group remains behaving as the one with the highest risk.
Reducing maternal mortality in this group is a goal with a high level of difficulty in countries like Guatemala, where cultural aspects usually are important barriers to overcome”.
Tzul Ana Marina, Kestler Edgar, Hernández-Prado Bernardo, Hernández-Girón Carlos (2006). Mortalidad materna en Guatemala: diferencias entre muerte hospitalaria y no hospitalaria. Salud pública de México 48(3):

14. Let’s think about the link between culture and modernity; traditional and modern (link)