hiv/aids: Ethnomedical approach to anthropology
HIV and AIDS affect millions of people around the world. While some illnesses can be associated with a specific culture or region of the world, HIV does not discriminate, and has spread throughout the world for various reasons. How the disease is recognized, understood, and treated within these various cultures defines the ethnomedical approach to anthropology. Anthropologists studying HIV/AIDS from this approach take into consideration how culture has shaped the way people in different areas deal with diseases and what types of medicine they use to treat them. There are 6 different areas of research that anthropologists consider when using the ethnomedical approach, and these are:
1) ethnographic descriptions of healing practices, or how different healing practices are used in different areas of the world,
2) explanatory models of health and sickness, meaning how it is explained in different areas,
3) linguistic taxonomies of illness categories, or how the disease is talked about and seen in different societies,
4) health-seeking behaviors, meaning the different ways affected people go about seeking help,
5) the efficacy of healing systems, or how well these different systems work, and
6) comparisons of and interactions between ethnomedical systems.
Culture is defined as the “learned patterns of thought and behavior shared by a social group.” Understanding how culture affects the development and spread of HIV has helped many health professionals to become aware of the cultural boundaries associated with the disease. For example, in American culture, homosexual men are considered to be a very at risk group of contracting HIV, because it can be transmitted sexually, and many deem condoms unnecessary. The image above shows that men who have sex with men (MSM) are the most affected group in America.Testing men who engage in homosexual behavior for HIV has become a standard procedure among HIV specialist physicians in America. However, this isn’t the case in other areas of the world largely affected by HIV, such as Africa. As I discussed on the biological/ecological page, a large at risk group in this region is poor women, who because of the culture they live in have very few options for economic support and thus engage in unprotected sex for money, spreading the disease. Understanding these types of cultural differences can help medical professionals to figure out better ways to recognize and treat the disease.
Medical anthropologist Arthur Kleinman describes three intersected sectors of healthcare that deal with health issues in different ways. The popular sector of healthcare focuses on how people first recognize their illness and where they go to seek help or treatment, which is usually friends, family, support groups, or any type of help that is outside of professional medical help. The folk sector is between popular and professional sectors, because while people seek medical help, the healers are not professional doctors. In this sector, healers share cultural values with the society they live in, which can range from religious healing to secular healers. The professional sector includes organized, legally sanctioned health professionals, and is the most prominent in American culture when recognizing and treating HIV/AIDS. This disease is very complex, and people usually turn to professional doctors to treat them. With advances in biomedical treatments such as antiretroviral therapy, the professional sector is the most effective in treating HIV/AIDS. However, people also turn to the popular sector to find support and cope with the social and mental aspects of the disease.
An anthropological view of the body can also be useful to analyze HIV/AIDS from an ethnomedical approach. The three-body approach can help to explain how this disease is viewed and handled. The social body describes how the human body is viewed or represented in society. For example, in Western cultures, many medical professionals describe the body as a machine, and this is very true when dealing with serious diseases such as HIV/AIDS. Anyone who studies biology can agree that the way our body functions is described in a mechanical way. Even the phrase “body functions” shows us that this is true; everything the human body does has a purpose, or function, much like a machine. This is the main premise of biomedicine, as scientists first study how and why certain things occur biologically, and then create medicine to fix it when it isn’t functioning correctly. Antiretroviral therapy (ART), the most common treatment for HIV, does just this. HIV is a retrovirus, meaning that instead of its DNA being converted to RNA and then to proteins, its RNA is converted into DNA and then incorporated into the host DNA. ART blocks the newly synthesized DNA from incorporating itself into the host DNA. “Fixing” this problem shows how Western society and biomedicine view bodies as machines. The image below shows how the HIV virus works, and this is accepted by physicians and medical scientists universally.
1) ethnographic descriptions of healing practices, or how different healing practices are used in different areas of the world,
2) explanatory models of health and sickness, meaning how it is explained in different areas,
3) linguistic taxonomies of illness categories, or how the disease is talked about and seen in different societies,
4) health-seeking behaviors, meaning the different ways affected people go about seeking help,
5) the efficacy of healing systems, or how well these different systems work, and
6) comparisons of and interactions between ethnomedical systems.
Culture is defined as the “learned patterns of thought and behavior shared by a social group.” Understanding how culture affects the development and spread of HIV has helped many health professionals to become aware of the cultural boundaries associated with the disease. For example, in American culture, homosexual men are considered to be a very at risk group of contracting HIV, because it can be transmitted sexually, and many deem condoms unnecessary. The image above shows that men who have sex with men (MSM) are the most affected group in America.Testing men who engage in homosexual behavior for HIV has become a standard procedure among HIV specialist physicians in America. However, this isn’t the case in other areas of the world largely affected by HIV, such as Africa. As I discussed on the biological/ecological page, a large at risk group in this region is poor women, who because of the culture they live in have very few options for economic support and thus engage in unprotected sex for money, spreading the disease. Understanding these types of cultural differences can help medical professionals to figure out better ways to recognize and treat the disease.
Medical anthropologist Arthur Kleinman describes three intersected sectors of healthcare that deal with health issues in different ways. The popular sector of healthcare focuses on how people first recognize their illness and where they go to seek help or treatment, which is usually friends, family, support groups, or any type of help that is outside of professional medical help. The folk sector is between popular and professional sectors, because while people seek medical help, the healers are not professional doctors. In this sector, healers share cultural values with the society they live in, which can range from religious healing to secular healers. The professional sector includes organized, legally sanctioned health professionals, and is the most prominent in American culture when recognizing and treating HIV/AIDS. This disease is very complex, and people usually turn to professional doctors to treat them. With advances in biomedical treatments such as antiretroviral therapy, the professional sector is the most effective in treating HIV/AIDS. However, people also turn to the popular sector to find support and cope with the social and mental aspects of the disease.
An anthropological view of the body can also be useful to analyze HIV/AIDS from an ethnomedical approach. The three-body approach can help to explain how this disease is viewed and handled. The social body describes how the human body is viewed or represented in society. For example, in Western cultures, many medical professionals describe the body as a machine, and this is very true when dealing with serious diseases such as HIV/AIDS. Anyone who studies biology can agree that the way our body functions is described in a mechanical way. Even the phrase “body functions” shows us that this is true; everything the human body does has a purpose, or function, much like a machine. This is the main premise of biomedicine, as scientists first study how and why certain things occur biologically, and then create medicine to fix it when it isn’t functioning correctly. Antiretroviral therapy (ART), the most common treatment for HIV, does just this. HIV is a retrovirus, meaning that instead of its DNA being converted to RNA and then to proteins, its RNA is converted into DNA and then incorporated into the host DNA. ART blocks the newly synthesized DNA from incorporating itself into the host DNA. “Fixing” this problem shows how Western society and biomedicine view bodies as machines. The image below shows how the HIV virus works, and this is accepted by physicians and medical scientists universally.
Sources:
"HIV Among Gay, Bisexual and Other Men Who Have Sex With Men." TheBody.com. Accessed August 11, 2014. http://www.thebody.com/content/58618/hiv-among-gay-and-bisexual-men.html.
"Relevancy22: Contemporary Christianity: Post-Evangelic Topics and Theology." : UNICEF & Katy Perry. Accessed August 11, 2014.