The Anthropology of Health and Healing

by Mari Womack

The Anthropology of Health and Healing provides the first holistic approach to the study of medical anthropology. Over the past two decades, medical anthropology has been the most rapidly growing subfield in anthropology, and a number of medial anthropology texts have been published, focusing primarily on public policy and health care delivery systems. Yet while Anthropologists have researched topics related to medical anthropology for over 100 years, here Womack thoroughly surveys this richly diverse field and provides an integrated approach that links together the biological, psychological, social, communicative, epidemiological, philosophical, historical, and developmental factors that shape health and healing.

Genres: Anthropology

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Andres · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this textbook for a Medical Anthropology class, and while it's full of interesting information it is a bit dry. The presentation of the facts can be puzzling or awkward at times and there are many missing or incorrect words (which really disrupts the flow of reading). It also suffers from a lack of coherence in that there are lots of stories and explanations but there's no real tying together of the disparate facts within chapters.

Sometimes I would read through something and either wonder why so much text was devoted to it or why so little, which may be more about what interests me but it happened quite a lot. Also, more than once the text seemed to be leading to a larger point only to have it abruptly end and switch topics, never to revisit it, leaving me in a kind of lurch.

I haven't read any other medical anthropology textbooks, and I don't know if I ever will, so I can't compare this to anything else except other textbooks in anthropology (to which it compares very differently). It has a "close to final draft" feel to it, so maybe in future editions it can be cleaned up and polished a bit more.

Interesting, learned a lot, but rough around the edges.

[Mills College Library]

306.461 W87212 2010