Deck 14: How Is Anthropology Applied in the Field of Medicine

Question 1

Researchers who consider the connection between aspects of culture, socioeconomic conditions, politics, and human health would be considered to be in what subfield of anthropology?

A) Biological anthropology.
B) Archaeology.
C) Medical anthropology.
D) Postmodern anthropology.
E) Paleodemography.

Answer 1

C

Question 2

Which of the following statements is true concerning illness?

A) Illness and disease cannot be distinguished without diagnostic tests.
B) Illness is a suffering person's feeling of not being normal and healthy.
C) Illness is an objectively measurable pathological condition of the body.
D) Illness offers a way for medical anthropologists to contrast culture-bound syndromes and biomedical disease.
E) Illness is a culturally specific form of a sickness.

Answer 2

B

Question 3

Based on the explanations provided in the textbook, one way we might distinguish between the understanding of medical anthropologists regarding "disease" and "illness" is to say

A) That they are each culturally arbitrary terms without precise meaning.
B) That whereas disease is universal, illness applies only to particular cultural groups.
C) That disease refers to biological processes recognized and described within biomedicine, whereas illness is described as an individual's own interpretation of his or her suffering.
D) That disease refers to more serious forms of illness that needs to be treated by scientific medicine.
E) That both terms can be replaced by use of the term "sickness," which is culturally relative.

Answer 3

C

Question 4

Which of the following statements best describes culture-bound syndromes as described in the text?

A) They are essentially indistinguishable from endemic disease.
B) They are found only in small-scale societies.
C) They are unique to particular cultural groups.
D) All of the above.
E) None of the above.

Question 5

When investigating an apparent outbreak of disease in a population, an epidemiologist could be expected to focus on

A) How to cure the specific disease.
B) How to statistically model characteristics of a population such as age and gender.
C) The frequency and geographic distribution of the disease in this population.
D) How the disease went from being endemic to epidemic.
E) All of the above.

Question 6

As scientific disciplines, epidemiology and demography have both developed through collection of information in large scale, state-level societies. Given this fact,

A) Epidemiological studies tend to focus on epidemic diseases that spread quickly in settled societies.
B) Ethnographers working in small, isolated societies are better equipped to study the presence of endemic disease.
C) Cultural anthropologists working in small-scale, isolated communities would need to modify epidemiological approaches in ways that better suit that research setting.
D) Many medical anthropologists have promoted the concept of syndemic disease to combine the conditions of both large- and small-scale societies in their analyses.
E) Paleodemographers are unable to employ modern epidemiological techniques.

Question 7

Diseases that are always present in a population-although at a usually low frequency-are classified as being of what pattern?

A) Epidemic.
B) Endemic.
C) Pandemic.
D) Syndemic.
E) Somatic.

Question 8

From the perspective of a critical medical anthropology, the relationship among substance abuse, violence, and AIDS might be characterized as a/an

A) Somatization of disease.
B) Maladaptation.
C) Syndemic.
D) Epidemic.
E) Biosociality.

Question 9

What is the term used by medical anthropologists to refer to social identities that are based on a shared medical diagnosis?

A) Embodied inequality.
B) Social exclusive identity.
C) Biological citizenship.
D) Biosociality.
E) Subjectivity.

Question 10

Which of the following could be characterized as an illustration of a process of biocultural adaptation?

A) The inability to digest milk after reaching adulthood.
B) Someone shifting from an integrated, self-contained self to a divided self when using virtual reality games.
C) A person who expresses his or her social, political, or economic suffering through bodily illnesses.
D) Changes in gene frequency in a population that result from the process of natural selection influenced by long-term changes in patterns of human behavior acting on genes that affect human health.
E) An adjustment by a group of organisms that undermines their ability to cope with environmental changes.

Question 11

A biocultural adaptation can best be understood as

A) Modifications to the physiology of individual human organisms produced by natural selection that better adjusts them to their environment.
B) A culturally mediated human adaption to the environment.
C) A form of adaptation that relies on processes different from natural selection.
D) Having a tendency to undermine the ability of human groups to cope with environmental challenges.
E) Disruptive to stable ways of life.

Question 12

Mary feels as though she really is not sure who she is. In some situations, she is an excellent, serious student who works hard and feels respected for her knowledge. In other situations, she feels like a girl trying to win her parents' approval. In her religious practice, she is a leader who feels a powerful sense of emotional release and loss of control. At work, she is meek and follows orders. In terms of postmodern social theory, she would be said to exhibit

A) Psychosis.
B) A decentered self.
C) A confused personality.
D) An integrated self.
E) None of the above.

Question 13

As defined in the text, what is the felt interior experience of the person that includes his or her positions in a field or relational power?

A) Socialization.
B) Personality.
C) The self.
D) Subjectivity.
E) Objectivity.

Question 14

Structural violence results from

A) Residual damage when buildings, bridges, or other similar structures collapse.
B) The way that political and economic forces structure risk for suffering within a population.
C) Military operations that are the result of civil war and internal unrest.
D) Adjustments that undermine the ability to cope with environmental changes.
E) Actions by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Question 15

To be very poor and powerless in Haiti is to increase the likelihood that one will suffer

A) Disease.
B) Hunger.
C) Suffering.
D) Violence.
E) All of the above.

Question 16

In the text, Paul Farmer makes the point that among the very poor and powerless people with whom he works, the AIDS epidemic

A) Is the result of a lifestyle choice.
B) Could be prevented by using condoms.
C) Is shaped by social and economic forces.
D) Is spread by the military.
E) Is the result of maladaptive behavioral choices.

Question 17

Severe suffering caused by forces and agents beyond individual control is called

A) Stress.
B) Trauma.
C) Torture.
D) Structural context.
E) Somatization.

Question 18

Which of the following statements is UNTRUE regarding biomedicine?

A) Its practitioners attempt to explain why people get sick.
B) Many of those who accept this explanatory model to sickness and health hold that disease is the result of material entities within human bodies.
C) Its practitioners must be willing to accept nonmaterial causes for disease agents that cannot be identified in a laboratory.
D) The approach entails an understanding of the individual human organism as a bounded, autonomous self.
E) Therapy for disease is targeted inside individuals.

Question 19

Which term refers to an alternative system of health-related beliefs, knowledge, and practices within a local cultural group?

A) An integrated science.
B) A biocultural model.
C) An ethnomedical system.
D) A biomedical paradigm.
E) None of the above.

Question 20

Seen from the perspective of critical medical anthropology, many forms of suffering can be directly connected to

A) Inequality in the structural features of society.
B) Mental illness.
C) Illogical ethnomedical practices.
D) The rise of decentered selves.
E) Illness narratives.

Question 21

In research conducted by the anthropologist Jessica Gregg in Brazil among poor women diagnosed with cervical cancer, how was she able to explain why these women regularly blamed their cancer on their own sexual misconduct?

A) Biomedical practitioners were accustomed to blaming the victim.
B) Poor women diagnosed with cervical cancer had come to rely on charity for treatment.
C) The treatment brought on negative side effects, including pain in connection with intercourse.
D) Men in Brazil are defined in terms of their sexual behavior.
E) The women used stigmatizing metaphors to organize their illness narratives.

Question 22

Which of the following does NOT follow from having a focus on subjectivity in anthropological analysis?

A) Acknowledgment of the fact that individuals are agents of their own actions.
B) Studies that emphasize how individuals are largely self-contained.
C) Recognition that individual action is limited by forms of inequality in different societies.
D) An understanding that individuals must occupy various subject positions in a society.
E) A view that unpredictable events can produce trauma that shapes the experience of people.

Question 23

As seen in the study by Guar and Patniak conducted among the Korwa of central India, social, political, and economic suffering were experienced as bodily suffering in what is called

A) "Sukh" in the local language.
B) Experiential health.
C) Somatization.
D) Displacement.
E) Liminality.

Question 24

Charles Leslie employed the term "cosmopolitan medicine" to

A) Emphasize that the practice of medicine is something found primarily in urban areas.
B) Indicate that non-Western medical beliefs and practices are best understood as cultural systems.
C) Suggest that biomedical approaches were one of a number of possible alternatives available to many people in multicultural societies.
D) Contrast modern medical training from traditional, ethnomedical approaches.
E) All of the above.

Question 25

Which of the following would NOT work well to describe the physical toll that inequality becomes physically integrated within peoples' bodies?

A) The result of chronic individual stress.
B) The effect of weak or absent social networks.
C) Embodied inequality.
D) An expression of how a cyborg identity is increasingly a part of everyday life.
E) An outcome that can be traced to the inequitable distribution of social and material resources.

Question 26

As seen in research by Ginsberg and Rapp, "stratified reproduction" occurs when

A) Descent is traditionally traced through males and thus states moves through lineages of related men.
B) Persons in favored social classes are supported in their reproductive efforts, whereas those in marginalized strata are discouraged.
C) Traditional sources of livelihood and social organization are undermined by neoliberal capitalism.
D) Parents choose assisted reproduction to elevate their standing in the social strata.
E) All of the above.

Question 27

When AIDS patients in Brazil organized politically to protest the cost of drugs that effectively deprived the poor of access to effective therapy for their condition,

A) They exhibited a social identity based on shared medical diagnosis.
B) They demanded that the state acknowledge that health was a human right.
C) They asserted their biological legitimacy.
D) They made the government respond to their citizen's health needs.
E) All of the above.

Question 28

Medical anthropology should be understood as a biocultural field because

A) Of its appreciation for structural violence.
B) It recognizes that the poor are far more likely to suffer a heavy burden of disease.
C) Of a general insistence of medical pluralism.
D) It places human sickness and health in a broad evolutionary context.
E) None of the above.

Question 29

Although biomedicine has held that certain experiences can be taken as a sign of mental disturbance,

A) The case of evangelical Christians suggests how "hearing voices" can be good for people.
B) Believing in the ability of nonmaterial objects to penetrate the body is a clear indicator of emerging psychosis.
C) The experience of virtual reality gamers demonstrates that a divided self need not indicate a psychotic condition.
D) Both a and c
E) None of the above.

Question 30

We would expect to find that people seeking medical care would develop hierarchies of resort when

A) Living in small-scale, traditional societies.
B) Diagnosed with a chronic condition.
C) Suffering from infertility.
D) Under conditions of medical pluralism.
E) They are the victims of structural violence.

Question 31

Use of the term "suffering" by many medical anthropologists to describe forms of distress experienced by individuals suggests

A) That they believe that biomedical understandings of health and disease should not be used.
B) That they believe that biomedical understandings of health and disease are not universal.
C) That without an understanding of culture-bound syndromes, it is not possible to gain insight into a person's illness.
D) A person's coping strategies can be maladaptive.
E) All of the above.

Question 32

Which of the following are illustrations of how the administration of biomedically derived therapies, such as ARV therapy, may be affected by different cultural and political settings?

A) In some settings, one's status with regard to infectious diseases such as HIV can lead to social ostracism.
B) Patients may not be willing to join self-help groups unless the groups are seen to offer tangible material benefits.
C) Patients in some cultural settings may not separate their own well-being from that of their families.
D) Patient organizing, such as that seen in the Brazilian case, may be undermined in other places because of government prohibitions on grassroots organizing.
E) All of the above.

Question 33

Based on the discussion in the textbook, which of the following is NOT a likely standpoint of those who approach human health through what is referred to as "interpretive medical anthropology?"

A) Culture mediates human experiences.
B) An understanding that medical systems are also symbolic systems.
C) The assertion that the medical beliefs and practices of different people are better understood if placed within their particular cultural context.
D) Illness narratives provide a way of exploring the symbolic dimensions of human suffering.
E) Disease is a result of culturally mediated maladaptations.

Question 34

As understood by some epidemiologists and medical anthropologists, "embodied inequality" entails all of the following EXCEPT

A) The product of processes of social exclusion acting on a neglected body.
B) The physical toll that inequality takes on some people.
C) Weak or absent social networks.
D) The nonbiomedical beliefs and practices of individual sufferers.
E) None of the above.

Question 35

Medical anthropologists have used the term "sickness" to refer to

A) Forms of physical, mental, or emotional distress experienced by individuals who may or may not subscribe to biomedical understandings of disease.
B) Classifications of physical, mental, and emotional distress as recognized by members of a particular cultural community.
C) A suffering person's own understanding of his or her physical, mental, or emotional distress.
D) Both b and c
E) None of the above.

Question 36

Which of the following concepts would likely NOT be used by medical anthropologists like Paul Farmer to explain why some persons who, for example, may have descended from enslaved Africans are more likely to suffer from illness?

A) Structural violence.
B) Embodied inequality.
C) Social exclusion.
D) Trauma.
E) Biosociality.

Question 37

Based on the study conducted by João Biehl among those living with AIDS in the Brazilian city of Salvador de Bahia, the pharmaceuticalization of public health may be understood to be at least in part a result of

A) The demands of patient groups for high-cost medicines.
B) The fact that many patient groups receive support from the pharmaceutical industry.
C) Agreements made by governments to supply drugs such as ARVs to all citizens free of charge.
D) The adoption of neoliberal economic policies, which may lead to cuts in funding to other elements of the health-care infrastructure.
E) All of the above.

Question 38

The primary lesson to be learned from the example provided in the text regarding lactose intolerance is that

A) South Asians become sick when they try to consume powdered milk.
B) Adults who are able to absorb lactose from milk effectively appear to be genetically related to human populations with a history of dairying.
C) Most human infants are able to absorb lactose.
D) Many North Americans and Europeans consume milk well into adulthood.
E) Adults without lactase can develop serious intestinal upset after consuming fresh milk.

Question 39

To insist that public health officials and others embrace the concept of syndemic disease is consistent with the understanding that

A) Simultaneous infection by more than one pathogen can lead to more complex health conditions.
B) Interventions directed at only one component of interacting diseases and behaviors are inadequate.
C) The poor nutrition, social instability, and violence experienced by those targeted by interventions exacerbate the combined effects of disease.
D) Prevention efforts must address complex entanglements characteristic of syndemic conditions.
E) All of the above.

Question 40

If the condition known as sickle cell anemia involves a mutant variant of a gene that can be fatal, why does it have a frequency as high as 20 percent in the gene pool of certain populations?

A) It is theorized that in areas where the malarial parasite is endemic, the advent of agricultural practices leads to a change in natural selection pressures acting on the genetic traits of these populations.
B) People bitten by an infected mosquito have a better chance of resisting the malarial parasite if they carry one copy of the mutant variant in addition to the normal hemoglobin variant.
C) Because the combined effects on a population of more than one disease can be exacerbated by a variety of stressful environmental factors.
D) Both a and b
E) None of the above.

Question 41

How do anthropologists use the term suffering and why do they use it?

Question 42

How is sickle cell anemia a biocultural adaptation?

Question 43

What is trauma? Using case material from this chapter, explain why this phenomenon is important for anthropologists to understand.

Question 44

What is structural violence? Explain how the Haitian case studies in the text are examples of structural violence.

Question 45

Discuss the effects of social suffering and trauma on both individuals and groups. How have anthropologists begun to study these issues?

Question 46

How does Spangler's case study of giving birth in Tanzania illustrate social exclusion and structural violence?

Question 47

Define the terms biosociality and biological citizenship. How do anthropologists use these concepts to analyze the history of HIV/AIDS in Brazil?