医学人类学

The modern development of clinical science, surgeries and pharmaceuticals has made biomedicine so pervasive that is hard to imagine a world without it. This course will offer a unique window into healing traditions around the globe that fall outside the orbit of modern medicine – contexts in which medicine also involves folk beliefs and ritual practices. Drawing from a wide range of case studies, we will look at healing traditions in different times and places, at the effectiveness of their treatments, and at the philosophies that grounds them. We will also engage with anthropological discussions on the subject. Significantly, these have moved away from the simplistic view of ritual healing as an outdated practice, recognizing it instead as a significant dimension of the treatment of illness that is still alive today. Tripartite in structure, the course begins by examining the scientific evidence and theories on the power of therapeutic rituals (otherwise called the ‘placebo effect’). We will look at what neuroscience, psychology and medical anthropology tell us about the effects of symbols and meanings on illness. Equipped with this knowledge, the second part of the course embarks on a grand tour of healing traditions around the globe. From Amazonia and Siberia to Laos and ancient Greece, it investigates the phenomena of shamanism, spirit possession, humoral medicine, and psychedelic medicine, reflecting on their potential efficacy and examining the social contexts in which these practices are embedded. The course ends by delving into anthropological theory. With detours into parapsychology and classic ethnographies of folk medicine, we will look at how medical anthropologists have tried to make sense of ‘apparently irrational beliefs’ in the history of the discipline. By appreciating the dazzling variety of ways in which humanity has fought against illness, the course aims to illustrate healing traditions in a refined comparative perspective, and to unravel the complex relationship between folk medicine and biomedical thinking.