Illness and Healing

• • Defining illness and disease, the normal and the abnormal
  • Placebos and cultural meaning
  • Ethics and drug trials
  • Illness narratives
  • Biomedicine and shamanism
  • The culture of biomedicine
  • Health and indigenous Australia
  • Cross-cultural perspectives on madness
  • Imaging technologies and reproductive health
  • Gender and the body: anorexia and menstruation
  • Pathologies of power and the organ trade
  • Pharmaceuticals and ADHD

Equivalent subjects

You cannot enrol in this subject if you have successfully completed any of the following subject(s) because they are considered academically equivalent:

• MAQ-ANT202
• MAQ-ANTX202-Illness and Healing

Special requirements

• OtherDetails -

  Students who have an Academic Standing of Suspension or Exclusion under Macquarie University's Academic Progression Policy are not permitted to enrol in OUA units offered by Macquarie University. Students with an Academic Standing of Suspension or Exclusion who have enrolled in units through OUA will be withdrawn.

This subject was previously known as ANTX202 Culture and Healing and ANTX202 Illness and Healing.

The subject offers an introduction to medical anthropology and cross cultural beliefs relating to illness and healing. Different notions about disease causality are examined, as well as the way in which disease has social as well as biological origins. Healing practices, including Western biomedicine, are treated as being inevitably predicated on cultural systems of understanding. Specific topics include the abnormal, culture bound syndromes, body techniques, witchcraft, shamanism, placebos and the 'meaning effect', discipline, social suffering, illness narratives, the relationship between illness and social experience, clinical encounters and changing concepts of mental health.

• Essay (40%)
• Non-Invigilated Exam (40%)
• Review (10%)
• Tutorial topics (10%)

Current study term (26 Jul 20 to 27 Nov 20)