Deck 16: What Is Applied Anthropology

Question 1

According to medical anthropologists, a state of physical, emotional and mental well-being, together with an absence of disease or disability that would interfere with such well being, is called

A) health
B) biomedicine
C) wellness
D) positivism

Answer 1

A

Question 2

Medical anthropologists refer to a suffering person's own understanding of his or her distress as

A) health
B) sickness
C) illness
D) possession

Answer 2

C

Question 3

Sicknesses (and the therapies to relieve them) that are unique to a particular cultural group are called

A) disease
B) suffering
C) illness
D) culture-bound syndromes

Answer 3

D

Question 4

The forms of physical, mental, or emotional distress experienced by individuals who may or may not subscribe to biomedical understandings of disease are called

A) sickness
B) suffering
C) illness
D) culture-bound syndromes

Question 5

Which of the following terms do medical anthropologists use to refer to Western forms of medical knowledge and practice based on biological science?

A) disease
B) biomedicine
C) culture-bound syndromes
D) therapy

Question 6

The specialty of anthropology that concerns itself with human health-the factors that contribute to disease or illness and the ways that human populations deal with disease or illness, is called

A) Biological anthropology
B) Physical anthropology
C) Medical anthropology
D) Positivist anthropology

Question 7

Human cultural practices influenced by natural selection on genes that affect human health are called

A) epidemics
B) syndemics
C) biocultural adaptations
D) genetic adaptations

Question 8

An adjustment by an organism (or group of organisms) that undermines the ability to cope with environmental challenges of various kinds is called

A) a maladaptation
B) an adaptation
C) a syndemic
D) an epidemic

Question 9

Which branch of medical anthropology emphasizes that cultural systems, including medical systems, are symbolic systems, and that people's ideas and practices about sickness and health need to be situated in their own symbolic cultural contexts?

A) demographic medical anthropology
B) evolutionary medical anthropology
C) interpretive medical anthropology
D) structural medical anthropology

Question 10

The coexistence of ethnomedical systems alongside cosmopolitan medicine is called

A) biomedicine
B) medical pluralism
C) the social division of medicine
D) interpretive medical anthropology

Question 11

Alternative medical systems based on practices of local sociocultural groups are called

A) biomedicine
B) superstition
C) ethnomedical systems
D) the social division of medicine

Question 12

The physical toll that inequality takes on people's bodies is called

A) structural violence
B) trauma
C) embodied inequality
D) maladaptation

Question 13

Which of the following terms describes social identities based on a shared medical diagnosis?

A) biosociality
B) biomedicine
C) illness narrative
D) trauma

Question 14

Political organization around a biosocial identity in order to demand health-related interventions by the state or other organizations is called

A) structural challenge
B) health activism
C) cosmopolitan medicine
D) trauma

Question 15

Government recognition of citizens' health needs and intervention on their behalf is called

A) health activism
B) structural recognition
C) cosmopolitan medicine
D) biological citizenship

Question 16

Which of the following is the term used by medical anthropologists to refer to the combined effects on a population of more than one disease, the effects of which are exacerbated by poor nutrition, social instability, violence, or other stressful environmental factors?

A) Culture-bound syndrome
B) Epidemic
C) Demographic
D) Syndemic

Question 17

Medical anthropologists who seek to understand human sickness and health in an evolutionary context sometimes use the concept of

A) adaptation
B) syndemic
C) epidemic
D) race memory

Question 18

Some scientific observers connect the ability to absorb lactose successfully to what cultural practices?

A) a history of keeping dairy herds
B) a history of consuming honey
C) a history of consuming refined sugar
D) a history of nursing infants longer than two years

Question 19

According to Tom Boellstorff, which experience of the self do aficionados of Second Life regularly experience?

A) decentered selves
B) unified and integrated selves
C) bounded selves
D) dividual selves

Question 20

A story told by sufferers (sometimes together with their caregivers) that explains the source of an individual's suffering is called

A) an illness narrative
B) a metaphorical narrative
C) an allegorical narrative
D) a subjective narrative

Question 21

Medical anthropologists use which of the following terms to refer to events in life generated by forces and agents external to the person and largely external to his or her control; specifically, events generated in the setting of armed conflict and war?

A) structural violence
B) trauma
C) experiential health
D) circumscribed agency

Question 22

According to Paul Farmer, the fact that poor Haitian women were more likely to die of AIDS and poor Haitian men were more likely to die of violent injury is an illustration of what he calls

A) trauma
B) structural violence
C) experiential health
D) the social division of suffering

Question 23

Medical anthropologists argue that a more accurate way to refer to Western biomedical systems adopted by people in non-Western societies around the world is

A) experiential health
B) medical pluralism
C) cosmopolitan medicine
D) the social division of medicine

Question 24

In the 1970s in Guider, Cameroon, a man and his wife were seeking therapy for infertility. First they went to the local biomedical clinic, then to a local Muslim practitioner, and finally made plans to consult a traditional non-Muslim healer living outside of town. This pattern of successive medical consultation can only occur in a situation of

A) medical pluralism
B) structural violence
C) colonialism
D) the social division of medicine

Question 25

Sydney Spangler, a medical anthropologist, argues that differential health outcomes experienced among Tanzanian women seeking the help of midwives at a Tanzanian village medical dispensary were due to

A) their unwillingness to deal with biomedical practitioners
B) their experience of social exclusion
C) the lack of training of midwives
D) their ignorance of the experience of labor and delivery

Question 26

Which of the following statements summarizes Sydney Spangler's conclusions about the poor women she knew who were about to give birth?

A) They did the best they could to minimize risk at the time of delivery while attempting to minimize the risk to their families of public humiliation or debt.
B) They did the best they could to minimize risk at the time of delivery, even if this meant that their families had to take out loans to pay for care at the dispensary.
C) They did the best they could to minimize risk at the time of delivery, which is why they always preferred to consult midwives at the dispensary.
D) They were so anxious about giving birth that they ignored pragmatic solutions and demanded that midwives attend them in their own homes.

Question 27

Which of the following statements describes the position of rural Tanzanian AIDS patients whom Rebecca Marsland knew in rural Tanzania?

A) The demands that a pharmaceutical places on the body cannot always be placed before the hunger and the health of one's family.
B) The demands that a pharmaceutical places on the body of the individual receiving treatment must always get priority.
C) Tanzanian AIDS patients regarded themselves as autonomous individuals responsible for managing a treatment regime designed for their individual health needs alone.
D) AIDS patients in rural Tanzania were always able to find sufficient food so that they never had to take their ARVs on an empty stomach.

Question 28

Which of the following statements describes the experience of rural Tanzanians who were interested in becoming health activists?

A) Their efforts were supported by a legal regime, inherited from the colonial period, which strongly supports grassroots organizing.
B) Their efforts were undermined by a legal regime, inherited from the colonial period, which strictly controls grassroots organizing.
C) NGO managers are eager to share resources and partner with self-help groups organized by poor AIDS patients.
D) AIDS patients were increasingly successful as health activists.

Question 29

Based on their experiences delivering antiretroviral (ARV) therapy in Haiti and Rwanda through Partners in Health, Paul Farmer and Jim Yong Kim recommend that ARVs should be made universally available and free to all those who needed them.

Question 30

An example of the role of cultural practices shaping natural selection on genes that affect human health concerns

A) sufferer's nerves
B) lactose intolerance
C) sucrose intolerance
D) an epidemic

Question 31

According to Tom Boellstorff, the experience of individual selves in Second Life is best demonstrated by the creation of

A) alts
B) avatars
C) autonomous selves
D) unified and integrated selves

Question 32

Which of the following best describes how Korwa people understand illness?

A) possessing a disease-free bodily state
B) living a forest-based life
C) encountering disruption, disorder, and disharmony associated with their living in locations outside the forest
D) suffering from chronic ailments associated with life in the forest.

Question 33

In the 1970s in Guider, Cameroon, a man and his wife were seeking therapy for infertility. First they went to the local biomedical clinic, then to a local Muslim practitioner, and finally made plans to consult a traditional non-Muslim healer living outside of town. This pattern of successive medical consultation is called

A) a hierarchy of resort
B) an ethnomedical system
C) the social division of medicine
D) structural violence

Question 34

Anthropologists Joao Biehl is concerned that regional governments in Brazil have been forced to alter their health budgets drastically to accommodate the demand for high-cost medicines like antiretroviral drugs. He calls this phenomenon

A) structural violence
B) embodied inequality
C) the pharmaceuticalization of public health
D) the socialization of medicine

Question 35

Explain how anthropologists define and use the term suffering. How do they apply this concept? Provide examples from the text.

Question 36

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

Question 37

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

Question 38

Explain the process whereby sickle cell anemia a biocultural adaptation. How does this process influence our understanding and treatment of the condition?

Question 39

Analyze the concepts of social suffering and trauma. What is trauma? Using case material from this chapter, explain why this phenomenon is important for anthropologists to understand. Discuss the effects of social suffering and trauma on both individuals and groups. How have anthropologists begun to study these issues?

Question 40

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