HUMN 3044 Healing and Culture
Credit Points 10
Legacy Code 101716
Coordinator Cristina Rocha Opens in new window
Description This unit takes as its starting point the idea that disease has social and cultural as well as biological origins. What people define as good health and illness, and how they treat the latter are profoundly shaped by cultural frameworks. Healing practices, including biomedicine, are underpinned by cultural understandings and larger configurations of power. We will examine notions of disease causality across cultures and explore the argument that good and ill health are about more than just the body. Popular understandings of illness and its origins, and techniques for responding to and seeking to remedy illness can be a reflection of how different societies imagine their place in the world.
School Humanities & Comm Arts
Discipline Studies in Human Society, Not Elsewhere Classified.
Student Contribution Band HECS Band 4 10cp
Check your HECS Band contribution amount via the Fees page.
Level Undergraduate Level 3 subject
Incompatible Subjects LGYA 0933 - Special Topics in Cultural and Social Analysis
Restrictions Successful completion of 60 credit points of study in currently enrolled program.
Learning Outcomes
- Think critically about the connections between health, illness, healing and culture
- Communicate and research effectively
- Explain the role of global power relations in international health
- Critically engage in debates around Western, Complementary and Traditional medicines.
- Have an elementary understanding of medical anthropology theory
- Develop problem-solving skills by applying and adapting anthropological knowledge to real world problems.
Subject Content
2. Medicalisation and Biopower
3. Alternative healing systems and biomedicine
4. Religion and healing
5. Healing and globalisation
6. Medical tourism
7. Spiritual tourism
8. Traffic of body parts
9. International health
10. Migration and health
Prescribed Texts
- NULL
Teaching Periods