Individual Constitutions vs Universal Physiology

Iranian Responses to Allopathic Medicine

Datos Bibliográficos

ID7674886
AutoresAgnes G Loeffler (University of Wisconsin–Madison, autor de correspondencia), Agnes Loeffler (University of Wisconsin–Madison)
Año2007
Volumen13
Número3
Páginas103-123
Fecha de publicación2007-09-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaBody & Society (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1357-034X • E-ISSN: 1460-3632
EditorialSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/1357034x07082254
OpenAlexW2031594118
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas1
Referencias citadas21

Allopathic medicine occupies a curious position in the medical anthropological literature. On the one hand partnered with big business and political interests it is vilified as an arm of hegemonic Western culture. In this class of scholarship allopathic medicine emerges as a monolithic system insensitive to local cultural contexts in which one physician can seemingly be substituted for another at any time and any place. On the other hand descriptions of the cultural roots of medicine and of the sociocultural basis of the doctor-patient relationship paint a picture of culture-boundedness which makes it difficult to imagine how such a system could be employed in the universalizing culture-abnegating transnationalist dispersal of Western culture described in the former literature. For if allopathic medicine is grounded in Western culture and the doctor-patient relationship is informed by sociocultural conditions then logically the practice of allopathic medicine in any one location must be different to a lesser or greater extent from that in another cultural context. I will address this hypothesis here by exploring how the contradiction between the universalizing tendencies of Western medicine and the cultural situatedness of medical practice is played out in a particular non-Western setting Iran. (excerpt)

Aesthetics · Allopathic medicine · Alternative medicine · Contradiction · Epistemology · Hegemony · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Sociocultural evolution · Sociology · Traditional medicine · Western culture · Anthropology · Cultural Competency in Health Care · Empathy and Medical Education · History · History of Medicine Studies · Law · Medicine · Philosophy

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