Beliefs about the Behavioral Effects of Disease
A Mathematical Analysis
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2733570 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Horacio Fabrega (corresponding author), J E Hunter (0000-0002-9693-2878) |
| Year | 1979 |
| Volume | 18 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 271 |
| Publication date | 1979-07-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Ethnology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0014-1828 • E-ISSN: 2160-3510 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/3773378 |
| OpenAlex | W329501335 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 5 |
Anthropologists who study cultural aspects of medicine have demonstrated the variability that exists in conceptualizations about disease (Frake I96I; Rubel I964). Though information of this type is plentiful, there has been little systematization of it and hence this area of anthropology has not shown a cumulative growth (Scotch I963). One of the current needs of the field of ethnomedicine the comparative study of disease with emphasis on cultural factors-is to develop a unifying frame of reference which will allow us to compare different peoples' beliets about disease. Even if such a frame of reference is not forthcoming, there is a need to study the ways in which beliefs about disease are used during actual episodes of illness. An eventual benefit of a functional comparison of medical belief systems is better explanations of how different types of social groups handle disease and cope with its burdens. The study of medical beliefs purely as symbolic systems would also be sharpened if more detailed attention were given to the use made of the beliefs (Foster I976). In the study of medical beliefs, principal attention has usually been given to explanations of cause and this has been linked to analysis of the world views of a people (Clements I932). The study of general medical beliefs in this fashion has promoted emphasis on variety and differences, a feature of ethnomedicine which has prompted criticism (Fabrega I972). Concrete manifestations of illness and how these are interpreted and judged have less frequently been the object of study. Since the manifestations of disease tend to be more uniform, attention to the way people evaluate them may in the long run promote better comparative analyses. Procedures for measuring how disease effects are judged by a people may also provide a means of better evaluating how other aspects of their medical beliefs function, in particular how beliefs about causation are brought to bear on actual occurrences of illness. As has been pointed out, the measurement of biomedical attributes of disease does not facilitate the study of how different people define and cope with illness in natural settings (Fabrega I974). There remains the basic need to ground the study of general medical beliefs in categories that people themselves use and which can be measured reliably in different cultural groups
Behavioral analysis · Developmental psychology · Behavioral and Psychological Studies · Cognitive and psychological constructs research · Psychology · Sensory Analysis and Statistical Methods · Social Psychology
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,09 |
| Citation span | 1979 - 2003 (25) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |