Читать книгу A Companion to Medical Anthropology - Группа авторов - Страница 27

Despite the scorn for science promulgated by some in the later twentieth century, biological medical anthropologists continued to attract students and quietly made substantial progress. They could afford to be quiet: Many journals outside of anthropology gladly accept their work. Importantly, in terms of tenure and promotion, many of the extra-anthropological journals that welcome biological anthropology have higher impact factors than those of the home discipline. Publications in such journals also can “count” more on grant applications, thereby helping assure a steadier stream of funding.

In the 1970s, the term “biomedical” had been applied to biologically oriented work with fairly immediate clinical applications or relevance for investigations of universal (albeit perhaps locally expressed) biological or disease processes. As time wore on, political ecology, which acknowledges that power relations affect the ways that human groups handle their natural environments (e.g., water, soil), and documents the health ramifications thereof, grew increasingly popular. While its treatment of culture was rudimentary, political ecology did offer an alternative to the narrower adaptationist perspective promoted by some environmentally oriented anthropologists.

By the 1990s, some biological anthropologists who had followed developments in critical theory acknowledged political ecology’s reductionist tendencies and called for deeper appreciation of the dialectical relationship between culture and biology (see Baer 1996; Singer 1996). A more sophisticated biocultural synthesis emerged – one highlighting the complexly interactive roles that social structures and the local and global political economies that support them play in biological outcomes (see Goodman and Leatherman 1998). Some areas of inquiry benefitting from this approach are global malnutrition, tourism’s impact on host population health, the situational emergence of syndemic clusters of disease or affliction, the consequences of declared and undeclared wars, or of structural racism, and even how pollution, deforestation, soil degradation, and climate change have affected human health. Such anthropogenic hazards can converge, each having a multiplier effect on the other, and thereby on human (and other species’) well-being; and effects can be transgenerational.

For example, a disenfranchised cultural group’s socioeconomic status can both set that group up for toxicant exposures and be the outcome of such exposures, experienced earlier. To wit: for years various factories discharged contaminants into the St. Lawrence River, upstream of Akwesasne Mohawk territory (which spans the US-Canada border). Fishing, hunting, and gathering became problematically dangerous: Developmental and reproductive abnormalities co-occurred with high pollutant levels, as did depressed thyroid activity, and obesity. Worse, one generation’s exposure-linked problems reduce life opportunities (e.g., educational achievement) for subsequent generations, compounding the toll as social distinctions become self-reinforcing (Schell 2012; Schell, Ravenscroft, Cole, Jacobs, Newman, and Akwesasne Task Force on the Environment 2005).

The demographic impact of COVID-19 follows a similar pattern: diseases more common in minoritized groups due largely to the legacy of their disenfranchisement (e.g., diabetes) increase the risk for infection and death from COVID-19. Concurrently, living and occupational conditions for such groups entail a higher risk for exposure. These inequitable arrangements simultaneously support an economy that benefits its investors and owners.

Biocultural explorations have advanced more than political ecology. For instance, investigations into culture’s role in creating and sustaining the placebo effect led to advances in theory regarding how healing works. Questions regarding the mechanisms whereby culture is embodied have enhanced our understanding of “stress.” Biologically oriented work has illuminated human–plant interaction, including regarding the microbiome and the antimicrobial value of certain herbs. Interest in trans-species or “human animal health” also has grown in recent years, as has our appreciation for multi-system interconnectivity.