ANTH 053B. Anthropology of Public Health

This course introduces students to the study of “public health” and various problems framed by public health actors through the theoretical and methodological lenses of sociocultural anthropology. The field of public health is typically defined by its commitment to understand not just the manifestations and patterns of illness in populations, but the social, political and economic forces that place certain individuals and populations at greater risk of morbidity and mortality. By critically examining various frameworks for understanding disease in human populations, the class will explore the potentials and challenges of improving health and healthcare in various populations, both within and outside of the United States. Additionally, this class aims to demonstrate the value of anthropology to the field of public health and to efforts to solve national and global health problems. Students will be urged to think about “public health” and “global health” as dynamic cultural artifacts and cultural systems; and likewise, to consider how ethnography is an important methodological tool, both to understand public health agendas as well as to investigate the subjects and elisions of public health interventions.
Social sciences.
1 credit.
Eligible for ESCH,GLBL-core
Catalog chapter: Sociology and Anthropology
Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/sociology-anthropology

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