Building Biocultural Anthropology
Ethos volume 33, number 1, March 2005
Edited by Daniel H. Lende, Daniel J. Hruschka, and Carol M. Worthman
Photo Credit: Brandon Kohrt and colleague conducting health exams and ethnographic interviews in Jumla district, Nepal
This special issue shows the applicability of the biocultural approach within psychological anthropology. While each article takes a different tack on how to bring biology and culture together, all are united by a focus on the mind as a link between cultural processes and individual bodies. As a whole, they demonstrate that there are a variety of biocultural lenses for examining how living, thinking, and feeling individuals operate in cultural context. They also outline how a focus on the mind is an important missing piece from other biocultural approaches that have focused on human evolution or on linking human biology and political economy.
The papers tackle a range of issues, including the effect of cultural consonance on well-being in Brazil, compulsive desire among Colombian substance abusers, the social and psychological factors implicated in becoming a Candomble medium, the process of coping with political ecological inequality in Peru, and the biocultural pathways to somatization and suffering in Nepal. By taking a biocultural perspective, the papers overcome dichotomies that have traditionally mirrored the biological/cultural divide in anthropology: nature versus nurture, mind versus body, qualitative versus quantitative, and materialist versus interpretive. The articles also illustrate a methodological strength of biocultural work: the examination of human experience using a range of methodological approaches, including ethnography, epidemiology, and the assessment of biological markers.
A focus on such pressing issues as the biocultural roots of addiction, the cultural patterning of mental illness, and the health effects of modernization, makes this a particularly relevant set of articles for teaching undergraduate and graduate students about the role that anthropology can play in understanding real-world problems. Furthermore, by clearly articulating how they conceived of and then executed their research, the authors offer a valuable window into the research process. For example, William Dressler describes how he used both cultural consensus theory and biological measures to address questions about how cultural consonance affects well-being. Meanwhile, Brandon Kohrt and co-authors carefully explain how they integrated personal descriptions of jhum-jhum (or numbness) among rural Nepalese with biological tests to assess possible organic causes of “somatization” among rural Nepalese.
In short, the articles demonstrate integrative thinking in action, and thus provide a valuable educational resource to both undergraduate and graduate students. The volume addresses issues directly relevant to basic courses in Psychological Anthropology, Medical Anthropology, and Biocultural Anthropology, as well as more advanced courses on Health and Inequality, Culture and Mental Illness, and Cross-Cultural Psychology.
Finally, the articles exemplify a common thread running through much of 20th century anthropology—an open-minded willingness to bring together methods and theories from within and outside of anthropology in attempts to understand culture and the diversity of human experience. In particular, the introduction to the special issue discusses multiple ways groups or institutions can advance an integrative approach at the research and institutional levels. Its emphasis on the articulation of common goals, balanced representation, the building of mutual trust, and the importance of undergraduate and graduate training in multiple perspectives provide a set of criteria that offer a fundamentally different vision for anthropology than that embodied in its recent fractious history.
