Medical anthropology in ecological perspective / Ann McElroy and Patricia K. Townsend

Includes bibliographical references and index.

The ecology of health and disease -- Interdisciplinary research in health problems -- Genes, culture, and adaptation -- Changing patterns of birth and death -- The ecology and economics of nutrition -- Nutrition and health throughout the life cycle -- Stress, illness, and healing -- Health resources in changing cultures -- Costs and benefits of development -- Projects in medical anthropology.

As an introduction to the anthropological study of health and disease patterns in human populations, this text takes an ecological perspective. The major theme of the book, influenced greatly by the writing of René Dubos and Alexander Alland, Jr., is that the distribution of disease over time and across geographic space is directly related to a population's role in its ecosystem. A community's health closely reflects the nature of its adaptation to the environment. Through this emphasis on the ways ecological concepts contribute to the theoretical development of medical anthropology, we attempt to give unity to an interdisciplinary science that uses clinical, epidemiological, and ethnographic approaches to health problems. The organization of the book reflects, we believe, the organization of medical anthropology itself—a new and growing field, strongly eclectic, yet in search of one or more theoretical frameworks to give it direction and a sense of identity.