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(1991) Anthropologies of medicine, Wiesbaden, Vieweg+Teubner.
Cultural constructivism
sickness histories and the understanding of ethnomedicines beyond critical medical anthropologies
Atwood D. Gaines
pp. 221-258
The present paper has two goals. First it attempts to identify and outline some central assumptions of "cultural constructivism" in order to unify and provide a common basis for a variety of interpretive approaches in medical anthropology. In line with this goal, an example of the cultural constructivist approach to sickness and biomedical knowledge is presented. This model of sickness, called a "Sickness History", is offered to demonstrate the historical basis of the construction and meaning of contemporary sickness realities, realities found in both folk and professional Western medicines.
Publication details
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-322-87859-5_17
Full citation:
Gaines, A. D. (1991)., Cultural constructivism: sickness histories and the understanding of ethnomedicines beyond critical medical anthropologies, in B. Pfleiderer & G. Bibeau (eds.), Anthropologies of medicine, Wiesbaden, Vieweg+Teubner, pp. 221-258.
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