Chapter 13 Test Bank

KNOWLEDGE OF KEY TERMS AND CONCEPTS

Multiple Choice

1. What subfield of anthropology tries to understand how social, cultural, biological, and linguistic factors shape the health of human beings in different cultures?

a) physical anthropology

b) medical anthropology

c) linguistic anthropology

d) biological anthropology

2. Health and illness

a) can readily be objectively measured by doctors with the right equipment.

b) form a straightforward concept well understood by physicians.

c) are stable and unchanging across the world.

d) have much variation throughout different cultures and societies.

3. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries American doctors often had second jobs as

a) nutritionists.

b) politicians.

c) morticians.

d) barbers.

4. Breastfeeding was universal in the United States until baby formula was developed in the

a) 1920s.

b) 1930s.

c) 1950s.

d) 1970s

5. An explanation given for medicalizing the nonmedical is

a) the growth in profits for insurance and pharmaceutical companies.

b) to decrease the prestige of physicians.

c) the denial among people to see social problems in scientific terms.

d) inaccurate, as there is a movement towards demedicalization.

6. Paul Farmer did much of his ethnographic and applied work in

a) United States.

b) Mexico.

c) Africa.

d) Haiti.

7. Paul Farmer’s work was originally focused on

a) malaria.

b) diabetes.

c) AIDS.

d) cancer.

8. Koro, a condition unique to Chinese and Southeast Asian cultures, is an example of

a) culture-bound syndrome.

b) the subjectivity of illness.

c) an explanatory mode of illness.

d) medicalization of the nonmedical.

9. Nearly all societies draw on more than one medical tradition simultaneously, a process which is called

a) medicalization.

b) the sick role.

c) symbolic treatment.

d) medical pluralism.

10. Medical anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes uncovered a large criminal network engaged in the black-market sale of

a) illegal drugs.

b) children.

c) bacteria.

d) body parts.

11. The authors of the textbook define the mind as

a) synonymous with the brain.

b) an individual experience that is removed from bodily awareness.

c) outside the concern of most Western medicine.

d) emergent qualities of consciousness expressed through thought, perception, will, and imagination.

12. Healing rituals are an example of

a) a social support therapeutic process.

b) a symbolic therapeutic process.

c) the placebo effect.

d) a clinical therapeutic process.

13. Not all conditions are recognized as illness, but they can become so through a process known as

a) medical pluralism.

b) medicalization.

c) bio-enculturation.

d) sick emergence.

Fill in the Blank

14. Medical anthropologists refer to whatever impairs the human body in physiological ways as ____________________, which is typically the domain of healthcare professionals.

disease

15. Medical anthropologists refer to ____________________ as psychological and social experience a patient has of disease.

illness

16. The ____________________ therapeutic process relies on the presence of family members and friends who provide comfort and aid to the sick person.

social support

17. The process of viewing or treating as a medical concern conditions that were not previously understood as medical problems is called ____________________.

medicalization

18. The ____________________ therapeutic process involves a patient’s social networks, who typically surround the patient.

social support

19. The ____________________ is a form of persuasion in which patients believe they are taking a strong medication but they are actually taking an inert tablet, such as a sugar pill.

placebo effect

True/False

20. Placebos have been proven to be far less effective than many other pharmaceutical interventions.

a) True

b) False

21. Health and illness are objective states.

a) True

b) False

22. The prestige and social authority doctors enjoy is relatively new.

a) True

b) False

23. Given developments in medicine in recent decades, doctors and patients most often have the same explanations for illness and disease.

a) True

b) False

24. There are certain mental illnesses that are unique to specific cultures.

a) True

b) False

COMPREHENSION OF FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS

Multiple Choice

25. What is the “subjectivity of illness”?

a) the idea that diseases cannot be measured objectively

b) how people understand and experience their condition on a personal level

c) the process of testing that determines if a patient is really sick or not

d) the effort to blame people for their own sickness

26. When anthropologist Robert Welsch got sick in Papua New Guinea, most of the villagers attributed his symptoms to

a) the flu.

b) malaria.

c) sorcery.

d) homesickness.

27. For the Ningerum patient to get help with his or her care and treatment, the main thing to do is

a) pay lots of money.

b) describe in detail how sick he or she is.

c) display visible signs of his or her illness.

d) hide away at home.

28. Which of the following activities or behaviors is not part of the American sick role?

a) They are free from the obligation to go to work or school because they are sick.

b) They are not expected to seek medical care from a professional or family caregiver.

c) They are expected to try to get better and assist in their care as much as possible.

d) They are free from blame for their sickness.

29. A good example of the process of medicalization is found in the changing understanding of which of the following conditions as a “disease”?

a) diabetes

b) alcoholism

c) albinism

d) HIV

30. According the medical anthropologist Arthur Kleinman, the several therapeutic processes that bring healing include

a) clinical processes, symbolic processes, and social support.

b) placebo effect and symbolic medicine.

c) social support and the nocebo effect.

d) clinical processes, ritual, and placebos.

31. When a doctor observes a patient’s symptoms and prescribes a treatment that he or she thinks will act directly on the patient’s body to cure the problem, the doctor is adopting which kind of treatment process?

a) medicalization

b) clinical therapeutic process

c) symbolic process

d) persuasion

32. Frank pulled his back out and went to see a chiropractor, an orthopedic surgeon, and an acupuncturist. Which of the following practices was Frank engaging in?

a) medicalization

b) the placebo effect

c) medical pluralism

d) medical singularism

33. When anthropologist Robert Welsch had a very high fever from malaria in Papua New Guinea, why did the Ningerum villagers visit and attempt to entertain him, even though he would have preferred being left alone?

a) They were trying to nurse him back to health.

b) They were trying to distract him from his symptoms.

c) They did not want to be suspected of bewitching him with sorcery.

d) They were curious about his strange illness.

34. Arthur Kleinman, a medical anthropologist who conducted research in Taiwan, argued that the key to understanding differences in perspective between doctors and patients is that healers and patients often have different

a) access to medical technology.

b) access to education and medical training.

c) class backgrounds.

d) ways of explaining what is happening to the sick persons.

35. Who is most likely to determine a physiological condition that manifests in disease?

a) the physician

b) the patient

c) the patient’s support system

d) medical interpretivists

36. Which of the following is least likely to have driven the increase of medicalization in the United States?

a) financial motivation from pharmaceutical companies and health insurers

b) doctors’ increased social standing and authority

c) the rise of scientific solutions to social problems

d) increasing secularism

Fill in the Blank

37. What frequently emerges in hospital care is a clash of professional and popular (or layperson’s) understandings of sickness, in which doctors focus on ____________________, the purely physiological condition, and patients focus on ____________________, their actual experience of the disease.

disease / illness

38. The culturally defined agreement between patients and family members to acknowledge that the patient is legitimately sick is called the ____________________.

sick role

39. The cause of the prestige enjoyed by doctors comes from the fact that doctors ____________________.

professionalized

40. Epidemiologists misunderstood the transmission patterns of AIDS in East Africa because they assumed it would spread locally around small neighborhoods when in fact it had rapidly spread long distances, traveling along highways via ____________________ and ____________________.

truck drivers / prostitutes

True/False

41. During the Civil War surgeons were little more than butchers who amputated with large, dirty saws, using no antibiotics, few painkillers, and no antiseptics.

a) True

b) False

42. Doctors throughout the world enjoy a high degree of prestige.

a) True

b) False

43. Diabetics often have better control of their blood sugar when they are with supportive family members but poorer control when feeling isolated.

a) True

b) False

44. The first cases of HIV in Africa appeared along highways because of the interactions between prostitutes and truckers traveling long distances.

a) True

b) False

APPLICATION OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL CONCEPTS

Multiple Choice

45. If a medical anthropologist like Arthur Kleinman were to turn his attention to studying the outbreak of Ebola in West Africa, he would likely want to understand

a) how local people interpret the symptoms of Ebola, its causes, and its threat.

b) what was necessary in the United States in terms of protective clothing and sanitation to limit the spread of the disease.

c) the weaknesses of resources of West African nations to deal with the epidemic.

d) naïve presumptions about disease causation.

46. What is an “explanatory model” of a disease like cancer?

a) a simplified physical model of the body with all the organs affected by the cancer identified in it

b) a general approach to explaining the incidence of cancer among various groups

c) a biological theory that explains why certain people get cancer and others do not

d) a general explanation held by individual patients and their families that accounts for the patient’s symptoms, the causes of these symptoms, and how to best treat the cancer

47. In which of the following ways would the sick role of people in an African country be expected to differ from the American sick role?

a) Although it would need to be confirmed with empirical evidence, we could presume that people must want to get better and should assist in their therapy.

b) Although all societies will have some form of sick role, it is impossible to know what form the local sick role takes without interviewing and observing local people when they are sick.

c) From statistical analyses, we would expect that people will be afraid of any contagious disease.

d) Because Africans are less educated than Americans, we would expect that most people will believe in magic and ritual healing.

48. What is the most striking difference between a physician’s approach to a sick patient and a medical anthropologist’s perspective?

a) Physicians will focus on the clinical processes that explain the disease, while medical anthropologists will focus only on the patient’s symptoms.

b) Doctors will not be concerned with the patient’s feelings since as physicians they know what is happening, while the medical anthropologist will be concerned with the patient’s anxiety and fear during treatment.

c) Doctors will focus on the clinical processes that explain the disease, while medical anthropologists will want to look at the illness from all perspectives.

d) There is often little difference in perspective among these experts.

49. Ethical rules for research with human subjects require that researchers be honest with patients in a study about what drugs are being given to them. This ethical premise limits research to study the efficacy of which of the four therapeutic processes?

a) clinical therapeutic processes

b) symbolic therapeutic processes

c) social support

d) persuasion (the placebo effect)

Short Answer

50. Explain the differences between how a medical anthropologist and a physician would approach an outbreak of flu at your university.

51. Before Arthur Kleinman’s research, medical anthropologists tended to assume that everyone in a small-scale society made similar decisions about treating health problems. Why did a perspective that emphasizes individual “explanatory models” transform the field of medical anthropology?

52. How does the fact that the healthcare industry, which includes hospitals, pharmaceutical manufacturers, and health insurance companies, produces huge profits annually influence the options available to ordinary American patients and their families?

Essays

53. Explain how some medical anthropologists explain the effectiveness of ritual treatments in tribal societies when these rituals use no substances with active chemical ingredients.

54. Explain what the power of the placebo effect as demonstrated in the French naproxen study might tell us about the effectiveness of other drugs besides painkillers.

55. If you were confronting the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, your first task would be to stabilize the epidemic and provide enough beds for all the Ebola patients as well as separate facilities for patients with other health problems. What approach would you suggest next if you followed the agenda of medical anthropologists Paul Farmer and Jim Yon Kim, who advocated an integrated program to combat the long-term effects of the epidemic?

OPPORTUNITIES FOR ANALYSIS AND SYNTHESIS

Essays

56. In most countries around the world physicians typically have much lower salaries than physicians in the United States. How can we explain this fact if American physicians are no more effective at treating their patients than doctors in other countries and if medical training is roughly comparable overseas to that in the United States?

57. According to medical anthropologists, how might a prayer circle in one town help a sick patient in a neighboring town?

58. From what you know of American cultural values about health and disease, why does it make sense that alcoholism is largely defined as a medical problem today, even though in past decades drunkenness was seen as a moral failing?

59. Besides the changing science of the body, what other factors were important in changing the way Americans breastfeed or bottle-feed their babies?