ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses various conceptions of clinical anthropology that have developed since the initial appearance of this subfield of medical anthropology. It argues that the expectations that physicans and health administrators impose upon medical anthropologists have contributed to the development of a conservative orientation within clinical anthropology. The chapter shows how health policy makers, hospital administrators, and physicians will take to a critical clinical anthropology that challenges the hierarchical and sexist nature of bourgois medicine, the economic organization, the role of medicine as moral regulation, and the reductionist bourgeouis medical model. It examines barriers to the development of a critical clinical anthropology. The chapter suggests that some potential strategies that critical medical anthropologists, whether they are employed in academic or applied positions, may pursue in merging theory and social action. Clinical anthropology emerged in the wake of the development of "biopsychosocial medicine" various changes in medical education designed to humanize bourgeois medical treatment.
