ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the general perspective of medical anthropology and aims to convey the fluid quality of medical anthropology fieldwork. It focuses on Peruvian shamanism and on organ transplantation in the United States. An increasing amount of anthropological fieldwork is being carried out on sickness and healing in the United States and Europe. Research on Peruvian shamans provides a general sense of the priorities that guide anthropological research into the healing traditions of other cultures. A related research question is how cultural definitions of death, norms for the treatment of the dead, and notions of an afterlife complicate organ transplantation. Biological and cultural perspectives might be brought to bear on the question of how transplant centers match donor organs to potential recipients. There is an immense amount of literature on the subject for transplant recipients, but almost all of it is based on surveys or brief, structured questionnaires.
