Anthropological Questions and Methods in the Study of Sickness and Healing

I have introduced the general perspective of medical anthropology, and I will soon consider in more detail the field’s theoretical frameworks. But first, let’s take a look at what a medical anthropologist considers worthy of study and how he/she goes about the research process. I use my own work on Peruvian shamanism and on organ transplantation in the United States because I want to show how these divergent topics raise surprisingly similar anthropological issues and are amenable to many of the same research strategies.