ABSTRACT
A theoretical model of medicine as a cultural system, if it is to be useful, should specify what that system is and how it functions. It should provide a method for describing individual systems and for making cross-cultural comparisons between different medical systems. The popular arena comprises principally the family context of sickness and care, but also includes social network and community activities. The explanatory model concept illuminates how problems in clinical communication frequently represent conflicts in the way clinical reality is conceived in the popular, folk and professional arenas of the health care system; and, therefore, it points to the systematic entailment of these problems within that cultural system. A reformulation of the medical model ought to include medical anthropology's understanding of medicine as a cultural system, as well as appreciation of the mechanisms by which culture systematically influences disease/illness and healing.
