ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on perspective that is based on recognition that there are both openings for critical praxis in the health domain and that such work can avoid cooptation into system-maintaining liberal reform. It suggests that practice of critical medical anthropology need not be restricted to injunctions for radical political action in the closing paragraphs of journal articles and that there is much that can be achieved on the long and winding road to apogean goals. Questions about the relevance and viability of critical medical anthropology in the applied domain must be addressed in terms of an analysis of social relations and social action within the larger health field. The tendency within medical anthropology has been to treat the concept of social relations as the pattern of interpersonal bonds maintained among individuals or small groups with face-to-face interaction. Consequently, there exist "institutional and situational openings" for influence and activity at many points in health care systems.
