Health Information Systems Project in Andhra Pradesh-Experiences from phcs in Kuppam

Anthropological Perspectives on Palliative Care (medical & cultural anthropology)

• Palliation is unique in different cultures. (For ex, Sepik Society).
• Complex “negotiations” between biomedicine and culture frequently take place. (Navajo, Ethiopian, Sepik, Hindus and Islamic cultures)
• Cultural anthropology helps us see dying as a social process.
• It provides us with a number of important tools with which to understand this universal yet culture-specific process.

Palliative care (cont….)

• Anthropology asks us to look at the way in which the process of dying is organized in time and space as well as at the web of social relations in which the process takes place.
• -- Gregory Pappas, Concepts to Reality, Anthropological Perspectives on Palliative Care

Comparative method & Ethnocentrism…

• Comparative method helps an anthropologist to avoid "ethnocentrism," the tendency to interpret strange customs on the basis of preconceptions derived from one's own cultural background.
• Cultural anthropologists not only study rain forest tribes in Brazil but growing numbers now study U.S. groups instead, applying anthropological perspectives to their own culture and society.