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Earliest Phases in the Evolution of Sickness and Healing
Author(s) -
Fabrega Horacio
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
medical anthropology quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.855
H-Index - 55
eISSN - 1548-1387
pISSN - 0745-5194
DOI - 10.1525/maq.1997.11.1.26
Subject(s) - sociology , identity (music) , field (mathematics) , anthropology , expression (computer science) , biological evolution , epistemology , realization (probability) , psychology , psychoanalysis , aesthetics , philosophy , biology , computer science , genetics , mathematics , pure mathematics , programming language , statistics
Sickness and healing constitute the root concepts that center medical anthropological inquiry and give the field its identity. Here, they are held to manifest a biological adaption designed by evolution that requires culture for its final realization. Sickness and healing thus provide anthropology with a bioculturalform that has changed in content and expression during cultural evolution. The early phases of this evolution, those bearing the most apparent influences of the environment of evolutionary adaptedness, are reviewed and analyzed in the article. Some of the implications of this for medical anthropology are discussed.