Cultural constructivism

sickness histories and the understanding of ethnomedicines beyond critical medical anthropologies

Atwood D. Gaines

pp. 221-258

in: Beatrix Pfleiderer, Gilles Bibeau (eds), Anthropologies of medicine, Wiesbaden, Vieweg+Teubner, 1991

Abstract

The present paper has two goals. First it attempts to identify and outline some central assumptions of "cultural constructivism" in order to unify and provide a common basis for a variety of interpretive approaches in medical anthropology. In line with this goal, an example of the cultural constructivist approach to sickness and biomedical knowledge is presented. This model of sickness, called a "Sickness History", is offered to demonstrate the historical basis of the construction and meaning of contemporary sickness realities, realities found in both folk and professional Western medicines.