Anthropology for doctors

Abstract

One of the paradoxes of our time is that the greater the medical advances and the more prominent is the biotechnological development, the more we are in need of social theories that invite us to rethink health and disease in our unequal and diverse world (1).

All contact between the doctor and his patient, contains significant elements determined by society and the powers that operate in it. Even the most subjective experience of a disease state is impregnated with the culture of the group in which the individual is located, and this is in turn the result of innumerable life experiences, in historically determined situations and, at the same time , due to the conditioning produced by the processes of hegemony and power existing in the social system (2).