Comparative Analysis Of Hopwood And Aldridge’s Works On Illness And Healthcare

Perception of the Body and Causes of Illness According to Different Cultures

This essay compares and contrasts two works done by Hopwood and Aldridge.  Throughout the article, Hopwood discusses the nature of the body, causes of illness as well as the manifestation of the diseases that are constructed through different cultures. He uses the Social Anthropological Perspective to argue his points. Hopwood primary focus is to show that every type of healthcare such as biomedicine is as a result of culture, plus every technique can be perceived to be efficient in its cultural as well as social perspective. Hopwood investigates the effects of such findings for the people practicing complementary as well as alternative medicine. He examines construction of a body, as well as the ways through which human societies and cultures affect the causes, the types, and occurrence of ailments 

On contrary, Aldridge in his work, “Making and Taking Health Care Decisions,” holds that making as well as taking healthcare resolutions is a process. He argues that people become cautious of things that make a difference in their lives. Most of these things are seen like symptoms and viewed as indicative of particular states. Such constitutive standards are found through understanding and are approved with regards to families and companions. People once in a while need to summon these principles as they are chronic. With regards to sickness conduct, they shape a collection for the administration of misery. Often, when people converge together, they find that those guidelines are addressed, and that collection is wrong. As these guidelines are discovered in families, they hold on after some time and can be persisted over time, hence carried from one generation to the other. Through this way, some specific forms of ailments behavior like depression seems to be hereditary

Challenging conventional medicine as well as ideas of illness, Aldridge (2004) sees health as the functional aesthetic relating to a performed body. The position the he takes in “Making and Taking Health Care Decisions” is that of an anthropologist (a person who is involved in the study of humans within past as well as modern societies). Aldridge talks about perception plus coding of illnesses behavior. His stance is that the health care decisions people make as well as take lies on different views made by people close to us, plus based on the shared truth that has been made by such people. Through such way of knowing problems especially when they present themselves as disease or ailment, are situated within the ecology of ideas. Aldridge argues that there is no realities which can help people know their understanding, but only through different ways of behaving, fitting as well as thinking together. This aspect changes from the notion of an individual perspective or reality towards the aspect of society as well as shared reality

Social Anthropological Perspective and Healthcare

Hopwood through his Journal Article talks about social anthropological perspective (1997). He defines social anthropology as the study of human societal as well as cultures. The position Hopwood dwells on here is that a huge part of anthropological studies has focused themselves with medicine plus healing all over the globe. Through this discipline, he focuses on illnesses, their meanings, and sicknesses instead of their underlying physiological problems plus more on diagnosis rather than treatment.  One of the key aspects Hopwood raises is that illness is socially constructed. By socials construction, he points out that every culture assigns a different meaning to an object around them as well as to the environment and situation they found themselves

In the chapter, “Making and taking health care decisions,” Aldridge uses prose. He gives a short story of how he developed cold and sore throat and how his family had different perceptions about the cause of his illness. The chapter addresses other patients.  It talks about different perceptions patients will get from their families and how they should go about making the right decision regarding their illness. Hopwood uses both fiction and nonfiction in his discussion. He addresses the general public and particularly the medical practitioners about beliefs of the nature of body, causes of illness as well as their manifestation in the cultural perspective. 

There are a number of questions that are raised throughout the chapter. They include:

1. How do families together see certain life events as indicators of transformation?
2. How do certain individuals and not others understand specific events and times in their lives as causing emotional or mental stress?
3. What construing is resident within a culture that offers knowledge of life events that ascribes stress, and how does such affect people together with their family understanding?
4. Are there any adaptations at physiological functioning level connected to what individuals think as well as what their lovers do?

Also, Aldridge argues that current healthcare experts look at the control of illness as well neglect an understanding of its meaning (2004). Moreover, the biomedical education of medical practitioners, as well as other physicists blinds them to the knowledge of the sense that they learn not to recognize nor treat. Aldridge believes that “if people could return to an understanding of life events, they would hypothesize that constitutive rules exist that identify specific acts as life events.” Besides, regulative rules could propose different ways of tackling such life events 

With the advancement in technology such as the use of x-rays, prevalence of aesthetic skeletons, as well as anatomy charts, majority of people would assume that they have knowledge of the biomedical aspect of a body and how it operates. According to Hopwood (1997) the conceptions of the body vary differently both within as well as between cultures. The majority of nonmedical western Americans and Europeans think of a body as “combustion machine.” The combustion model holds a need of supplying energy or fuel in the form of the food and beverages people consume so as to keep the machine operating.

Challenging Conventional Views of Illness and Healthcare

Besides, social anthropologists suggest that perceptions of a body commonly relate to the understanding of the society as well as moral order. For instance, Western countries view the body like a personal belonging that conforms to the preoccupations within us. However, in the cultural perspective, a body is considered an integral part of the social domain. It is believed that it can be passed down from one generation to the other. Therefore, a person is a transient of his body and needs to take care of it. In the cultural Chinese medical theory, the anatomy of the body has been compared to the societal organizations of the states. This means that a body may be viewed to carry moral, social, and personal meaning.

Therefore, the ways in which different cultures sees the body, how it operates, as well as the meaning it has will significantly affect the concepts of illnesses plus its necessary treatment. Bendelow, Carpenter, Vautier, and Williams (2012), argues that the biomedical model is a coherent model that most individuals find essential in pursuit to know bodies 

In the personalistic perspective, Hopwood (1997) believes that illness is caused by deliberate actions of the sensate agent. The agent can either be an ancestor, a god, or even a witch in regard to the norms of a given society. Therefore, a sick person can be seen as a victim as well taken to be either deserving/undeserving. According to Hopwood, the ideas of evil intentions and witchcraft are not found in small and in less developed societies, but they are very common in the Western Europe. For example, a study conducted on the southern Portuguese found that young children and babies wore protective amulets under their garments to protect them from harm or danger (Barry 200).

On the other hand, naturalistic theories see illness as a disturbed balance of nature which is perceived in the aspect of Ayurdvic medicine, humoral model and ancient medicine among other aspects which are believed to have originated from Greece. According to this theory, a body contains four different humors. They include phlegm, black and yellow bile plus the blood. Poor health can be due to deficiency or excess of any of these humors; hence treatment is all about balancing them. Excess humor can be expelled through purging, starvation, vomiting, or bleeding, while deficiency cured through administration of medicines or diets

As a matter of fact, humoral medicine is the key to the contemporary understanding of health as well as sickness in the Latin America. Besides, it is known as the “hot or cold theory of disease.” Mental illnesses, states, herbs, medicine, food as well as activities are classified into the binary oppositions of cold/hot referring to a symbolic temperature.  A mentioned scenario in the anthropological literature is when a person undergoing pain in his hand might blame it on carelessness in washing while the hand was just heated by a lime the person was using.

Conclusion

Although human ideologies have disappeared in the western biomedicine, they still prevail in the British aphorism. Lay beliefs should be treated with warmth since they are of the great essence. Besides, statistics in both European, as well as Non- European states show that between 70% and 90% of illness is controlled within the public domain.

Eisenberg (1988) holds that in many societal cultures, social discord is believed to be the cause of illness. For example, the Najavo of Arizona hold that discord trait in a relationship is an essential element of illness. This idea focuses on male, female symbolism, for instance, the concept of father /mother/earth sky. Besides, there is a lot of evidence showing that the Western countries associate a lot of their sickness to society in terms pollution, fast food, work, as well as the lack of community among other factors.

Within the national culture, explanations for sickness might vary along different lines such as gender and race. In a study conducted by Blair, he found that Britons differed in the aspect of class on the area of distress plus the type of treatment received when having similar symptoms.

All in all, people from different societies possess varying perceptions of a body as well as diverse ideologies of the effect of sickness. It should be noted that different individuals are going through the same sort of illness but interpreting them along different cultural viewpoints.

Hopwood argues that people of diverse societies suffer from “culture-bound ailments”, this means that certain illnesses are only found in some cultures hence seems to have emanated from that culture. For example, “Empacho” in Latin America is caused by food being stuck in the vitelline duct due to eating a lot or very little or even feeding on the wrong diet. According to a study conducted by Weller and his associates in the coastal region of Guatemala, they discovered that Empacho was a common illness, reported by about 17% of the demography every year. Also, they found out that while a few of the symptoms linked with Empacho would be connected with gastrointestinal sicknesses like diarrhea and vomiting, others like a headache were indication of empacho. However, the concluded that “the most severe culture bound illness found by medical anthropologists is what we have been referring to as magical death or voodoo death.”

As a matter of fact, some evidence suggests that in the western nations, there are culture- bound disorders in the state of a coronary disease. Rosenman in his research  found that people having “Type A personality “( which includes preoccupied with tight deadlines , ambitious, aggressive, work oriented as well as chronically impatient ) were at higher risks to have coronary heart diseases as compared to their counterparts having no such characters  . In simple terms, Type A trait is encouraged as well as rewarded in the western society. On the other hand, Aldridge (2004) argues that in the modern western culture, the focus to punctuate the beginning of an episode of sickness usually appears to be a recognizing symptom that is validated in the aspect of relationship, whether it is filial, familial, or fraternal

Therefore, the presence of culture bound illnesses helps people understand that their societal beliefs have made them believe certain aspects on how they should live. Such beliefs affect them negatively. Hence every treatments is made to fit such beliefs as well have a placebo effect that should be taken with consideration

David Aldridge in his book “Health, the individual and integrated medicine “sees life events as not causative but indicative. He points out that the recognition of the life events depends entirely on how people as well as social gatherings are informed by themselves as well as their cultures as to which event makes the difference. As a result, there is a journey of co evolution where social groups and people inform their cultures plus cultures notify people and their gatherings. Other researchers describe the relationship between culture and symptoms as well as cultural elements in the expression of pain 

Conclusion  

As seen in the article, the perceptions of nature of the body, causes of sickness as well as the manifestation of an illness results form the beliefs people view in the world they are living. As a result, all types of healthcare such as the biomedicine fall on such beliefs for their efficiency and validity.  The primary function for every treatment is the power to give reasons for all the misfortunes.  Evidence shows that whenever a sick person is provided with necessary personal as well as social meaning for her sickness plus treatment that suits its explanation, healing will occur.

On the other hand, it should be noted that making as well as taking health care decisions is a journey. People become aware of situations that are of difference. Some of these situations can be seem as indicative of specific region. These rules are learned through experience as well made valid in the content of friends and families. In the aspect of sickness behavior, these set of laws form the repertoire to manage distress. At times, people converge with other groups and they realize that these rules are questioned plus the repertoire is unnecessary. Since these rules are from families, they remain for long and can be carried in the subsequent generations through this way; some forms of illness behavior like depression will appear to be hereditary   

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