Entry Requirements
Normally a good Honours degree from a UK institution; an equivalent overseas qualification; or an equivalent professional qualification (eg from a health background or similar). Candidates not fully meeting these criteria may nevertheless be considered. Students whose first language is not English must have IELTS of at least 6.5 or equivalent.Course Aims
- Why do some biomedical interventions seeking to control infectious and non-infectious diseases work, and others fail?
- How do ideas about ‘the body’ and ‘person’ influence the experience of health, illness and healing among different groups and societies?
- How and why is it appropriate to combine insights emerging from clinical and epidemiological research with ethnographic understandings of health, illness and disease?
Medical anthropology can be described as the study of cultural beliefs and behaviours associated with the origin, recognition and management of health and illness in different social and cultural groups. Despite the name conventionally given to this area of study, medical anthropology is not simply concerned with practices of healing or systems of diagnosis and treatment such as biomedicine. It deals with the more informal systems of health care that exist worldwide (such as self-treatment, folk healers, shamans, traditional birth attendants, and alternative practitioners), as well as those associated with professional Western science-based medicine and caring practices. Additionally, medical anthropology is also concerned with issues which relate to different cultural views of the 'self' in health and disease, as well as shared beliefs, images and practices associated with perceptions of the human body and mind.
The Brunel MSc addresses the above issues in a lively and challenging way. It was the first taught master's degree dedicated to medical anthropology in Europe; and it is the largest MSc medical anthropology programme in the UK. We have the largest number of dedicated and internationally known medical anthropology staff in the country teaching the degree; and around 330 students have graduated with an MSc in medical anthropology from Brunel University. They are now working all over the world in a variety of settings.
Course Content
The main objectives of the course are to provide a rigorous grounding in key topics and perspectives in medical anthropology, and to equip candidates with a range of research skills to enable them to successfully complete research (either individually or part of a team).
Students have undertaken a huge range of important studies for dissertations in Britain, Europe and worldwide. Many have been used by NGOs, primary care trusts and UN agencies to assist their work as well as giving excellent demonstrations of the anthropologist's craft. Some recent examples of students' dissertations include:
- The management of Alzheimer's disease;
- The relationship between nurses and doctors in managing primary care;
- Cultural aspects of the management of premature babies;
- Private experiences and public encounters: selfhood and personhood amidst the chaos of homelessness;
- Life in a government-run leprosy colony in Nepal;
- An exploration into the role of girls abducted during the war in Sierra Leone;
- "This time I'm going to God because it doesn't cost money": managing mental illness and madness in Uganda.
Modules are subject to variation and students are advised to check with the School on whether a particular module of interest will be running in their year of entry.
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Compulsory Modules |
Optional Modules |
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| Plus two unassessed reading modules | ||
Compulsory Modules
Anthropological Approaches to Health, Healing and Medicines
Main Topics of Study: The therapeutic “triangle”, at the micro-level, of patient, doctor and patient’s kin and community; at the macro-level, the political economy of health, the dynamics of a national medical culture; the problem of efficacy in treatments and the role of the placebo effect; how might one change people’s health behaviour through public health? Plus problems in the specific analysis, cross-culturally, of (1) chronic illness and disability; (2) the process of dying; (3) pain; (4) ‘mental illness’.
Applied Anthropology and International Health
Main topics of study: health care pluralism in the UK, and abroad; folk, traditional and alternative healers; cultural attitudes to food and causes of malnutrition; cross-cultural psychiatry, and cross-cultural definitions of mental illness; culture-bound syndromes; migration, stress and health; urbanisation and the urban poor; family planning programmes; HIV and AIDS; primary health care; malaria; cultural barriers to international aid programmes.
Anthropological and Public Health
Main topics of study: changing conceptions of public health; constructing public health problems: the case of female circumcision; the social construction of epidemics; constructions of health and sickness in war zones; the changing relationship between anthropology and epidemiology; targeting people, targeting places: the limits of HIV prevention strategies; neglected tropical diseases and the case for targeted disease control programmes; public health and healing in the aftermath of war; evaluating public health policy; human rights and public health; ethical aspects of public health policy and practice.
Ethnographic Research Methods
Main topics of study: the centrality of fieldwork to anthropological research; theoretical and practical issues of participant observation, open-ended unstructured interviews and semi-structured interviews; the advantages and disadvantages of using questionnaires during fieldwork; different styles of ethnographic writing; gaining access in ethnographic research; ethical clearance and ethical dilemmas arising in the course of fieldwork; constructing a research proposal.
Dissertation
The specific topics and/or research problems discussed in the dissertation are a function of the student’s particular research interest in the domain of medical anthropology, and the data generated by the student’s own fieldwork.
Recent examples of dissertations by students taking this course include:
- The Management of Alzheimer's disease.
- The relationships between nurses and doctors in managing primary care.
- Private experiences and public encounters: selfhood and personhood amidst the chaos of homelessness.
Optional Modules
Kinship and New Directions in Anthropology
Main topics of study: descent and alliance, the household, the incest taboo, new reproductive technologies, kinship and the state, gay kinship, the abortion debate, conceptions of social reproduction, kinship and migration, the social and cultural construction of paternity.
Anthropology of the Body
Main Topics of Study: The social body; embodiment, ‘habitus’ and phenomenological approaches to the body; cross-cultural perceptions of the body; the body in parts; sex and gender; childhood and the body; bodily norms, beauty and ideas of the perfect body; biomedicine and the body; death and the dying body.
Anthropology of the Person
Main topics of study: theories of the person; the notion of 'normality'; the emergence of memero-politics; classifications, kinds, and kind-making; 'looping effects'; cultural bound syndrome and 'ecological niche'.
Anthropology of Disability and Difference
Main Topics of Study: A critical overview of the medical and social models of disability that have framed discourse on disability; ethnographic and phenomenological alternatives to such approaches; conducting fieldwork with cognitively and physically impaired people; disability across the life course, with a focus on childhood disability; identity and disability; social policy, development, the state and disability; ethical dilemmas and the new genetics.
Plus two unassessed reading modules
History and Theory of Social Anthropology
Main topics of study: evolutionary' anthropology; 'race', 'civilisation'; diffusionism and the Boas school; the development of ethnographic research; functional, structure and comparison; structuralism; neo-evolutionism; culture and the interpretation of cultures; critiques (Marxism, feminism, post-modernism).
Issues in Social Anthropology
Main topics of study: kinship; gender; religion; anthropology of the body.
Further details (School of Social Sciences web pages)
Teaching and Learning
You will be taught via a combination of lectures, seminars, workshops, tutorials and film.
Assessment
Assessment is variously by essay, practical assignments (eg, analysis of a short field exercise), and a dissertation of approximately 15,000 words. This dissertation is based upon fieldwork undertaken by the candidate. There are no examinations.
Careers
Students will acquire analytical and research skills that can be used in a wide range of careers. For instance, graduates will find that the degree enhances professional development in fields such as midwifery, general practice, sexual health, psychiatry, nutrition, psychotherapy, public health, non-governmental agencies and international development. Some of our graduates also go on to do further research for a PhD in medical anthropology.
Special Features
The MSc in Medical Anthropology is taught by a large team of internationally respected medical anthropologists who have undertaken extensive fieldwork at home and overseas
Research interests of our current team of internationally respected anthropologists are as follows:
Dr Nicolas Argenti has undertaken long-term fieldwork in Cameroon and in Sri Lanka. He is an expert on children’s and young people’s experience of conflict and on theories of material culture and social change.
Dr Andrew Beatty specialises in religion, kinship and emotion. He has worked on the relation between family forms and styles of thinking (conceptual and moral relativism) in Java, has a research interest in Mexico and has published on the anthropology of emotion.
Dr Peggy Froerer has undertaken extensive fieldwork in India on Hindu nationalism, Christian/Hindu ethnic relations and education. Her recent work focuses on childhood, learning and cognition, and on children's understanding and beliefs about illness and health.
Dr Eric Hirsch has a long-standing interest in the ethnography and history of Papua New Guinea. His research focuses on issues of historicity, landscape, power and property relations. He has also carried out fieldwork in Britain on the relations between new technologies and personhood.
Dr Isak Niehaus works on the diverse fields of population removals, cosmology, witchcraft, masculinity, sexuality, politics and AIDS in the South African lowveld, and is interested in the parallels between post-Apartheid in South Africa and post-Communism in the Czech Republic. He is currently writing the biography of a South African teacher.
Dr Melissa Parker has undertaken research in Sudan, Kenya, Uganda, Burkina Faso, Ghana and London. Her publications address a wide range of issues including tropical diseases; maternal and child health; female circumcision and sexuality; HIV/AIDS and sexual networks; anthropology and public health.
Dr James Staples conducts fieldwork in South India, including long-term research with leprosy-affected people in a rural coastal community and, more recently, with disabled people in the major city of Hyderabad. His thematic interests include personhood, performance and the body; disability and notions of human rights; and marginal livelihoods, including begging.
We are sad to announce that Cecil Helman, Professor of Medical Anthropology, has passed away. He was involved in the establishment of the MSc in Medical Anthropology in 1989 and played a major role in teaching the MSc programme until his death. For 2009/10 similar modules will be taught by Professor Murray Last and Dr Ann Kelly.
The Anthropology Department has an associated research centre focussing on debates relevant to international policy makers and practitioners as well as debates curent in social and biological anthropology in the light of research undertaken in the arena of international medical anthropology. See Centre for Research in International Medical Anthropology page.