Critical Biocultural Approaches to Health and Illness

Human health is biocultural. Indeed, the recognition that human health, illness, and well‐being are complexly interwoven biocultural processes, best understood through a variety of humanistic and scientific perspectives, is a foundational tenant of medical anthropology. This chapter outlines the history and debates leading to a critical biocultural anthropology and then to highlight contributions of a “critical biocultural” approach to medical anthropology. It also outlines the emergence of critical biocultural approaches within anthropological studies of health and then discusses their place in medical anthropology and public health. The chapter then reviews key areas of current research, and potential new directions for critical biocultural approaches. It highlights diverse contributions from biological and medical anthropologists that seek a deeper engagement with the social worlds of their interlocutors. Over the past several decades, one important growing trend in critical biocultural studies of health has been a stronger engagement with ethnographic methods.