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Show 199 Indigenista. XXLX (December, 1969), pp. 241-252. English summary: The author states that anthropology is able to discuss and analyze the internal conditioning of cultures and to derive the laws which govern its dynamics. If this assertion is correct, the anthropologist should be able to point out: the existing problematic in a specific field; the chained series of cultural impingements which may accompany change processes; the complex of forces susceptible of starting to move or neutralize to accelerate the transformation process or giving it its initial impulse; and a predictive vision of situation associated with conflict and trauma with the purpose of minimizing them. Specifically, in the field of public health it is the job of the anthropologist to analyze the cultural situation of the group involved specially in reference to attitudes, values, policies and practices associated with health and illness and their conditioning or determination by the prevailing economic and social situations; to determine the positive or negative conditions of these values, attitudes, etc., in the process or change to reach a proposed goal; and the prediction, based on previous analysis and determination of the results of change and the operative formulation to attenuate the obstacles, clear conflict situations and minimize, if possible, resulting traumas. In teaching medical and paramedical personnel, the anthropologists job consists basically in offering a general view of the correlations between health, culture and society, as an instrument for understanding the environment and the rational adjustment to it; and to give them enough motivation so in a field of specialists he may offer his specialized collaboration but adjusted to the circumstances of the other fields involved. Harman, Robert C , "La Medicina Preventiva en una Comunidad India de Los Altos de Chiapas, Mexico," Anuario Indigenista, XXIX (December, 1969), pp. 277-283. English summary: In recent years behavioral scientists have investigated numerous social aspects of the states of health and illness. A community in which sorcery and disease as a complex were inextricably intertwined with social control was described by Professor Alfonso Villa Rojas (1947). I wish to make explicit the system of preventive medicine that existed in the community, and explore the changes. At the present time the Indians still conceive culturally prescribed correct behavior as a means to maintain health, but scientific preventive medical practice are now an alternative to attain the same end. Besides a description of current preventive medical practices and beliefs, there is a brief discussion of contemporary functional equivalents of former measures of social control that are no longer completely viable. Latorre, Dolores y Felipe, "Hasta que Punto los Indios Kickapu se han Integrado en la Medicina Popular y Moderna de Mexico," Anuario |
