Disease and Health: Culture, Society, and Ethics
Medicine, examined as a cultural system rather than a biological one. This MIT OpenCourseWare course looks at how different societies define disease, health, body, and mind, and how those definitions shape practice, with particular attention to Western biomedicine as one cultural system among others. Readings and discussions draw on medical anthropology to compare healing traditions, doctor-patient relationships, and ethical questions that arise when biomedical models meet other ways of understanding illness. Materials include the syllabus, readings list, and assignments as published by MIT OpenCourseWare, free to access with no enrollment or certificate. The course suits students in anthropology, sociology, or health fields who want to see medicine treated as a human practice shaped by belief and context rather than as a fixed set of biological facts.