Medical anthropology -how political economy relates to the issue of social suffering - Research Paper Example

e an aspect that is influenced and affected by numerous interplays of social control issues, ranging from politics, economy, culture, and many more (Brown and Barrett 28). Of particular interest to this study is political economy as well as how it relates to the issue of social suffering. Numerous anthropological theories exist that postulate the relationship between health and interrelated human social environment. Therefore, this paper is arranged in two parts, which are theoretical development of medical anthropology and how political economy relates to the issue of social suffering.

The objective of the paper is to clearly outline how social suffering within the perspective of anthropology can be linked to political economy of society. Numerous studies have been undertaken to investigate what causes human health problems in different societies. As a result, different but related frameworks have been developed over a period, that link human health problem to different aspects of ecology, social, cultural, economy, and many more. Donald Joralemon clearly shows how people understand social suffering brought about by presence of diseases and illness using different anthropological perspectives (307).

The author develops and explains three types of anthropological perspective that can be used to explain social suffering that human undergo such as disease. The three perspectives include ecological/evolutionary perspective, political/economic perspective, and interpretive perspective (Ember and Ember 307). It becomes possible for one to explain the presence and persistence of social suffering humans go through in any given society. Of interest to this study is the political/economic perspective, which postulates that society is made up of social classes that exhibit differences in terms of resource accessibility, and this particular situation leads to differential occurrence and recurrence of diseases and illness in the society (Ember and Ember 307).

The influence of