Welcome to HM103 Society, Culture and Health

This unit provides students with the necessary ethnographic information to adapt work protocols in a PNG setting. It does this in two ways. Firstly, it provides an introductory anthropological perspective of the entire Melanesian cultural society with an emphasis on social change and workplace issues (hierarchies of authority, democratization of knowledge, gender issues, shame, social versus individual identity and so forth). From this, students are able to formulate professional protocols that work in particular socio-cultural context, whether these are remote or urban. Secondly, students examine the socio-cultural context of disease, its identification, treatment and experience, and the way in which communities respond to illness in their midst. They examine the commonly held but contradictory assumptions about biology, epidemiology, causation and gender roles and the way in which these contradictions often result of both local and nationally introduced strategies.