Chapter 13 Student Activities

Therapeutic Processes Activity: How Does Healing Happen for You?

We’ve all experienced illnesses, from the minor to the severe and to the potentially life-threatening. Consider the last time you were sick, whether at your university or before you started college. Think about all of the treatments or diagnostic activities you engaged in. Which of medical anthropology’s four distinct therapeutic processes (clinical processes, symbolic processes, social support, and persuasion) were being used to treat your condition? Some of what happened is likely to be clinical, but is everything clinical? Or did you benefit from social support, or persuasion, or some symbolic process?

A Thought Activity: Conceptualizing Underage Drinking

Consider how your university treats alcohol abuse, specifically underage binge drinking. Historically, some universities have considered underage drinking as a rite of manhood, and others have viewed as a result of overactive youthful hormones. Other universities have biomedicalized drunken public behavior by putting students in the infirmary overnight. A growing number of universities are using a criminal model by calling in local police. Even though the drinking behavior in each university may follow a variety of patterns in each university, administrators have focused on just one aspect, giving it symbolic importance. How do your university’s administrators deal with drunken public behavior or underage drinking in dorms? What symbols of the behavior have they focused on?