Towards a political economy of health: A critical note on the medical anthropology of the Middle East

Abstract

This paper critically reviews certain trends in the medical anthropological literature on the Middle East. It identifies and analyzes the dominant theoretical orientations found in the study of medical beliefs, folk illness, healing and competing medical systems. Data from an Egyptian village are used to illustrate some of the theoretical limitations which characterize the study of these dimensions of the indigenous Middle Eastern health system. The paper advocates a political economy perspective which undermines the idealist, reductionist and dualist approaches to the study of health and illness in the Middle East. Alternatively, it suggests that analysis of health systems requires their placement in their broader political-economic environment. Health and illness are thus conceptualized as results of historically specific social orders rather than the consequences of ideologies of obscure origins.