Anthropology 499 examines the notion that health and illness are not entities in themselves but rather culturally constituted means of both representing and shaping human experience and reality. The course looks at different medical systems within particular cultural contexts. It also investigates several important themes including healers, medical pluralism, Indigenous medicine, the political economy of health and illness, the medicalization of social life, and the relationship between belief and the construction of clinical realities. The main theoretical approaches in medical anthropology are analyzed in the context of their strengths and weaknesses, which helps explain the ideologies and practices behind each system.