Pedagogical Approach

This thesis is located in medical anthropology because it grants insight into how and why people act around health and sickness in their everyday lives, the ways they deal with the challenges to health and the constraints they experience in creating healthy settings for themselves. This chapter opens with theories of medical anthropology regarding health - care and then discusses critical medical anthropology (CMA), one approach proposed within medical anthropology to take account of the fact that health and illness are not simply biomedical events, but are impacted upon by the social, political, economic and environmental contexts within which people are located. Following this approach, the notion of social capital is discussed to understand
The first is the ecological approach that examines the ways in which people adapt to their environment and how the changes they make in their environment, improve or worsen their health conditions (Leatherman & Goodman 2011:30; Townsend 2011:181-182). This approach rests upon the acceptance of adaptations, defined as behavioural or biological changes at either individuals or group levels that support people to survive in a given environment, as the core concept in the field. It focuses on understanding the connection between human biology and behaviour, as interactive sets of adaptations to ecological and social challenges (McElroy & Townsend 2009:6,193; Payne-Jackson 2011:334). A second approach to the understanding of health is the sociocultural approach, which examines the meanings, practices and interpretations that people and societies ascribe to issues of health (often linked to religion and magic) (Sobo 2004:4-5). This approach addresses psychological issues such as identity and behaviour that are closely associated with the experiences of the person (Lavenda & Schultz 2013:211). It examines cultural system of health which emphases the symbolic dimensions of the understanding of health and includes the knowledge, beliefs, perceptions and cognition used to define, classify, perceive and explain the disease such TB. Each and all cultures possess concepts of what it is to be sick or health (Langdon & Wiik 2010:465). The cultural beliefs, norms and values that are used in the classification of illness and medical systems developed for the treatment and prevention of sickness including TB (Payne-Jackson 2011:335; Wolf