Week 4: Background Search- Library resources

1. Electronic Reference
  • I chose to use Sage eReference for my search and the book that I chose to use was The Encyclopedia of Anthropology and the entry title was “Ethnomedicine”  http://ntserver1.wsulibs.wsu.edu:2090/10.4135/9781412952453.n302
  • Some new information that I found from this source are: Founding people in the field including William Caudill and Stephen Polgar. More detailed descriptions of what ethnomedicine and traditional medicine represent such as explanatory models and health constructs. I also found that there is a differentiation between “old ethnomedicine” and “new ethnomedicine”; The old approach excluded biomedicine as a form of ethnomedicine while the new ethnomedicine recognizes biomedicine as a form of ethnomedicine.
  • Some subtopics that I read about were: culture bound medical disorders, types of ethnomedicine, and changes in the field of ethnomedicine over time. 
  • Potential research questions include: Does the utilization of other types of ethnomedicine create problems for biomedicine? Are they compatible or incompatible? What are some examples of culture bound medical disorders and what are the implications of such conditions from the biomedical perspective?
  • Possible future search terms include: Culture bound disorders (broad), susto (distinctive), amok, latah, koro, Ayurvedic, Unani, traditional Chinese medicine (narrow), kanopo, traditional medicine, biomedicine, ethnomedicine, ethnopharmacology, shamanism, sorcery, alternative medicine. 


This entry was much different than the Wikipedia article. It provided more detail as to what ethnomedicine entails as far as a construct and provides more history of the field. It also makes a distinction between new and old ethnomedicine in order to specifically to highlight the more recent acceptance of biomedicine as a type of ethnomedicine. This seemed to be a topic of confusion in the Wikipedia article to some degree. In Wikipedia there is mention that ethnomedicine is typically considered to include medical systems outside of biomedicine, while other parts of the article seem to acknowledge that biomedicine is ethnomedicine. There were no sub-topics included in the Sage Reference entry as they had started to do in Wikipedia with ethnopharmacology. There were also no links to other sub-topics and related information in the article itself, although there was a “see also” section with a few links and a further readings section. The Wikipedia article seems to be geared toward people with little background knowledge in anthropology while the other article seemed to assume some general knowledge in anthropology and utilized more technical concepts and scholarly language.

2.  Book from Search It
  • The book I found is titled "Transcultural research in mental health"
  • Some subject headings include: The family and the management of mental health problems in Vietnam, Suicide attempts among children in Japan, and Javanese mystical groups.
  • I can tell from the book's description that it is a compilation of scholarly articles from various authors on various topics within the realm of cross-cultural studies in mental health. 
  • In order to get a copy of the book I had to request that it be sent from the Pullman library to Vancouver. 
3. EBook from Search It
  • The Ebook that I found on my topic is called "Diversity issues in the diagnosis, treatment, and research of mood disorders".
  • Some subject headings include: Issues in diagnosis and assessment of mood disorders in minorities, culture specific diagnoses and their relationship to mood disorders, treatment modalities and culture,  health care seeking and access. 
  • From the description I can tell that it is a compilation of scholarly articles from various authors related to the topic of mood disorders from a cross cultural perspective, diversity, and challenges of care. 
  • This ebook was available to download or view through online access. 
4. Reflection 


This week was certainly beneficial even if it was mostly a review for me. While the Wikipedia article from last week provided a good starting point, looking at the Sage online encyclopedia which was more specific to anthropology cleared up some confusion about biomedicine as an ethnomedicine that I was left with after reading Wikipedia, and it provided more detail about the history of ethnomedicine and how it has changed over the years.

                The Ebook I found which I downloaded, and the book from the stacks at Pullman that I requested through interlibrary loan should be quite helpful. One of them is more sharply focused on mood disorders from a cross cultural perspective and I am looking forward to going through it to determine if this might be a good option for a much more specifically focused research topic for my medical anthropology term paper.
                I have been using the WSU databases and SearchIt for a long time now as I am a senior and have written many research papers. I have also used interlibrary loan and borrowed books from the Vancouver campus library previously so most of the lesson this week was review. One thing that I might do differently in the future would be to look at both Wikipedia and the encyclopedias in the electronic database rather than just one or the other. Both were useful in different ways and the information I found between the two gave me a much more complete picture than either alone would have. 


Comments

  1. UnknownFebruary 4, 2018 at 6:49 PM

    Sorry about the highlighting. It isn't showing up in my draft- just once I publish? I keep trying to fix it but haven't been able to figure it out so far.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousFebruary 6, 2018 at 6:12 PM

    Great job identifying your sources! I especially appreciate how you identified your reference entry from the book all the way down to the chapter you used within that book. I also appreciate the research questions that you were able to develop from this reference entry. You did a great job creating your search terms for broad, distinctive, and narrow terms. Were you able to come up with related terms? Related terms can be helpful for your research as it can give you some ideas as to how your topic relates to other research. Lastly, I really appreciate how you find using more reference sources useful to your research. You are absolutely right that using both Wikipedia and library resources can be beneficial because you can check for accuracy as well as find things that could be missing from each resource. Great job! Kimberly

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