Anthropology Questions essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Anthropology Questions - Essay Example In contrast, social authority is the capacity to command individuals. However, the two basic features of cultural authority, legitimacy, and competency must be attained collectively as one group (Joralemon 18) Whilst people may acquire confined reputation, a profession’s aggregate conveys significant trust warrant and authority. Legitimacy is attained by competent advance of national health. For example, health professionals can provide credible data, recommend and validate medical claims, and should be leaders and be honest always. Social authority is the most suitable in western Biomedicine since most of the communities are driven by superiority complex and a command can work well for them. Question 2 Cultural competence is referred to as a set of harmonious behaviors, policies, and attitudes that merge in an agency, among professionals, or system and enable that system, professions, or that agency to work efficiently in cross-cultural circumstances. Culture in this context is used with a reason that it applies the incorporated pattern of human behavior inclusive of communications, customs, values, thoughts, actions, and institutions of an ethnic, racial, social, or religious group. Competence is a word used here as it implies having the ability to function effectively (Bae 47). In terms of operations, Joralemon defines cultural competence as the combination and transformation of knowledge concerning groups of people and individuals into specific policies, standards, attitudes, and practices used in suitable cultural settings to improve on the quality of services, thus producing better results. Medical anthropologists apply the concept of cultural competence by incorporating dialogue at individual levels, since individuals are the ones who create and endorse culture, who encounter diseases and illness, and who can clarify the variation within what we comprehend as cultures. Dialogue recognizes that culture is not necessarily language, ethnicity, and co mmon tradition as existing discourse suggest, rather that these elements join with political and socioeconomic stratifications to affect individual experiences. Medical anthropologists assume that culture labels the entirety of an individual’s experience of illnesses and continues to show patients how important cultural competency is in giving the most effective and comprehensive medical care for all patients. However, the greatest challenge in their work is that, cultural competence is considered as a technical skill, which can be merely acquired or a matter that can be simply handled by a translator. This challenge is rooted from how medicine defines culture, which contrasts with its present use in anthropology. Culture is regularly made identical with nationality, language, and ethnicity. For example, cultural competence has do’s ad don’ts, which define how to take care of a patient from a specific ethnic background. In a medical setting, cultural competence is an important concept as it equalizes power dynamics in health care that lead to those with limited power, for example those in cultural, linguistic, ethnic, or economic minority to receive a lower quality care. It also helps health providers not to believe that they have a superior and correct value system. For example, some cultures believe that when death is talked about, it accelerates life loss, yet most western health care providers view this as a wrong belief