Elsevier

Nature Sciences Sociétés

Volume 5, Issue 4, October–December 1997, Pages 5-11
Nature Sciences Sociétés

Une approche écoanthropologique de la santé publiqueAn eco-anthropological approach to public health*

https://doi.org/10.1016/S1240-1307(97)87680-7Get rights and content

Abstract

Under the joint influences of anthropology and ecology, medical thinking is being steered into radical new avenues in which simple linear approaches (a given cause produces a given effect, a germ generates a disease) are no longer adequate. In the philosophy of what may be termed ‘eco-medicine”, disease can only be understood by taking into account the full complex of relations - cultural, social and biological - between Man and the environment. The unit of study in these approaches is no longer the individual but the total population. Beyond purely medical issues, questions about Man's adaptability to the environment and the environment's adaptability to Man are explored. New geographic and ecological concepts, such as the pathogenic complex, epidemiological landscape or pathocenosis, need to be integrated into the medical reasoning process. This interdisciplinary conception, grounded in the nature-biology-society triangle, concerns all aspects and branches of public health: the relations between food, health and development, cultural attitudes regarding the perception of the physical and social environment and their changes, the genetic or acquired predisposition to diseases, interbreeding and migrations and their epidemiological consequences, population growth, the rise of new diseases due in particular to urbanisation, etc. The article demonstrates the need for future public health policies to take these new approaches into consideration.

Résumé

Sous l'influence de l'anthropologie d'une part, de l'écologie d'autre part, la pensée médicale connaît une évolution déterminante, au terme de laquelle on ne peut plus raisonner de façon simplement linéaire. Dans le cadre de ce que l'on pourrait appeler l'éco-médecine, la compréhension de la maladie passe par une appréhension globale des relations tant culturelles et sociales que biologiques entre l'Homme et le milieu. De nouveaux concepts, comme celui de complexe pathogène, de paysage épidémiologique ou de pathocénose, doivent être intégrés au raisonnement. Cette conception interdisciplinaire, inscrite dans le triangle nature-biologie-société, intéresse tous les domaines de la santé publique.

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    *

    Communication présentée au colloque NSS, Écologie et Politique, Paris, décembre 1995

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