Krumeich A, Weijts W, Reddy P, Meijer-Weitz A
Departments of Health Ethics and Philosophy, and Health Education, Maastricht University, PO Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands.
Health Educ Res. 2001 Apr;16(2):121-30. doi: 10.1093/her/16.2.121.
In recent years health education practitioners have been looking for ways to extend the social psychological analysis of human behavior with approaches that focus on the cultural and social context of human behavior. In this article the value of the 'thick description' approach, borrowed from anthropology, is explored by examples from the Caribbean and South Africa. It demonstrates that an anthropological approach has much to offer as a basis for sound interventions for understanding human behavior. However, although an anthropological approach offers valuable starting points for interventions, its broad scope exceeds the traditional goals of health education (changing health beliefs, health counseling). Interventions will not aim at informing individuals, but at improving cultures. They may concern the change of basic cultural and social structures such as gender roles. To limit the risk of ethnocentrism, adequate ways need to be developed to make optimal use of the information thick description offers, while avoiding ethnocentrism. The article ends with a discussion concerning the assets of a dialogical approach towards health promotion. A dialogue between health promoters and their target population may help solve the problem of ethnocentrism in broadly scoped interventions.
近年来，健康教育从业者一直在寻找方法，通过关注人类行为的文化和社会背景的方法来扩展对人类行为的社会心理分析。在本文中，借鉴人类学的“深度描述”方法的价值，通过来自加勒比地区和南非的例子进行了探讨。它表明，人类学方法作为理解人类行为的合理干预措施的基础有很多可提供的。然而，尽管人类学方法为干预提供了有价值的起点，但其广泛的范围超出了健康教育的传统目标（改变健康观念、健康咨询）。干预措施将不以告知个体为目标，而是以改善文化为目标。它们可能涉及基本文化和社会结构的变化，如性别角色。为了限制种族中心主义的风险，需要开发适当的方法，以充分利用深度描述提供的信息，同时避免种族中心主义。文章最后讨论了对话式健康促进方法的优点。健康促进者与其目标人群之间的对话可能有助于解决广泛干预措施中的种族中心主义问题。
