Introduction: Health And Disease In The Regional Context

This section focuses on selected diseases and conditions that are prevalent in the Arab world. It includes chapters on nutritional problems, infectious diseases, the major non-communicable diseases and their risk factors, mental disorders, and injuries. These conditions are commonly examined in the medical and public health literatures, and mortality and morbidity indicators guide the work of clinicians and policy makers in this region and elsewhere.We suggest that this standard approach is insufficient for understanding health and disease in the Arab world, or anywhere else. For decades this insufficiency has been pointed out by anthropologists and others based on ethnographic research, which reveals not only what conditions motivate what kind of health-seeking behaviors, but the very meanings attached to specific positive and negative conditions. Researchers such as Giacaman et al (2010) write about these states as actually a continuum between "ease" and "dis-ease," reflecting different states of health at particular moments in time.The standard approach, and its associated indicators, does not capture non-professional sources of knowledge and insights into health. Lay-persons' points of view do matter. These often reveal what strictly biomedical conceptions do not: connections between body and mind, and individual bodies and families and society at large. They underscore the dynamic and syncretic nature of lay-persons' understanding of health and illness; in an increasingly globalized world, many ideas, medicines, technologies, and images shape people's notions about their health (Ghannam 2010). These "popular" connections may also suggest new hypotheses for research and new ways of conceiving interventions beyond the usual individual-focused prevention or treatment. Fundamentally, they tell us about what defines well-being and the greatest threats to it, and many of these are outside a strictly biomedical purview.Our chapter is organized into three parts. The first addresses the problematic definition of "health," most commonly conceived of in the negative, by its absence. Health is the absence of pain, for example. This "double negative," in fact, needs to be challenged. The second offers a critical examination of "disease," that is, universally recognized morbidities and other negative outcomes. The third part highlights new approaches to research on health and disease, notably self-rated health and quality of life and well-being studies.