Illness and Culture in the Postmodern Age

Modern medicine traditionally separates disease - an objectively varified disorder - from illness - a patient's subjective experience. Postmodern medicine, the author says, can make no such distinction, instead it demands a biocultural model, situating illness at the crossroads of biology and culture. Maladies such as chronic fatigue syndrome and post-traumatic stress disorder signal our awareness that there are biocultural ways of being sick.