Medical anthropology is one of the youngest and most dynamic of the various subdisciplines within anthropology. Critical medical anthropology has evolved into one of the major perspectives through which faculty and students study the field: it makes connections between the macro-level of the capitalist world and the micro-level of the patient's beliefs about and experiences with disease.

While critical medical anthropology draws heavily on neo-Marxian, critical, and world systems theoretical perspectives, it attempts to incorporate the theoretical contribution of other systems in medical anthropology, including biocultural or medical ecology, ethnomedical approaches, cultural constructivism, poststructuralism, and postmodernism. This is the first textbook to incorporate this perspective.