Patients, Doctors and Healers: Medical Worlds Among the Mapuche in Southern Chile

ISBN-13: 9783319970301 / Angielski / Twarda / 2019 / 228 str.

Dorthe Brogard Kristensen

Opis

While previous publications on Mapuche Indians concern analysis of shamanic historical consciousness and healing rituals or broader anthropological debates about indigenous peoples in South America, this book is a more strictly medical anthropoligical piece from the patient's perspective in a context of medical pluralism.

Recenzje

"The book is a good and timely contribution to the ethnographic study of Mapuche medical practices and medical pluralism in Chile. It will be greatly enjoyed by social scientists working on indigenous issues both in Chile and Latin America, as well as by medical anthropologists working on medical pluralism, therapeutic efficacies, postcolonialism, and indigenous medicine and witchcraft practices within modern nation-states." (Adelaida Barros Cajdler, Anthropos, Vol. 115 (1), 2020)

Spis treści

1. Illness Stories, Medical Choices and Socio-Political Process

2. The History, Culture and Politics of Chile

3. Complex Illnesses and Complementary Cures

4. Indigenous Disease Categories, Medical Dialogues and Social Positions

5. Being Mapuche in Modern Chile: Illness Experiences, Medical Choices and Social Positions

6. Uncanny Memories, Violence and Indigenous Medicine

7. The Shaman, the Virgin and the Taxation Authorities

8. Conclusion: The Control of Medicine, the Control of Bodies

O autorze

Dorthe Brogård Kristensen is Associate Professor of Consumption Studies at the University of Southern Denmark. Her current interests include health, food, consumption, technologies and medical pluralism. 

Blurb

Recognizing the interplay between biomedicine and indigenous medicine among the Mapuche in Southern Chile, this book explores notions of culture and personhood through the bodily experiences and medical choices of patients. Through case studies of patients in the context of medical pluralism,  Kristensen argues that medical practices are powerful social symbol indicative of overarching socio-political processes. As certain types of extreme and violent experiences–known as olvidos–lack a framework that allows them to be expressed openly, they therefore surface as symptoms of an illness, often with no apparent organic pathology. In these contexts, indigenous medicine, thanks to its sensitivity to socio-political contexts, provides a space for articulation and management of collective experiences and suffering among patients in Southern Chile.