The need for a taxonomy of health in the study of African therapeutics

Janzen, John M.

doi:10.1016/0160-7987(81)90045-4

Cited by 18 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…Thus Janzen avoided conceptualising health care as some sort of structural system by prioritising the endlessly negotiated strategies of afflicted people themselves. 13 Writing in the early 1980s, drawing on these theoretical contributions, and leaning rather more towards Kleinman than Janzen, Barnes-Dean describes Lugbara healing in the 1970s as being made up of sectors, between which patients make choices.…”

Section: Changing Lugbara Healing Between the 1950s And 1970smentioning

confidence: 99%

Quests for therapy in northern Uganda: healing at Laropi revisited

Allen

Storm

2012

Journal of Eastern African Studies

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Section: Changing Lugbara Healing Between the 1950s And 1970smentioning

confidence: 99%

Quests for therapy in northern Uganda: healing at Laropi revisited

Allen

Storm

2012

Journal of Eastern African Studies

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“…The comparative analysis of biomedicine revealed that it was merely one among many systems and that the rapid spread of biomedicine had neither eclipsed nor led to the disappearance of so-called traditional medical systems and practices. Leslie [28] avers that all medical systems-modern as well as traditional, are inherently dynamic and responsive to socio-political changes [1]. The spread of biomedicine did not result in the complete integration of traditional medical systems into a dominant modern system on the principle of scientific rationality.…”

Section: Biomedical Hegemony Medical Anthropology and Alternative Hementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The spread of biomedicine did not result in the complete integration of traditional medical systems into a dominant modern system on the principle of scientific rationality. In Southeast Asia for instance, the revitalisation of Aryuveda led to the development of a syncretic Aryuvedic medical tradition that co-existed in a complementary and conflictual relationship, with ritual curing and cosmopolitan medicine [28]. Similarly, practitioners in Africa and Latin America integrated antibiotic injections into ritual curing and herbal medicine [2].Chinese doctors in Tanzania skilfully administer integrated treatments that combine traditional Chinese medicines with biomedicines "for rapid effects'' [18].…”

Section: Biomedical Hegemony Medical Anthropology and Alternative Hementioning

confidence: 99%

Self-medication within the context of medical pluralism in Yaounde, Cameroon

Pemunta

Nzefa

Ngo

2019

Preprint

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BackgroundThis paper documents the experiences of patients who use the knowledge and practices of the “African chemist’’, and the determinants of this therapeutic recourse in their ‘quest for therapy’ as ‘quest for relief’ within the context of medical pluralism in Yaounde, Cameroon. MethodThe study adopts a mixed qualitative and quantitative methodological approach comprised of 30 individual in-depth interviews and the administration of 100 questionnaires to participants.ResultThis study neither found that self-medication is wholely nor exclusively preoccupied with therapy for minor physical ailments, but also for diseases and problems with perceived supernatural undertones and for the achievement of personal success and desires. It suggests that social relations, personal experiences and perceptions of trust are central to the choice of the ‘African pharmacy’ as a therapeutic recourse. ConclusionThe popularity of this informal healthcare institution that can be categorized neither under traditional healing nor under modern medicine contradicts the focus on the latter stages of the illness referral system when a patient seeks help from a specialist. This practical case of medical pluralism articulates the need to focus on the local context, on the everyday realities of illness and therapy seeking and to prioritise experiences and social relations that are often obscured in health statistics and development policies.

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“…The main focus in African ethnomedical studies has swung away from ecology back to the healer, the patient, and the world of signs and meanings which they inhabit (Prins, 1981;Ngubane, 1981;Janzen, 1981). This parallels a growing realization that western medicine, in striving for technological sophistication, has created, or failed to solve, a large number of sociological problems, e.g.…”

Section: The Ecology Of Health and Diseasementioning

confidence: 99%

Ecological Change and the Politics of African Land Use

Richards¹

1983

African Studies Review

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JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. African Studies Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to African Studies Review. INTRODUCTIONThis essay explores ground common to ecology and politics.1 It addresses the question to what extent and in what ways are ecological ideas political ideas. The discussion, divided into five man sections, endeavors to steer a course between the pitfalls of environmental determinism on the one hand and economic reductionism on the other.The first section deals with the link between population processes and land use. Explanations stressing population increase as the driving force behind agricultural change are contrasted with arguments in which demographic fluctuations are treated as responses to economic imperatives. An example of the second kind of approach is Meillassoux's attempt to reconstruct the demographic dynamic of a precapitalist, lineage, mode of production. This is but one of a number of attempts to construct models of "natural economy" as starting points for discussions of the penetration of African agriculture by capitalism. Against the assumptions on which such models are based it is argued here, and in later sections of the paper, that the demographic and ecological processes subsumed under the category "natural economy" (or alternatively, "precapitalist subsistence production") are more plausibly viewed as products of capitalism and colonialism. An example from southern Nigeria in the early colonial period is used to suggest that the kind of evidence on which Meillassoux's reconstruction is based is a complex ideological by-product of factional politics in an economy dominated by merchant capital.The second section of the paper focuses on the topic of the ecology of disease in Africa. Special attention is paid to John Ford's (1971) work on the ecology of trypanosomiasis. Critical of colonial scientific orthodoxy, and of colonialism itself (properly treated as a factor in the spread of sleeping sickness in Africa in the twentieth century), Ford's book has received some attention from Africanists in the social sciences and humanities. It is probably fair to say, however, that the originality of the book's ecological argument has yet to have its full impact on such readers. This is the justification for substantial summary of one of Ford's case studies. The significance of this case study is that is illustrates the ecological complexity characteristic of trypanosomiasis, and of a number of other African epidemic diseases, and the importance of local knowledge and initiative in African Studies Review, vol. 26, no. 2, June, 1983. 1 This content downloaded from 62.122.78.57 on Mon, 9 Jun 2014 19:30:54 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and...

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The need for a taxonomy of health in the study of African therapeutics

Cited by 18 publications

References 10 publications

Quests for therapy in northern Uganda: healing at Laropi revisited

Quests for therapy in northern Uganda: healing at Laropi revisited

Self-medication within the context of medical pluralism in Yaounde, Cameroon

Ecological Change and the Politics of African Land Use

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