Patients, Doctors and Healers

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 experiencesknown as olvidoslack 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.

Employs a methodological orientation that can be very enlightening not only for the case it explores in Southern Chile, but also for broader contexts of medical pluralism Performs a thorough exploration of how socioeconomics and ethnic identification pre-exist and emerge from, social practices Takes a unique approach by putting patients as the main focus and relegating medical practitioners to a secondary role

Autorentext
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.

Inhalt

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.