5 August 2003

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5 August 2003

• AN203-057
• we will begin at 6.00pm

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Agenda

• Mapping project presentations
• Review/discuss Quinlan text
• Review/discuss P B text

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My role in review

• We discussed Murphy and Shostak last class
  please get info from classmates
• Our discussion last class gives a good indication
  of the sort of analysis you will be doing on the
  final exam
• I can introduce some larger points from Quinlan
  but you will need to fill in the details

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Marsha B. Quinlan, From the Bush The Front Line
of Health Care in a Caribbean Village. Toronto,
Ontario Wadsworth/Thompson, 2004.

• Medical anthropology
• Folk medicine in Dominica
• Bwa Mawego
• Rural, remote village in Dominica

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Folk medicine

• Folk simply means people
• Folk medicine, then, refers to any of the
  various remedies, behaviors, substances used in
  the course of home-treatment of an ailment
• Band-aids (cut, scrape)
• Aloe gel (sunburn)
• Advil (headaches, cramps)
• Hot tea/lemon/honey (sore throat)
• Cool bath (fever)
• Hot shower (congestion)
• Chicken soup (cold or flu)

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Folk medicine

• An important topic because most illnesses are
  treated via folk medicine rather than via a
  specialized medical practitioner (doctor, shaman,
  healer)
• 70-90 of all medical treatment in US and Taiwan
  occurs at home
• Mothers in the Saraguro of Ecuador treat 86 of
  family illness complaints

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Methodology and epistemology for studying folk
medicine . . .

• Does not involve interviewing professionals or
  experts (methodology)
• Does involve observing day-to-day lives of
  non-specialist individuals within a given
  community (methodology)
• Why? Because the information/knowledge about folk
  medicine lies with the folk (epistemology)
• The experts, therefore, in folk medicine are,
  by definition, non-medical personnel
  (epistemology)

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Methodology

• Quinlan looks at population-wide data in order to
  locate larger patterns of behavior
• Different from the key informant strategy
  employed by some ethnographers
• Collected data during 4 field trips over a 6-year
  period (1993-1999)

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Method focus

• Quinlan is interested in three main ideas
• Ethnomedicine
• Medical enculturation
• Ethnopharmacology
• Advocates a holistic view of the beliefs,
  practices, and substances of medicine (i.e.,
  medicine is a culture of its own, and varies from
  culture to culture)

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ethnomedicine

• A cultures body of beliefs about sickness
• Includes ideas about what we need to do to stay
  healthy, how we catch certain illnesses, and what
  we must do to get better
• Also includes knowledge of when and why (and from
  whom) to seek medical help when we are sick

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• http//www.tfba.org/articles.php?articleid17

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(ethno)medical enculturation

• How this body of beliefs is transferred between
  individuals
• Examples

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ethnopharmacology

• Ethnomedicine referred to the beliefs concerning
  sickness and health
• Ethnopharmacology refers to the medication itself
  (which can take a variety of forms)
• Drugs
• Plants
• Foods

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Method focus

• Quinlan is interested in three main ideas
• Ethnomedicine
• Medical enculturation
• Ethnopharmacology
• Advocates a holistic view of the beliefs,
  practices, and substances of medicine (i.e.,
  medicine is a culture of its own, and varies from
  culture to culture)

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Holistic view ??!

• Based on the premise that treatment of any sort
  (specialist or non-specialist) always involves
  the beliefs, practices, and substances which
  comprise the particular cultures perspective on
  health
• Quinlan (and others) use a three-fold method to
  ensure that anthropological analyses are holistic

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Holistic view

• Identify the health problem and how it is
  conceivably healed according to the locals (emic
  view)
• Objectively assess the remedys ability to
  produce the desired effect (etic view)
• Identify the areas of convergence and divergence
  between the emic and etic

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Quinlan

• http//www.bsudailynews.com/vnews/display.v/ART/20
  03/07/07/3f09c5525772a

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P B Thematic Review

• Fieldwork
• - Communication
• Food
• Agriculture
• Race
• Economy Business
• Gender and Socialization
• Marriage and Gender Relations
• Politics, Law, Warfare
• Religion, Ritual, Curing
• Cultural Change Globalization

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For each article

• Main point (thesis) in one sentence.
• Two most interesting ideas from the article.
• Two most important terms from the article.
• Two anthropological concepts that the article
  illustrates/addresses (e.g., methodology, emic
  view, ethnicity)
• One larger theme under which the article could be
  categorized (e.g., marriage, gender relations,
  health, etc).

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this just in

• Tonight we have to fill out course evaluation
  forms!
• I cannot be here when you fill them out so I
  will leave them here in an envelope and return at
  8.30pm
• Someone needs to volunteer to collect them and
  take them downstairs to the Continuing Ed. Office.