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Nowadays a plethora of treatment technologies is available to the consumer, each employing a variety of concepts of the body, self, sickness and healing. This volume explores the options, strategies and consequences that are both relevant and necessary for patients and practitioners who are manoeuvring this medical plurality. Although wideranging in scope and covering areas as diverse as India, Ecuador, Ghana and Norway, central to all contributions is the observation that technologies of healing are founded on socially learned and to some extent fluid experiences of body and self.
List of contents
List of Tables
List of Figures
Preface
by
Thomas Csordas List of Contributors
Chapter 1. Introduction: Body and Self in Medical Pluralism
Helle Johannessen PART I: BODY, SELF AND SOCIALITY Chapter 2. Demographic Background and Health Status of Users of Alternative Medicine: A Hungarian Example
László Buda,
Kinga Lampek and
Tamás Tahin Chapter 3. Táltos Healers, Neoshamans and Multiple Medical Realities in Postsocialist Hungary
Imre Lázár Chapter 4. 'The Double Face of Subjectivity': A Case Study in a Psychiatric Hospital (Ghana)
Kristine Krause Chapter 5. German Medical Doctors' Motives for Practising Homoeopathy, Acupuncture or Ayurveda
Robert Frank and
Gunnar Stollberg Chapter 6. Pluralisms of Provision, Use and Ideology: Homoeopathy in South London
Christine A. Barry Chapter 7. Re-examining the Medicalisation Process
Efrossyni Delmouzou PART II: BODY, SELF AND THE EXPERIENCE OF HEALING Chapter 8. Healing and the Mind-body Complex: Childbirth and Medical Pluralism in South Asia
Geoffrey Samuel Chapter 9. Self, Soul and Intravenous Infusion: Medical Pluralism and the Concept of samay among the Naporuna in Ecuador
Michael Knipper Chapter 10. Experiences of Illness and Self: Tamil Refugees in Norway Seeking Medical Advice
Anne Sigfrid Grønseth Chapter 11. The War of the Spiders: Constructing Mental Illnesses in the Multicultural Communities of the Highlands of Chiapas
Witold Jacorzynski Chapter 12. Epilogue: Multiple Medical Realities: Reflections from Medical Anthropology
Imre Lázár and
Helle Johannessen Index
About the author
Helle Johannessen had a PhD in anthropology from University of Copenhagen and conducted research and teaching in medical anthropology from the mid-1980s. She was associate professor at the Institute of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark, where she was head of a research unit and a PhD program for social studies in medicine. In her research she studied medical pluralism in Denmark and Europe. She was involved with a comparative study of the use of complementary medicine among cancer patients in Denmark, Italy and India. She died in 2018.
Imre Lazar graduated as a medical doctor from Semmelweis University of Medicine and in 1999 became an expert of occupational medicine. He has a Master's Degree in Medical Anthropology from the Brunel University and a Ph.D. in Behavioral Sciences from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Since the foundation of the Institute of Behavioural Sciences at Semmelweis University, Lazar has been teaching in the Medical Anthropology department and in 2004 he became its head. He is also associate professor at the Institute of Communication and Social Sciences, K.roli G.sp.r University of Reformed Church, Budapest.
Summary
Nowadays a plethora of treatment technologies is available to the consumer, each employing a variety of concepts of the body, self, sickness and healing. This volume explores the options, strategies and consequences that are both relevant and necessary for patients and practitioners who are manoeuvring this medical plurality.
Additional text
“…an intriguing collection of articles exploring medical pluralism and bodily experiences from a largely European perspective.” · American Anthropologist
