On knowing and not knowing in the anthropology of medicine / edited by Roland Littlewood.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Littlewood, Roland.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Medical anthropology.

Traditional medicine--Cross-cultural studies.

Traditional medicine.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (246 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Walnut Creek, CA : Left Coast Press, c2007.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Social scientific studies of medicine typically assume that systems of medical knowledge are uniform and consistent. But while anthropologists have long rejected the notion that cultures are discrete, bounded, and rule-drive entities, medical anthropology has been slower to develop alternative approaches to understanding cultures of health. This provocative volume considers the theoretical, methodological, and ethnographic implications of the fact that medical knowledge is frequently dynamic, incoherent, and contradictory, and that and our understanding of it is necessarily incomplete and part

Contents:

The importance of knowing about not knowing / Murray Last

Coconuts and syphilis : an essay in overinterpretation / Roland Littlewood

On "medical system" and questions in fieldwork / Gilbert Lewis

Explanatory models and oversystematization in medical anthropology / Simon Dein

The ambivalence of integrative medicine / Guido Giarelli

Not knowing about defecation / Sjaak van der Geest

Christianity, tradition, AIDS, and pornography : knowing sex in western Kenya / P. Wenzel Geissler and Ruth J. Prince

Feeling and borderlinking in Yaka healing arts / Ren Devisch

On knowing and not knowing in Latvian psychiatric consultations / Vieda Skultans

Farewell to fieldwork? : constraints in anthropological research in violent situations / Els van Dongen

Neutralizing the young : the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission and youth / Pamela Reynolds

In touch without touching : Islam and healing / David Parkin.

Notes:

First published 2007 by Left Coast Press, Inc.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on metadata supplied by the publisher and other sources.

ISBN:

1-315-42331-6

1-315-42332-4

1-315-42333-2

1-59874-778-9

9781315423333

OCLC:

645641517