A01=John M. Janzen
alternative therapies
Author_John M. Janzen
bakongo
Category=MBN
central africa
cosmopolitan medicine
cultural contexts
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
ethnographic study
healing
healing practices
health
health institutions
historical contexts
ill
ill health
illness classification
lower zaire of africa
medical decision making
medical pluralism
medical systems
medicine
patterns of healing
social transactions
symptoms
therapy
therapy classification
therapy management
treatments
Product details
- ISBN 9780520046337
- Weight: 363g
- Dimensions: 140 x 216mm
- Publication Date: 22 Jun 1982
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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In this book, Dr. John M. Janzen describes patterns of healing among the BaKongo of Lower Zaire in Africa, who, like many people elsewhere, utilize cosmopolitan medicine alongside traditional healing practices. What criteria, he asks, determine the choice of the alternative therapies? And what is their institutional interrelationship? In seeking answers, he analyzes case histories and cultural contexts to explore what social transactions, decision making, illness and therapy classifications, and resource allocations are used in the choice of therapy by the ill, their kinfolk, friends, associates, and specialized practitioners. From the Preface: this book presents an 'on the ground' ethnographic account of how medical clients of one region of Lower Zaire diagnose illness, select therapies, and evaluate treatments, a process we call 'therapy management'. The book is intended to clarify a phenomenon of which central African clients have long been cognizant, namely, that medical systems are used in combination.
Our study is aimed primarily at readers interested in the practical issues of medical decision-making in an African country, the cultural content of symptoms, and the dynamics of medical pluralism, that is, the existence in a single society of differently designed and conceived medical systems.
John M. Janzen is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Kansas. His books include Lemba 1650-1930 (1982) and Ngoma: Discourses of Healing in Central and Southern Africa (California, 1992).
