Healing Logics: Culture and Medicine in Modern Health Belief Systems

By Erika Brady

Scholars in folklore and anthropology are more directly involved invarious aspects of medicine--such as medical education, clinical pastoralcare, and negotiation of transcultural issues--than ever before. Oldmodels of investigation that artificially isolated "folk medicine,""complementary and alternative medicine," and "biomedicine" as mutuallyexclusive have proven too limited in exploring the real-lifecomplexities of health belief systems as they observably exist and areapplied by contemporary Americans. Recent research strongly suggeststhat individuals construct their health belief systmes from diversesources of authority, including community and ethnic tradition,education, spiritual beliefs, personal experience, the influence ofpopular media, and perception of the goals and means of formal medicine.Healing Logics explores the diversity of these belief systems and howthey interact--in competing, conflicting, and sometimes remarkablycongruent ways. This book contains essays by leading scholars in thefield and a comprehensive bibliography of folklore and medicine.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0874214106
• ISBN13: 9780874214109
• Release Date: April 2001
• Publisher: Utah State University Press
• Length: 296 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Interesting Articles on Folk Medicine

The articles in this book are intriguing and well-written. They deal with ways to understand traditional and unorthodox health practices within their own communities. The writers are especially interested in relationships between scientific medicine and alternative/complementary medicine. There is a great range of approaches and interests, and the book provides numerous ways to examine how various types of knowledge are valued and devalued in relation to health care. My major critique of the overall project is that it doesn't fully deal with the tension between the need to engage in scientific inquiry while working to understand traditional health care beliefs and practices that stand in contrast to scientific methods and theories.