Indigenous Theories of Contagious Disease

By Edward C. Green

Book Overview

Far from being the province of magic, witchcraft, and sorcery, indigenous understanding of contagious disease in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world very often parallels western concepts of germ theory, according to the author. Labeling this 'indigenous contagion theory (ICT), ' Green synthesizes the voluminous ethnographic work on tropical diseases and remedies_as well as 20 years of his own studies and interventions on sexually transmitted diseases, AIDS, and traditional healers in southern Africa_to demonstrate how indigenous peoples generally conceive of contagious diseases as having naturalistic causes. His groundbreaking work suggests how western medical practitioners can incorporate ICT to better help native peoples control contagious diseases.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0761989412
• ISBN13: 9780761989417
• Release Date: January 1999
• Publisher: Altamira Press
• Length: 311 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.2" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Outstanding study

Green ranks among the foremost practitioners of applied medical anthropology who work in developing societies. His focused contract work and extensive published scholarship reflect a strong commitment to separating myth from reality in public health and medical pluralism. In this book, focused mainly on Subsaharan Africa, he exposes the practical and theoretical underpinnings of indigenous systems of medical knowledge, ignorance of which limits the value of biomedical treatment and stifles beneficial collaboration. Green argues that biomedicine has been handicapped and diminished by its failure to learn about and work with pre-exisiting, indigenous medicine. Many problems mirror this weakness, including child survival efforts and STD and HIV/AIDS control. Ironically, as 21st Century begins, biomedicine remains politically powerful, yet it is conceptually and therapeutically underdeveloped in its ability to advance human health in Africa and the developing world. Green?s careful, balanced analysis of indigenous theories of contagious disease is an antidote for ignorance. His book represents a crucial first step toward abandoning inter-cultural and professional prejudices that hinder best practices in healing, wellness, and community health. He argues that popularized theories of disease causation in Africa, including witchcraft, sorcery ,and magic, have fostered a "myth of excessive supernaturalism." This myth has evolved with little reference to ethnographic facts and is part of the belief system of Western-educated anthropologists and medical professionals. Acceptance of this particular "story" of disease causation has helped entrench a theoretically unsound basis for biomedical praxis in multicultural settings. Green asserts that indigenous African etiologic models reflect a high prevalence of ideas about naturalisitic and impersonal causes, much of which is linked to contagion and pollution. The models and evidence he discovered do not support the notion that supernatural forces reign paramount in African disease frameworks. Instead, Africans emphasize naturalistic and impersonal causes of illness, rather than human agency and unseen forces. Green?s aims to create a more balanced view of ethnomedicine and to make the case for an Indigenous Contagion Theory (ICT). This, he believes, can help to foster mutual awareness of common ground shared by the two systems. The etiologic overlap holds promise as a basis for cooperation between biomedicine and traditional healers. Early chapters review a broad spectrum of African health beliefs and etiologies, Bantu ideas about pollution and other forms of contagion, and the relationship of disease resistance and the internal snake/equilibrium concept. These are followed mid-book by essays about notions of contagion in childhood diarrhea, STDs and AIDS (arguably the finest chapter) , and infectious diseases such as malaria, TB, Bilharzia, epilepsy, and other syndromes identified with specific ethnic grou

Interesting

This book contains a variety of information about how people (mostly Africans) without an extensive formal education view contagious disease. Green reports that traditional healers and their patients throughout Africa attribute diseases such as AIDs, diarrhea, and tuberculosis to such things as poor hygiene or promiscuity rather than to witchcraft or black magic. He goes on to argue that since traditional healers are so much more numerous, accessible, and approachable than medical practitioners, public health programs must include them rather than dismiss their work out of hand, noting that their theories of contagious disease aren't irreconcilable with medical accounts after all. As a general anthropological book, the coverage is a little disappointing since it focuses so closely on Africa- -I would have liked to have seen more comparisons of theories of disease held by people of other cultures with similar levels of education. Green tends to assume that readers have fairly extensive knowledge of both medical and anthropological terminology, since he uses words like "etiology" and "fontanel" without explanation. Overall, this book should be of interest to medical anthropologists, particularly those specializing in African cultures.

Well-written, innovative approach to cross-cultural healing

Anthropologist Edward Green once again has produced an important and highly readable contribution to the fields of medical anthropology and international development work. In his latest book based on decades of extensive fieldwork and development assistance in Africa, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere, the author of STD and AIDS in Africa and other pioneering works has deepened his examination of indigenous healing and disease prevention strategies. This innovative study models an effective bridge and integration between what Green terms "indigenous theories of contagious disease" (or "ITC"), with Western biomedical norms of disease etiology and treatment. His thoughtful, measured analysis of ITC and its implications for public health arrives as a long-awaited and crucial response to the all-too-frequent dismissal of -- if not downright opposition to -- indigenous healing practices and belief systems on the part of foreign aid workers, development "experts" and often even by Western-educated nationals of African and other developing regions. Green's creative ideas for integrating ITC with biomedicine are of paramount and timely importance towards addressing a number of today's health plagues, from AIDS to TB, malaria and a host of other contagious scourges. As he reasons, "We do no injustice to science and medicine, and certainly not to public health, if we build on - rather than ignore or confront - indigenous contagion beliefs in our attempts to mitigate the ravages of infectious diseases" (p. 18).The author clearly strives to avoid either/or polarizations in his analysis of ITC's potential - and above all fundamentally down-to-earth -- contributions to efficacious public health prevention and patient care. As one cogent example:"Critics of the approach of this book might argue that it is impossible to separate ethnomedical beliefs that are traditional from those that have been influenced - perhaps heavily so - by Western biomedical ideas and education. My response is that African ethnomedicine, like African religion, seems always to have been an open, changing, adaptive system that incorporates new ideas and beliefs even if it reworks them to suit existing beliefs. And, from a practical viewpoint, it does not matter how much biomedical ideas about, for example, microbes has influenced indigenous "germ" theories of unseen insects. What is important is the nature and content of the present belief system, however blended and syncretistic it might be. The fact that some Swazi bogobela - master healers who train initiates - teach that bilharzia [Schistosomiasis] is caused by snail-contaminated water only proves that new, foreign ideas have been adapted and adopted into the present etiological system by its most conservative and influential participants. It is the present belief system - not an imagined pure system of the past - that needs to be understood by those in public health who would influence po