This thesis examines the meanings of naturopathy through the experiences of twelve women with refugee backgrounds involved in naturopathic treatment at the Victorian Foundation for Survivors of Torture (Foundation House), a refugee torture and trauma rehabilitation service in Melbourne, Australia. The findings of this research show that the naturopathic encounter provided a transformative and meaningful meeting place for healing, a place in which the women felt at ease and in place.At Foundation House naturopathy has been practised alongside counselling since 1989, two years after the organisation’s inception. The women I interviewed for this project came from diverse sociocultural backgrounds and a wide range of countries including Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Afghanistan, Somalia, Burma and Serbia.The thesis brings together two contemporary fields of practice: Western models of refugee health care and traditional medicine. It argues for the place of non-biomedical approaches in refugee health care in a Western setting. The thesis takes an interdisciplinary approach to theorise the naturopathic encounter. The distinction between holistic and reductionist perspectives on health, illness and the body is underpinned by the theoretical work of medical anthropologists Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Margaret Lock and that of medical sociologist Aaron Antonovsky. A cultural studies perspective, influenced by the work of embodiment scholar Elspeth Probyn is employed to theorise these women’s experiences of the naturopathic encounter.This qualitative study is based on in-depth interviews and draws on grounded theory as an approach to data analysis. Descriptions of respite, renewal, and healing in the naturopathic encounter are cited as the most observable themes emerging from the women’s stories. These themes represent a health-oriented, as opposed to a disease-focused, perspective. Importantly, a health-orientated approach is congruent with the core tenets of naturopathic philosophy. Listening to the body is a crucial therapeutic tool in the naturopathic encounter, where primacy is given to supporting and strengthening health-creating strategies. I argue that this orientation disrupts the existing dominant biomedical approach to refugee health care. I draw on the work of Probyn to theorise the movement from the naturopathic encounter (NE) to the naturopathic meeting place (NMP). Central to this transposition is Probyn’s articulation of the body’s awareness of being in and out of place. This awareness lends itself to an understanding of the connectedness between past and present in the bridge-making that these particular refugee women have engaged in across cultures in the NMP.The thesis addresses an important but often neglected focus in refugee research: the resilience and agency of refugees. This positive aspect of refugee recovery is revealed in the research by theorising the women’s stories through Probyn’s embodiment analysis and cognisance of the ‘everyday’ as a productive and creative process. The research interrupts the ubiquitous image of the ‘disempowered refugee victim’. It highlights the practical wisdom and agency of these particular women that is often overshadowed in the complex resettlement process. It makes a call for further health-orientated research to broaden and deepen our understanding of the refugee experience.

Pregnancy and birth are not only physiological processes but also socially and culturally organized events. Pregnancy is an individual experience as well as the focus of collective concerns and values. In this dissertation the pregnant body is understood as an arena of social truths and contesting perspectives: a public stage where different perspectives on medical technology, risk and gender are acted out. Swedish maternity care dominates the arena, and women have to adjust to the authority of medical knowledge. This, however, does not mean that women comply without questions. As the study shows they struggle for voice and agency which is reflected in pregnant women’s differing views and uses of biomedical knowledge and technology. Although the discourse on pregnancy and birth is highly ideological and marked by strong opinions, pregnant women in practice tend to be motivated by pragmatics rather than ideology. In order to understand the complexities and nuances of reproductive culture in Sweden, we need to move beyond distinctions such as the one between technology and the body, and instead focus on the experiential world of pregnant women in which technology is an integral part in everyday life and therefore taken for granted rather than problematised. The thesis is based on fieldwork at a maternity care center and interviews with pregnant women. Furthermore, discussion groups on the Internet and debates in mass media have been valuable sources of information. / Avhandlingen finns att köpa som tryckt bok för 120 SEK exkl. frakt. Maila birgitta.hellmark@comhem.se

In this Master's of Public Issues Anthropology thesis I examine the perceptions of health and healthcare services within a small rural subsistence farming community in South-Western Paraguay from a political ecology of health perspective. Qualitative research data was collected from May to September of 2010 in Lindo Manantial, a subsistence farming village, and Piribebuy, the closest town to Lindo Manantial and the location of the nearest health centre, the Piribebuy Centro de Salud. The primary goals of this research project were to gain an ethnographic understanding of current local health perspectives and concerns, as well as the local frameworks for health provision in Piribebuy. I argue that the introduction of culturally competent healthcare services could greatly improve individual and community health statuses and outcomes in Lindo Manantial and other similar rural subsistence farming communities in Paraguay. / Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC)

This thesis explores the ontological content of the integration of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in biomedical education, through a critical exploration of “CAM" policy related documents from the World Bank, the World Health Organization and Health Canada, as a means of contextualizing "CAM" in biomedical education. It also interrogates curriculum documents from a project that seeks to standardize “CAM” in biomedical education. This thesis suggests that there are ontological parallels to the colonial era conversion of indigenous medicine evoked in the contemporary 'integration' of CAM in biomedical education.

As the second decade of AIDS draws to a close, researchers and others involved in the AIDS effort have come to appreciate that complex interactions between social, cultural, biological and economic forces are involved in shaping the epidemiological course of the disease. Nevertheless, the process by which these variables interact and affect each other remains poorly understood, with many of the shaping forces yet to be fully explored. In South Africa, the sociocultural matrix in which the AIDS epidemic is embedded and its role in shaping the interpretation and experience of AIDS have not been fully analyzed. This thesis represents an attempt to elucidate the finer nuances of some commonly-held local beliefs, perceptions, symbolic representations, ethnomedical explanatory models and mythologies associated with AIDS. These associations are viewed as directly informing the way in which Zulu-speaking people are experiencing and responding to HIV/AIDS in KwaZulu Natal, currently home to 1/3 of the country's estimated 3 million HIV infected people. In particular, the focus is on the gender patterning of AIDS, with ethnographic data drawn from extensive field experience at St Wendolin's Mission, a peri-urban settlement in the Marianhill district of Durban. The shared perception of women as naturally 'dirty', as sexually 'out of control' and suspected of using witchcraft in new ways, are identified and discussed as key conceptual strands contributing to the sociocultural construction of HIV/AIDS in that community. It is argued that these notions are metaphorically joining and combining in ways that 'gender' the AIDS epidemic and simultaneously 'demonize' women. The central tenet of this thesis is that HIV/AIDS is fundamentally associated with women as a female caused and transmitted disease that can and does affect men. The author argues that the gendered construction of AIDS in St Wendolin's is a reflection of patriarchal resistance to women's changing roles and expectations that represent an overstepping of culturally defined moral boundaries. Deeply embedded ways of thinking associated with notions of gender are viewed as germane to the disempowerment of women that ultimately impedes the fight against HIV/AIDS. The thesis concludes with a discussion on the opportunity which the current AIDS epidemic presents for wider sociocultural transformation, and how this might be achieved through an AIDS 'education for liberation' based on the philosophies of Paulo Freire. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1999.

Whereas there has been much interest amongst anthropologists in the West in studying diseases such as Type II Diabetes Mellitus, there appears to be a paucity of local anthropological studies that analyse the social and cultural dimensions of this disease. In this country, according to the South African Diabetes Association, this disease is most prevalent in the South African Indian population. This study focuses on the South African Indian community in the suburb of Reservoir Hills, Durban, and examines socio-cultural issues around diabetes. Previous research conducted overseas has demonstrated a strong link: between rapid socio-economic changes that affect diet and lifestyle, and increases in the incidence of this disease among particular communities. This dissertation represents an attempt to: 1. Document salient features of the lifestyle, food beliefs and habits of the Indian population. 2. Discuss significant changes in lifestyle and diet that may have contributed to the rise of this disease among the Indian population. 3. Through an analysis of common discourse, analyse and record the thoughts and feelings of research participants regarding the disease and the manner in which they cope with diabetes. Case studies are used to support the author's arguments and an attempt is made to use the research findings to identify ways for community members to better cope with the disease. A number of suggestions and recommendations from medical experts with an interest in diet and lifestyle on prevention and management of diabetes are included in the study. The author argues that a few relatively simple lifestyle/diet changes may have the effect of lowering the high incidence of diabetes in the South African Indian population. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2001.

Ce mémoire explore le parcours de guérison de pratiquants du Yoga Sivananda dans un contexte de réenchantement du monde. Les répondants ont été recrutés à l'ashram Sivananda de Val-Morin (Québec) qui a été défini comme un territoire transnational et cosmopolite favorisant l'hybridité religieuse et l'accès à des ressources symboliques et thérapeutiques multiples. À travers une approche phénoménologique qui privilégie la subjectivité de l'individu, nous proposons d'identifier les facteurs-clés de guérison propres à chacun des répondants et d'observer comment ils composent avec les univers de sens et les diverses représentations du corps, de la maladie et de la guérison qui circulent dans la société. Nous définirons la place qu'occupe la ressource spirituelle à l'intérieur de ce parcours et comment la ressource biomédicale s'ancre à l'intérieur de la ressource spirituelle. Nous verrons comment les personnes bricolent leur propre système de représentations et s'arrangent pour donner un sens à la maladie et la réinscrire dans une dimension holiste, tout en profitant pour la plupart de la technologie du système biomédical, ceci pour multiplier les chances de guérison. Il a été présumé que le déclenchement des mécanismes de guérison dépend de la subjectivité de la personne et que celle-ci contient – au moins en partie – les clés de sa guérison. Ces clés sont propres à chacun et la recherche démontre que chaque parcours est unique. Aussi, en faisant référence à cette subjectivité, la question principale de ce mémoire est-elle de savoir à quoi les répondant attribuent leur guérison. / This dissertation explores the healing journey of Sivananda yoga practioners in the context of the re-enchantment of the world. All respondents have been recruited at Sivananda Ashram in Val-Morin (Quebec) which has been defined as a transnational cosmopolitan territory that stimulates religious hybridity and promotes access to multiple symbolic and therapeutic resources. Through a phenomenological approach that emphasises the subjectivity of the individual, we propose to identify the key factors of healing proper to each interviewee are identified and to observe how they deal with worlds of meanings and various representations of the body, illness and healing circulating throughout society. We will define the position of the spiritual resource within this journey and observe how the biomedical resource is embedded in this spiritual resource. We are interested in how individuals are building up their own system of representations and manage to find a meaning to their illness and enlarge the scope of it beyond a holistic dimension while taking at the same time advantage of the biomedical technology in order to multiply their chances of healing. In my approach, I assume that the triggering of self-healing mechanisms depends upon the subjectivity of the individuals and that this subjectivity contains the keys of their healing. These keys are proper to each person and the research shows that each journey is unique. So, regarding this subjectivity, the main question of this thesis is to what participants attribute their healing.

No description available.

The focus of this thesis is an AIDS education programme targeting prostitutes in the industrial town of Thika, Kenya. The thesis challenges three key assumptions underlying the programme, namely: (1) prostitutes in Kenya form a readily identifiable, homogenous social category; (2) medically, they are a source of HIV-infection, and a risk group due to their sexual activity; (3) once provided with knowledge about AIDS transmission and prevention, they have the incentive, and the means to modify their risk behaviour. The notions of "prostitution", "risk", and "responsibility", as assumed in the medical discourse of the programme, are contrasted with those found in the narratives of local health workers and the women involved in the programme. The incongruences in these sets of understandings have implications for the interpretation of epidemiological findings and the planning of AIDS prevention programmes in general. By lending an overall priority ranking to the risk factor of sexual behaviour, the epidemiological paradigm informing the programme masks social and economic co-factors placing women at risk, as well as the role of men in transmission of the HIV-virus. Further, the paradigm ignores important factors in the motivation of health behaviour, namely, the relative significance that women attribute to the risk of AIDS, as well as their envisaged control over health.

Biculturalism is a relationship in government between the British Crown and the indigenous [Māori] people of New Zealand. I show that this relationship permeated some Māori healing practitioners’ healing knowledge and perception. A key way in which this occurred was through the practitioners recognizing biological and social boundaries between Māori and Pākehā [New Zealanders of European descent]. A second was through the practitioners’ embodiment of connections with social groups including the nation, a history and present shared between Māori and Pākehā and an idealized pre-contact past. A fundamental principle of Te Oo Mai Reia was that for the practitioners to harness the power of the various forces that sustained life they had to be in touch with their whakapapa [genealogy] for it was through their ancestors that they could commune with the Ultimate Deity, Io, the source of the most potent of all forces of life. A further key principle was that spiritually inspired and traditional Māori culture heightened the wellbeing of Māori, not modern, Pākehā culture. Spiritual and ancient knowledge was supra-conscious and made knowable through an embodied awareness of self and other. To make my argument I draw on literature inspired by Foucault that shows how states govern by implementing their operations and securing their penetration into the citizenry by drawing and building upon pre-existing bodies of knowledge and relations of power. I also draw on literature that shows how the human body bears the effects of such practices of government. To this literature I integrate perception by showing how, in this Māori healing context, the government of the bicultural nation-state worked through the ways the practitioners made sense with the body (especially through feeling, seeing and touching).