This research thesis explores how healers in the Peruvian Upper Amazon experience and negotiate their roles and knowledge systems at the interface of Amazonian, Western scientific and other medical knowledge systems at the confluence of community and environmental health. Experiences of identity, practice and place feature in this research among selected healers in the region of San Martín, Peru. Relationships with nature have sustained Indigenous populations in this region, and economic pursuits of natural resources have attracted many populations to the Upper Peruvian Amazon, making it an interesting site for the analysis of healers’ experiences at the interface of different knowledge systems. An emergent objective of this thesis has been to provide what healers in the region expressed to me as a need for an experiential approach to research on local medical knowledge systems. The resulting thesis is an ethnography of my experiences learning from healers and plant teachers about intercultural health initiatives on a regional level in Peru.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVIV.1828/261 |
| Date | 04 December 2007 |
| Creators | Sieber, Claire Louise |
| Contributors | Matwychuk, Margo L. |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Rights | Available to the World Wide Web |
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