Patients, Doctors and Healers

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

   PDF

2. Illness Stories, Medical Choices and Socio-Political Process

   • Dorthe Brogård Kristensen

   Pages 1-37

3. The History, Culture and Politics of Chile

   • Dorthe Brogård Kristensen

   Pages 39-62

4. Complex Illnesses and Complementary Cures

   • Dorthe Brogård Kristensen

   Pages 63-101

5. Indigenous Disease Categories, Medical Dialogues and Social Positions

   • Dorthe Brogård Kristensen

   Pages 103-125

6. Being Mapuche in Modern Chile: Illness Experiences, Medical Choices and Social Positions

   • Dorthe Brogård Kristensen

   Pages 127-149

7. Uncanny Memories, Violence and Indigenous Medicine

   • Dorthe Brogård Kristensen

   Pages 151-169

8. The Shaman, the Virgin and the Taxation Authorities

   • Dorthe Brogård Kristensen

   Pages 171-191

9. Conclusion: The Control of Medicine, the Control of Bodies

   • Dorthe Brogård Kristensen

   Pages 193-204

10. Back Matter

    Pages 205-228

    PDF

Recognizing the interplay between biomedicine and indigenous medicine among the Mapuche in Southern Chile, this book explores notions of culture and personhood through the bodily experiences and medical choices of patients. Through case studies of patients in the context of medical pluralism,  Kristensen argues that medical practices are powerful social symbol indicative of overarching socio-political processes. As certain types of extreme and violent experiences–known as olvidos–lack a framework that allows them to be expressed openly, they therefore surface as symptoms of an illness, often with no apparent organic pathology. In these contexts, indigenous medicine, thanks to its sensitivity to socio-political contexts, provides a space for articulation and management of collective experiences and suffering among patients in Southern Chile.

• machi
• Mapuche practitioners
• shamanic
• healing
• healing rituals
• indigenous
• South America
• medical pluralism
• medical anthropology
• Mapuche politics
• organic pathology
• Mapuche-illnesses
• Augusto Pinochet
• trauma
• olvido
• area studies

“The book is a good and timely contribution to the ethnographic study of Mapuche medical practices and medical pluralism in Chile. It will be greatly enjoyed by social scientists working on indigenous issues both in Chile and Latin America, as well as by medical anthropologists working on medical pluralism, therapeutic efficacies, postcolonialism, and indigenous medicine and witchcraft practices within modern nation-states.” (Adelaida Barros Cajdler, Anthropos, Vol. 115 (1), 2020)

• University of Southern Denmark, Odense M, Denmark

  Dorthe Brogård Kristensen

Dorthe Brogård Kristensen is Associate Professor of Consumption Studies at the University of Southern Denmark. Her current interests include health, food, consumption, technologies and medical pluralism. 

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