"We Pray at the Church in the Day and Visit the Sangomas at Night": Health Discourses and Traditional Medicine in Rural South Africa
"We Pray at the Church in the Day and Visit the Sangomas at Night": Health Discourses and Traditional Medicine in Rural South Africa
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DOI：
10.1080/00045608.2012.671133
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发表时间：
2012-01-01
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
King, Brian
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
King, Brian
地理学和相关学科的研究已经证明了人类疾病对社会和生态系统的重大影响。虽然人类疾病从根本上改变了人口模式以及区域和国家经济，但学术和政策研究往往集中在宏观层面，从而减少了对直接影响卫生决策的地方动态的关注。鉴于各政府机构援引传统文化习俗的重要性，包括使用传统医学来治疗疾病，这种缺失是值得注意的。南非的具体经验就是这方面的代表，国家和省级政府机构继续倡导传统医学管理人类健康。然而，南非国内对疾病的理解仍然存在很大争议，并暴露了关于卫生决策如何受到疾病和治疗方案的不同看法影响的潜在紧张关系。本文借鉴了2000年开始的研究，分析农村地区的健康观念和传统医学的使用。我的工作是揭示不同的，往往是相互冲突的，对传统医学的看法，并研究他们如何与社会文化系统，调解健康决策相交。文章的结论是，未来对人类健康的地理研究需要与社会和文化系统，有助于塑造健康的看法和决策在各种设置。
Research within geography and cognate disciplines has worked to demonstrate the significant impacts of human disease on social and ecological systems. Although human disease fundamentally reshapes demographic patterns and regional and national economies, scholarly and policy research has tended to concentrate at the macroscale, thereby reducing attention to local-level dynamics that directly influence health decision making. This absence is notable given the invocation by various governmental agencies of the importance of traditional cultural practices, including the employ of traditional medicine, in responding to illness. South Africa's particular experience is representative of this, with national and provincial governmental agencies continuing to advocate traditional medicine in managing human health. Yet understandings of disease within South Africa remain deeply contested and expose underlying tensions about how health decision making is shaped by varied perceptions of illness and treatment options. This article draws on research that began in 2000 to analyze perceptions of health and the use of traditional medicine within rural areas. I work to uncover the divergent, and often conflicting, views on traditional medicine, and examine how they intersect with sociocultural systems that mediate health decision making. The article concludes that future geographic research on human health needs to engage with the social and cultural systems that contribute in shaping health perceptions and decision-making in various settings.