Dissertation Research: The Reconstruction and Revitalization of Tahitian Healing

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This award supports the dissertation research of a cultural anthropologist from Southern Methodist University, studying how people in the developing world select medical treatments. Most developing societies afford two ranges of choices for health services, traditional healing and biomedical treatment. The project will observe and interview people in two Tahitian locations, Papeete (an urban center) and a rural village. Using ethnographic techniques of participant observation and intensive interviews, as well as a census-sample of 100 households in each area, and a `morbidity survey` of 30 households in each location who will be visited every 3 weeks to record cases of illness and treatment, the project will make a `cultural model` of how people select medical treatments for various illnesses; describe the Tahitian traditional healing system as it is evolving to incorporate modern biomedicine. The student will test hypotheses that neither socioeconomic status nor urban-rural location govern medical treatment choice, but that religiosity and nationalist cultural feelings will predispose people towards traditional medicine. This research is important because it will advance our understanding of a system of traditional medical treatment and explain its persistence and adaptation in the face of the alternative biomedical system. Such tension between alternative medical systems is a fact of life in most countries of the world, and increases in our understanding of how and why people choose each for specific illness episodes will be valuable for health planners. In addition this research increases or society's expertise about this important region of the world.