The interculturization of ethnobotanical practices in French Guiana: towards a new understanding of medical pluralism
This paper develops the concept of “interculturalization” as applied to the complex, polymorphic and dynamic exchanges among botanical herbal medicine that occur in modern and especially urban contexts. We develop this concept based on an analysis of herbal medical practice in French Guiana, buildin...
Spremljeno u:
| Izdano u: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/suds, |
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| Glavni autori: | , |
| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Jezik: | Anglais |
| Izdano: |
Suds
2024
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| Teme: | |
| Online pristup: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Sažetak: | This paper develops the concept of “interculturalization” as applied to the complex, polymorphic and dynamic exchanges among botanical herbal medicine that occur in modern and especially urban contexts. We develop this concept based on an analysis of herbal medical practice in French Guiana, building on and improving upon the concepts of “creolization,” “hybridization” and “medical pluralism” that have been used to date to understand these processes. Drawing on the work of Ladio and Albuquerque (2014) we identify a number of sub-processes that are detailed and illustrated with concrete examples from the fieldwork in French Guiana. In intensely intercultural social contexts such as those found in French Guiana, both practitioners and patients have access to a wide range of therapeutic options, giving rise to complex, “zigzag therapeutic routes” that can result in the addition of new medicinal species, relocations of exogenous practices and even inventions and reinventions of uses that arise from these dynamic cultural encounters. We explore how the notion of interculturalization in ethnobotany and medical anthropology might contribute to studying medical practices in different parts of the world. |
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