Naslov
Medical Pluralism in Postsocialist Croatia - from Exorcism to Ayurveda

Autori
Bukovčan, Tanja

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, sažetak, stručni

Izvornik
5th Annual Hawaii International Conference on Social Sciences : abstracts / - , 2007, 37-37

Skup
Annual Hawaii International Conference on Social Sciences (10 ; 2007)

Mjesto i datum
Honolulu (HI), Sjedinjene Američke Države, 30.05.2007. - 02.06.2007

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Nije recenziran

Ključne riječi
medical pluralism; postsocialim; complementary and alternative medicine

Sažetak
In the presentation I will outline my PhD research, the main topic of which was medical pluralism in postsocialist Croatia. The research deals with interrelatedness and co-existence of biomedical and non-biomedical systems in the city of Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, where, because of its size and the importance as the country’ s largest urban centre, the non-biomedical systems are commonly present in everyday and popular culture. The staring point of my research were the patients, their attitudes towards illness and health and their reasons for the selection of specific therapies, healers and/or medical systems, as well as the factors (cultural, social, generational, educational, religious, political-ideological, financial) which determined their choice. The postsocialist period in Croatia started in the 1990ies and, among other changes, brought about significant changes to the biomedical health care system, which became less state funded and much more market oriented and, as the consequence, more expensive to the end-users, the patients. Simultaneously, and maybe partly because of this, the non-biomedical systems were more ‘ loud’ and more visible, ranging from folk healers, herbalists, through exorcists, bioenergy practitioners to established traditional medical systems and practices such as ayurveda or acupuncture. The main goal of my research was to question the reasons why different forms of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) were increasingly present in Croatia, i.e. to point to the factors which made medical pluralism as present in Croatia as any other Western (European) country. Starting from the Croatian key association of CAM, I used the snow-ball sampling to collect around 100 informants who talked about their illnesses and choice of treatments in open interviews. I wanted to answer the following questions: why is an increasing number of people turning to CAM, is this the consequence of changes in health care system and its commodification, are the new age trends and their pop-culture interpretation partly responsible for it, did it happen also because of the large migrations from rural parts of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina to Zagreb during the 1990ies and the subsequent change in population structure, or, maybe, is it because of the general and growing dissatisfaction with biomedicine? My initial findings are the following. For the majority of the people I interviewed biomedicine comes first, but in case of chronic, terminal or psychosomatic illnesses, they would seek alternative therapies ranging from folk healers to established non-Western medical systems. As an ethnographer, I was faced with moving stories of loss and trauma – stories of war refugees, patients with PTSS, disabled people), which made me re-examine my position of observer, interpreter and analyst. Anthropology’ s unique possibility of understanding and interpreting other cultural norms and realms and its application to this very sensitive field full of emotional attitudes, opinions, beliefs, metaphors and meanings may, in the case of applied medical anthropology, suggest a possible shift towards acitivism.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Znanost o umjetnosti

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