Anita Hardon

Susan Reynolds Whyte

Sjaak van der Geest

An anthropological study of the social functions and meanings of medicines in different cultures.

Social Lives of Medicines

Erdmute Alber

Though long neglected in anthropological research, the connections and conflicts between generations are at the heart of social processes. In this book, sixteen studies examine relations between generations of kin and between historical and political generations. The topics range from grandmother's cooking, migrant remittances, youth unemployment, teenage pregnancy, Valentine's Day, and hip hop music, to respect, religious virtue, gerontocracy, memory, wisdom, complaint, and the meaning of tradition. Together they reinvigorate and expand the old anthropological interest in generation, showing how necessary it is to understanding contemporary African societies.

Connections and Conflicts

Generations in Africa

Western pharmaceuticals are flooding the Third World. Injections, capsules and tablets are available in city markets and village shops, from 'traditional' practitioners and street vendors, as well as from more orthodox sources like hospitals. Although many are aware of this 'pharmaceutical invasion', little has been written about how local people perceive and use these products. This book is a first attempt to remedy that situation. It presents studies of the ways Western medicines are circulated and understood in the cities and rural areas of Africa, Asia and Latin America. We feel that such a collection is long overdue for two reasons. The first is a practical one: people dealing with health problems in developing countries need information about local situations and they need examples of methods they can use to examine the particular contexts in which they are working. We hope that this book will be useful for pharmacists, doctors, nurses, health planners, policy makers and concerned citizens, who are interested in the realities of drug use. Why do people want various kinds of medicine? How do they evaluate and choose them and how do they obtain them? The second reason for these studies of medicines is to fill a need in medical anthropology as a field of study. Here we address our colleagues in anthropol ogy, medical sociology and related disciplines.

Studies in Pharmaceutical Anthropology

The Context of Medicines in Developing Countries

Based on a long-term study of adversity and its social causes in Bunyole, eastern Uganda, Whyte considers the way in which people deal with uncertainties of life such as sickness, suffering, marital problems, failure and death.

Susan Reynolds Whyte

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