Decolonizing Knowledge: Biomedical Beliefs and Indigenous Medical Practice

Abstract

Medical traditions and practices go back to antiquity and are defined by the cultures in which they emerge. We may regard these practices (health care systems) as profoundly personal and ethnocentric, tied to such things as religion and belief systems, kinship structures, local topography, environment and indigenous ethno-pharmacological practices, food and lifestyle. When we come to look at such practices temporally and spatially we see common themes, but also important variations. We also see trends, for example, dominant ideologies that drive and legitimate practice, thereby giving license to practice and defining authenticity. Western modernity emphasizes the notion of ‘science’ (essentially stemming from the European enlightenment) as the legitimating principle underpinning what has come to be called biomedicine. This paper is about what is regarded as ‘authentic’ medicine and considers the juxtaposition of folk medicine (and folk healing) with biomedicine. It will attempt to unpick some critical issues at the heart of the often-abrasive interface between the critical social sciences in medicine and modern Western dominated notions of ‘scientific’ biomedical practice.