Malay health in context: humoral system, traditional medicine, reproduction and rites de passage
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3989/rdtp.2009.012Keywords:
Ethnography, Cosmology, Health, Traditional medicine, Rites de passage, Rural MalaysAbstract
The author introduces some of the foundations of Malay culture with respect to health and disease in a rural context. Malay cosmology is grounded in a syncretism of animistic beliefs with Islam. The cognitive and symbolic contents of this cosmology reveals general aspects of Malay culture (cosmology, social structure, gender relationships, witchcraft) as well as specific aspects of the same as they pertain to health and illness (understanding of the body, reproduction, disease). Ethnography is predicated on a twofold methodological exercise: identifying the social and cultural context in which disease is understood locally and eliciting elements for comparison with other Muslim social formations in the context of contemporary biomedical systems.
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