TWO PATHWAYS TO FINDING A CURE: BIOMEDICAL AND SHAMANIC TREATMENT IN THE LIFE OF YANOMAMI

Abstract

This paper compares and contrasts biomedical and shamanistic approaches to health and illness among the Yanomami of the Venezuelan Upper Orinoco region. The author is a medical anthropologist who spent many years working with the Yanomami populations. The main intention of the author is to counteract some claims influenced by Cartesian mind-body dichotomy that doctors treat physical bodies while shamans work on patient’s psyche. The main argument is that the Yanomami shamans in their attempts to restore patient’s health treat their bodies against fever, pain and general discomfort as common somatic manifestations of illnesses.

References

1. Alès, C. and J. Chiappino. (1985) ‘Medical Aid, Shamanism and Acculturation Among the Yanomami of Venezuela’, in M. Colchester (ed.), The Health and Survival of the Venezuelan Yanoama. (IWGIA document 53). Copenhagen: ARC/IWGIA/SI, pp. 73–90.
2. Buchillet, D. (ed.). (1991) Medicinas Tradicionais e Medicina Occidental na Amazônia. Belém: Edições CEJUP.
3. Carrier, A. H. (1989) ‘The Place of Western Medicine in Ponam Theories of Health and Illness’, in S. Frankel and G. Lewis (eds), A Continuing Trial of Treatment: Medical Pluralism in Papua New Guinea. Dordrecht: Kluwer, pp. 155–80.
4. Jauregui. I. P. (1993) ‘Reflexiones Sobre la Muerte del Humanismo entre los ‘‘Napes”’, unpublished report. Puerto Ayacucho: Memorias del CAICET III (1, 2), pp. 29–37.
5. Lizot, J. (1998) ‘Situación cultural y acción sanitaria: el caso Yanomami’, La Iglesia en Amazonas 19(81–82): 30–36.
6. Kelly, J. A. (2011) State Healthcare and Yanomami Transformations: A Symmetrical Ethnography. Tuscon: The University of Arizona Press.
7. Perrera, M. A. and P. Rivas. (1997) ‘Medicina Tradicional Indígena, Medicina Occidental. Compatibilidades y Oposiciones’, in M. A. Perrera (ed.), Salud y Ambiente. Contribuciones al Conocimiento de la Antropología Médica y Ecología Cultural en Venezuela. Caracas: UCV – Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Sociales, pp. 7–30.
8. Peters, L. (1979) ‘Shamanism and Medicine in Developing Nepal’, Contributions to Nepalese Studies 6(2): 27–43.
9. Rhodes, L. A. (1996) ‘Studying Biomedicine as a Cultural System’, in C. F. Sargent and T. M. Johnson (eds), Medical Anthropology: Contemporary Theory and Method. London: Praeger, pp. 165–80.