Informal Medicine and biomedicine

Informal medicinal knowledge has been denied as a legitimate form of knowledge for decades within the global medical paradigm. In recent years, international organizations, especially the WHO, has made attempts to recognize the social and legal standing of informal medicinal knowledge especially in areas that can be verified in scientific laboratories and transformed into measurable molecular entities. Although the WHO has been working with its member states to integrate informal medicine and biomedicine into national health care system, knowledge claims concerning illness and its treatment are often contested between formal and informal health practitioners.The book question how localized practices provide lens to gain larger insights into national and transitional politics of healing and knowledge using a power/ knowledge theoretical perspective. It is apparent that the power relations linked with formal practices decrease possibilities for collaboration with informal medicine and also have a negative influence on any possible medium of innovation.

Auteur

J.P Nyonator is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Ottawa. He has field experience on localized medicinal practices in its intersections with biomedicine in Ghana. He is currently working on medicine and technology, more specifically on sound therapies.