Nomad RSI - Therapeutic diversity and the environment

Edited by Laurent Pordié (2005), Paris: Karthala, 326p.
Language: French.

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How do healing traditions transform health development? Vice versa, what role does healthcare development have in the dynamics of vernacular therapeutic practices and knowledge? The essays gathered in this volume provide answers to these twin questions, by inviting the reader to explore the social dimension of international health programmes. This book thereby examines the contexts, practices and the social impacts of development, and the ways in which medicines are manifested in it, categorized, taken care of, standardized or rendered invisible by it.

Health development programmes always concern healing traditions, in some way or another, directly or indirectly. This ineluctable encounter is, however, often ignored by healthcare planners. It has social and medical implications that should yet be thoroughly taken into account to make health development a more balanced practice. The reader will find, in this volume, essential analytical tools for that purpose. Combining contextualised accounts and anthropological analysis, Panser le monde, penser les médecines insists on the necessity of understanding the world before trying to heal it.

"Ce livre d’une grande rigueur apporte finalement une perspective soucieuse de mettre à jour les liens entre pratiques vernaculaires et enjeux de développement, sans pour autant tomber dans le piège de la finalité. À le lire, on découvre de nouvelles pistes d’investigations qui feront référence pour de futurs ouvrages" - Transcontinentales 02 (2006)

"[Cet ouvrage repense] le développement sanitaire en Inde à partir d’une étude fine des médecines traditionnelles" - Sciences Humaines 191 (2008)