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Tradisi and Moderen , Village and State: Emergent Tensions in a Sasak Health Quest
Author(s) -
Hunter Cynthia
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
the australian journal of anthropology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.245
H-Index - 25
eISSN - 1757-6547
pISSN - 1035-8811
DOI - 10.1111/j.1835-9310.2000.tb00054.x
Subject(s) - modernity , indigenous , biomedicine , state (computer science) , subjectivity , sociology , resource (disambiguation) , indonesian , gender studies , social science , environmental ethics , political science , law , epistemology , philosophy , ecology , computer network , linguistics , genetics , algorithm , computer science , biology
On Lombok island, in the province of West Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia, indigenous medicine and biomedicine coexist. Nevertheless, biomedicine, a product of modernity and the development of the state has been superimposed on village life along with other state institutions such as education. In this paper I analyse the processes involved in Sasak villagers' quest for health. Operating within various and sometimes overlapping social fields and conflicting discourses, villagers utilise both local indigenous practices as well as the Indonesian national health system in their quest. Because local or ordinary knowledge is a rich resource for interpretation, I describe the health quest through the participant individuals: family members, neighbours, doctors and nursing personnel involved. The subjectivity of the individual participants contributes to the intricate unfolding of health seeking quests to expose the various tensions which emerge between tradition ( tradisi [ I ]) and modernity ( moderen [ I ]) and between state and village.