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Intracultural Variation in Folk Medical Knowledge: A Comparison Between Curers and Noncurers
Author(s) -
Garro Linda C.
Publication year - 1986
Publication title -
american anthropologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.51
H-Index - 85
eISSN - 1548-1433
pISSN - 0002-7294
DOI - 10.1525/aa.1986.88.2.02a00040
Subject(s) - variation (astronomy) , psychology , social psychology , folk medicine , sociology , medicine , traditional medicine , physics , astrophysics
This paper investigates variation in folk medical beliefs in a Tarascan community in west‐central Mexico. The data are from a structured interview completed with ten traditional curers and a like‐sized comparison group of noncurers. Three possible patterns of interinformant agreement are described and tested using the quadratic assignment program. The results suggest that although curers and noncurers do differ, the differences are not so great that they represent two variant systems of medical beliefs. Rather, there is a single system of beliefs common to both groups, but with curers showing higher agreement among themselves in expressing this system than noncurers. This finding, and a related one showing higher agreement among older informants, are explained in terms of culture learning. Curers and older people share more knowledge about illness because of their greater experience in both dealing with and communicating about illness. A model of folk medical knowledge is then presented and systematic variation from this model examined.