Personhood and Illness among the Kulina

This article offers both a contribution to the ethnography of ethnomedicine among the Kulina Indians of western Amazonia—a region in which there has been little ethnomedical research—and an extended illustration of the value of the concept of “personhood” in the analysis of ethnomedical beliefs and practices. I argue that the current medical anthropological fixation on the Body is neither good ethnography nor productive theory, and I use the Kulina example to illustrate how the cultural dimensions of personhood provide a more satisfactory framework for the understanding of illness. Kulina conceptions of illness are closely linked to the substances and processes through which personhood is acquired, expressed, and transformed. I consider the two major categories of illness in Kulina ethnomedicine, and focus special attention on the more serious of these: potentially fatal illnesses that are linked to witchcraft and to the violations of prohibitions. I suggest how these illnesses serve as languages for the simultaneous negotiation of social issues and personhood.