Traditional Healing

Feminist Anthropology and Traditional Healing

Feminist anthropologists have critiqued the way in which cultural anthropology has investigated women's experiences in the context of traditional healing. One example of this is how conventional anthropologists have asked women about their experiences with traditional healing as it relates solely to issues like pregnancy, birth, and miscarriage. Feminist anthropologists assert that this inquiry reinforces women's linkage to the constellation of sexuality, pregnancy, mothering, and child rearing, associated with low status. Characterizing women as involved only in these low-status roles perpetuates a false duality of nature/culture in which women represent only nature. Feminist anthropologists suggest looking critically at the way in which assigning women to the category of nature denies them mobility in the social world and does not afford them agency to penetrate the cultural or public sphere. They are interested in investigating the micropolitics involved with female traditional healers, their situated knowledge, and how it bears on their role in culture. They ask questions such as the following: How do women healers reinforce or challenge patriarchy? What does women's power look like in a traditional healing system?

Critical Medical Anthropology and Traditional Healing

Historically, in cultural anthropology, there has not been an emphasis on researching the issues around illness, suffering, and healing in women's lives. To a large extent, women were written out of the history of healing traditions. However, critical medical anthropology[Page 842](CMA), an offshoot of cultural anthropology, seeks to remedy this oversight. CMA draws heavily from feminist anthropology and the critical theories of Michel Foucault and Karl Marx. The CMA approach to illness and traditional healing builds on the interests of the interpretative approach but diverges in that it poses questions about issues of power: How does an unequal distribution of resources impact women's access to healers? How do social relationships such as racial inequality influence the arena of health and illness? The approach looks at how systemic problems, which directly affect oppressed groups, are depicted in systems of illness and healing. One area of particular interest in CMA is inquiry around the role traditional healers play in cultures where women are strictly oppressed. For example, do healers in these contexts advocate for women, or do they maintain the status quo and even penalize women who are of lower status? Does it differ if healers are men or women?

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