Anthropology and "Ethnoscience": Galician Popular Medicine (Spain)

投稿日: 2012/04/21 12:12:33

1. Some recent ethnographic studies have shown the long-neglected importance of the personal aspect of the informants' and the anthropologist's experiences (See OBEYESEKERE 1980 among others). It is clear that ethnomedicine will be one of the fields where this problem is of great significance. Illness and its treatment certainly cannot be regarded as a simple social or cultural phenomenon that is 'objectively observable'. It is composed, at least in part, of a process which is experienced personally by the subject and the people around him or her, so to say, 'with body and soul'.

This article, which may also serve as a brief ethnographic introduction to Galician popular medicine, intends to sketch some of the methodological or epistemological questions concerning the above theme: I aim to present the Galician ethnomedical system as a set of 'ethnoscientific discourses' (the definition will be given later), which offer to the people pragmatic means to handle a variety of problems in human life. In this article, I first describe briefly the medical pluralism in a village in Galicia, and after a brief comment, I go on to look at two Galician 'illnesses', aire ('air') and mal de ollo (evil eye) to illustrate some aspects of the problem. During this discussion, I shall also suggest that the anthropological (and biomedical, psychiatric, etc.) frameworks, by which we interpret the local discourses, themselves are other 'ethnoscientific discourses'. Some consequences of this view will be discussed in the conclusion. (Note my use of the term 'discourse' in this article, which does not coincide with its normal linguistic use. It roughly indicates a flexible framework of ideas and actions which can be modified, remodeled, decomposed or newly constructed in the actual process of human life; the term is deliberately used to grasp the subtle relationship between 'theory' and 'practice', which seems to characterize not only 'ethnosciences', but even our 'scientific' investigations, as is shown by FEYERABEND 1981.)

My argument chiefly refers to the ethnomedical practices in Piñeiral, a Galician village located in the northwestern extreme of the Iberian Peninsula. Galicia is a Spanish region lying to the north of Portugal, and has an ambience fairly different from Castilla, Central Spain. It is featured by a rainy climate, undulating land covered with verdure, dispersed small hamlets, infinitely subdivided land possession, etc. The Galician language (galego) is of common origin with Portugese, rather than Spanish, though people are more or less bilingual with Spanish, owing to recent historical circumstances. (back)

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2. In Piñeiral, the six following discourses are evoked when someone suffers from 'illness' (this term being defined here as a sum of folk and biomedical concepts) : (1) biomedicine, (2) herbal treatment, (3) practices by compoñedores (bonesetters), (4) magical practices by local healers of the village, (5) mainly magical practices by professional healers, (6) treatment by the grace of God and the saints.

Let us see how people regard the coexistence of these different discourses. Among the six, the first (biomedicine) is evidently the most influential and authorized discourse in the present situation of Piñeiral. This is both due to the presence of a medical clinic and a pharmacy in the village and to the implantation of the Social Security System. Next to this, the sixth discourse (that of God and the saints) is positively acknowledged in principle, since Catholicism forms an important part of the dominant ideology here. In contrast, people are manifestly ambivalent in respect of the fourth and the fifth (those of magical cure), which are ideologically disapproved and suppressed. It is notable that these discourses, especially the fourth, are curiously related to the Catholic ideology, because the healers generally assume that their magical power derives from the grace of God. The second and the third are neutral in this respect. (back)

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3. These local discourses on illness and its treatment cannot be viewed simply as a set of cultural or social phenomena. They are constantly utilized, tested, and elaborated; in this sense, each of them ought to be regarded as an 'ethnoscience' (which obviously has little to do with mere folk taxonomies), in other words, as an authentic system of theories and practices which is justified by itself and not by reference to our 'sciences' (See LAPLANTINE 1982). The matter is clear when we consider the case of Chinese medicine, whose validity cannot be doubted, though the major part of its practices remain unexplained from a biomedical point of view. In this point, it is worth referring to Paul FEYERABEND (1981), who argues, in his criticism of the Popperian distinction of science and non-science, that modern science resembles mythology in many more points than the philosophy of science is ready to admit, and that it is one of the many forms of thought elaborated by man, not being necessarily the best. In fact, I suspect that each of the branches of our modern science could also be called an 'ethnoscience'.

With these reflections taken into account, we now proceed to look at some examples from Galician ethnomedicine. We shall take up two Galician 'illnesses', and shall briefly examine them from four of our 'scientific' (or rather 'ethnoscientific') discourses, that is to say, symbolism, ethnopsychiatry, sociology and social change. I believe that this procedure of contrasting 'their' discourses and 'ours' is fundamental for us to grasp 'in our own way' the merits of local discourses, in spite of an insufficiency that we shall observe later.

Aire is a local illness with an almost fixed set of symptoms such as decrease of appetite, physical enfeeblement, loss of weight, etc. Usually, it is treated successfully by local healers who utter incantations and prayers to cure it. The symptoms of mal de ollo (evil eye), in contrast, are not always the same: a person may wonder if it is mal de ollo whenever he is gravely ill or he has continuously bad luck. Note that the concept of mal de ollo is closely related with those of envexa (envy), meigallo (witchcraft or sorcery), and sometimes of endemoniamento (demonic possession), each of which designate slightly different situations, although they are in no way mutually exclusive. Mal de alto is treated either by local healers, or by professional healers, or through some religious practices.

Regarded as symbolic systems, these 'illnesses' and their treatment are of some interest. I argue that aire is related with the problem of transgression of the socio-cultural categorization.

As for mal de ollo, I mention VALENTE's view that some of its symptoms, particularly when it takes the form of endemoniamento, can be interpreted as the subject's total rejection of the collectively approved symbolic order (See VALENTE 1984). These results imply, on the other side, that the curing practices also could be interpreted in this manner (as LEVI-STRAUSS did), which is true only to some extent. After all, it becomes evident that what the theory of symbols clarifies is no more than a small part of reality, and further reflections are needed, particularly concerning what we may call the imaginary aspect of the phenomena.

Ethnopsychiatry offers another frame of reference that is of value. With respect to aire, suggest that it can be considered, in the ethnopsychiatric discourse, to be a manifestation of the subject's psychological problems which is triggered by contact with symbolically dangerous beings. Mal de ollo, once more in its aspect of endemoniamento, is here treated as an example of 'ethnic disorder' (a concept forged by Georges DEVEREUX), in which the subject's unresolved internal conflicts burst out in a culturally recognized manner (See VALENTE 1984 and GONZALEZ 1984). I hasten to add that this interpretation of mal de ollo, though it appears fairly successful, explains merely a part of the phenomenon. It is naturally incapable of explaining those cases in which animals or houses or ships are bewitched, and not human beings.

Let us now consider the problem sociologically. Though little can be said about aire, I point out, based on the above discussions, that it may be related to the questions of the society through the system of socio-cultural categorization. Mal de ollo raises two sociological interpretations, incompatible and equally founded. One intends to present mal de ollo as a system of social control, and it is partly justified by the local formulation of mal de ollo as envexa (envy) : envy is an antisocial desire, so that those who have it should be detected and controlled. I note that this interpretation has a serious defect, because, at least in Piñeiral, witch-hunting frequently ends without clear results. The other interpretation has to do with the above ethnopsychiatric one (and have the same defect as above): mal de ollo, in this way, is regarded as a system which facilitates the suffering individual to look for a means to readapt himself or herself both socially and psychologically.

Finally, the problem of social change is briefly discussed. I remark that three types of change are relevant here. First, we ought to take into account the changes of medical pluralism: introduction of new discourses (and loss of old ones). This is surely a fundamental phenomenon of ethnoscience, since these discourses (including biomedicine) are composed, as we have argued, of pragmatic ideas and actions, some of which can certainly serve In other natural-cultural-social environments (this is not only true of biomedicine, but also perhaps of urban folk healing, naturist medicine and Chinese medicine, which seem to be appearing now on the Galician ethnomedical scene). Secondly, ideological change is of great importance. The introduction of biomedicine in Galicia does not simply mean that people have another alternative for treatment, but that they are forced to accept the exclusive ideology that accompanies biomedical systems. However, it is worth pointing out that biomedicine can never be the supreme medicine: people continue choosing, every time, the best way to cope, with a health problem, which is not necessarily biomedicine. Thirdly, I argue that the change of the illnesses themselves has to be considered. In short, the human mind-body is closely related with its natural-cultural-social environment, so that it is not surprising that diseases should be transformed according to changes in their surroundings. I imply, although as a mere hypothesis, that cases of aire and mal de ollo are decreasing, possibly changing into other forms of illnesses, as the continuous process of urbanization goes on. (back)

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4. The above discussions on aire and mal de ollo have, I believe, the merit of showing how the local 'ethnoscientific' discourses can be interpreted differently (which means how we can acknowledge in them a variety of pragmatic value), and at the same time how our frames of reference, our 'scientific' discourses are insufficient for estimating the value of the local discourses.

To conclude, I am tempted to refer to a fundamental question. What is the relationship between anthropology and 'ethnoscience'? What does the anthropological interpretation of local discourses consist in? As I have already emphasized, anthropology is merely another 'ethnoscience'; in fact, the privilege of anthropological discourses (as well as other 'scientific' ones) as our constant frames of reference is only justified by the fact that we perform our intellectual and social practices from the side of 'our' modern-urban societies, to which belong all anthropological discourses and (in principle) all anthropologists. Now, what we should always remember is the insufficiency of 'our' discourses to interpret 'theirs', as is illustrated by the example of mal de ollo. Based on this recognition, I think that our task lies in the double endeavour, on the one hand to understand 'their' discourses from inside, and, on the other, to enrich 'our' discourses by contrasting 'ours' with 'theirs'.