Vodou Case Study

Brilliant Essays
Register to read the introduction… As McCarthy Brown (2003) noted, healers “rarely try to compete with scientific medicine” (p.285). In fact, more often the practitioner, once he has appeased the problem with the supernatural, advises the client to consult Western biomedicine to repair the remaining damage from the Vodou spirits former wrath (Freeman, 2007, p.125). In this view Vodou is essentially enlisted to combat the cause and biomedicine to combat the symptoms. Although, as Freeman (2007) notes “in practice, real collaboration has been limited to working with midwives, injectionists and faith and herb healers, with in a few cases strictly voodoo practitioners called in for certain psychotherapeutic counseling” …show more content…
(2003). Medicine Across Cultures: History and Practice of Medicine in Non-Western Cultures. Kluwer Academic Publishers. Great Britain

McCarthy Brown, K. (n.d). The Power to Heal: Haitian Women in Vodou. Retrieved from: http://blogs.dickinson.edu/ecofeminism/files/2012/05/The-Power-to-Heal.pdf

McGrath, B. (1999). Swimming from Island to Island: healing Practice in Tonga. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 13, 483-505. Retrieved from: http://www.jstor.org/stable/649560
Michel, C., Bellegrade-Smith, P. (2006). Vodou in Hatian Life and Culture: Invisible Powers. Palgrave Macmillan. New York, N.Y http://www.iupui.edu/~womrel/REL%20300%20Spirit/REL%20300_Spirit/Brown_AfroCaribbeanSSpirituality_Haiti.pdf Lange, R. (2012) 'Te hauora Māori i mua – history of Māori health - Slow progress, 1920 to 1945', Retrieved from: http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/te-hauora-maori-i-mua-history-of-maori-health/page-4

Lyons, A. Mark, G. (2010). Maori Healers’ Views on Wellbeing: tHE importance of Mind, body, Spirit, Family and Land. Social Science and Medicine, 70, 1756-1764. Retrieved from:

Related Documents

  • Great Essays

    The purpose of this paper is to critically analyse the impact of history and colonisation on contemporary First People’s health outcomes. It will also analyse how these impacts influenced Australia’s First Peoples ability to build trustful and respectful relationships within the healthcare system. It will commence by explaining the policy era of colonisation and how this era impacted on health. This will then lead into strength-based approaches that healthcare professionals can use to build trustful and respectful relationships. This paper will then introduce the assimilation policy and how this era impacted on health outcomes.…

    • 1162 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In the realm of medical anthropology, Julie Livingston’s Improvising Medicine stands as a poignant ethnography that examines the growing cancer crisis in Sub-Saharan Africa from the view of the oncology ward in Princess Marina Hospital (PMH) in Gaborone, Botswana. A professor at New York University, Julie Livingston is a medical historian who combines her training in anthropology and public health to evaluate medicine in Botswana with an emotional analysis, depicting a view of physical suffering in context of the social climate. Her previous work, Debility and the Moral Imagination in Botswana, analyzed the effect of economic and political development on traditional, medical care practices. This runs parallel with Improvising Medicine as the…

    • 1581 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    Waseem Alkakoz April 30, 2015 ECOL 379 Where is the US Healthcare Heading To? The health care system in the United States has been a contentious issue in the last decade. The rising costs and unsustainability in the system has resulted in much higher costs of health care, and yet the life expectancy is lower than most countries like Canada, Germany, and Japan (Wallace 2013). The US has the highest healthcare costs in the world, and it is estimated that about fourteen percent of health care administrative costs (about 91 billion) are wasted annually due to the inefficiency and redundancy in health administration practices (Mukau 2009). What are some implementations in the U.S. healthcare system that could potentially lower the cost of health insurance while delivering the highest quality healthcare at rates that people could afford?…

    • 1265 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Anne Fadiman’s book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, tells the story of the clashing of cultures between the Hmong culture and Western culture through the lens of medicine. Fadiman’s plot revolves around Lia, a Hmong girl born with severe epilepsy, and the tales of Hmong culture, allowing the reader to understand the actions of Lia and other Hmong, like her parents, as their culture heavily influences their beings. Thus I propose that this book remain a summer reading requirement as the book contains a unique correlation of culture and medicine, the themes are straightforward to analyze and provides a gradual preparation for the incoming year. The book itself consists of an interesting format, switching back and forth between plot…

    • 743 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Introduction The film The Split Horn The Life of a Hmong Shaman in America focuses on how health and illness is dealt with in the Hmong culture. It is about the life of a Hmong family who moved to Appleton Wisconsin from Laos and how they are adapting to this new place. The journey of a Shaman 's family is explored and it is expressed that they have their own set of traditions in their culture but when this family moved to America it was learned that it is difficult to carry out traditions. Illnesses are looked at from different viewpoints across different cultures and depending on an individual 's culture, explanations for health are looked at and treated differently. This family learns that it is difficult to adjust to the American lifestyle,…

    • 777 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Pohnpei Chapter Summary

    • 1005 Words
    • 5 Pages

    1. After the defeat of the Japanese in World War II, doctors aboard the U.S. Navy ship, conducted a healthy survey of the Island and found that islanders had consistently low blood pressure with no rise as people grew older it is the reason why John Cassel and the School of Public health had selected Pohnpei. 2. The three challenges the anthropologists have to faces while conducting fieldwork in Pohnpei are culture shock, learning a new language, and explain words that Pohnpein people don’t have.…

    • 1005 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    This paper will discuss how the Navajo Indian and their view of the disease process, along with their traditional medical practices. The second part will talk about how the Navajo view Western medicine by looking at how they seek treatment for certain illness. The Navajo is the largest Native American tribe in the United States. They live in an area that encompasses Colorado, Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico and is about “25,000 square miles” (Coulehan, John L. 1).…

    • 1567 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Important Role of Occupational Therapy within First Australian Communities Introduction Occupational therapists enable people to engage in everyday activities through occupation, which can structure, shape and change people’s lives. Correspondingly, attitudes, values, perceptions and life choices can be shaped by culture (Kinébanian& Stomph, 2010). However, there is inconsistency in the provision of occupational therapy services to clients from different cultures (Darawsheh, Chard & Eklund, 2015).…

    • 1170 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Essay On Hmong Culture

    • 2194 Words
    • 9 Pages

    The cultural clashes amongst the people of the Hmong and Westered based society of America about health care is a clash of ideologies and ethnocentrism. A refusal to find middle ground and a general misunderstanding of each other’s cultures. Each of these culture’s healing arts, be that biomedicine of America or the traditional healings of the Hmong, are working remedies that tackle the problems faced by healers and doctors with a unique understanding of one’s culture. Through the Hmong it is a spiritual and a truly holistic understanding of the body, while the American biomedicine divides things into parts, like a car. These two systems while approaching the same field with different understandings, can have similar results.…

    • 2194 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Earthquake In Haiti

    • 1257 Words
    • 6 Pages

    The religious framework of Vodou in Haiti can be traced back to traditions of slaves who were forcibly brought to Haiti from Kongo and Dahomey regions of West Africa (Desmangles, 1992). Haiti was previously called Saint-Domingue was colonized in 1492 and the colony was formed through the eighteenth century (Desmangles, 1992). As of 1797, around half a million inhabited the island people, ninety percent of which being of African origin (Desmangles, 1992). It is important to understand that Vodou has been a part of the Haitian way of life for as long as it’s been colonized, and the traditions associated with this worldview can’t and shouldn’t be wiped out by traveling…

    • 1257 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Caddo Nation Case Study

    • 1758 Words
    • 8 Pages

    According to Andrews and Boyle, Native Americans believe that heath is associated with the mind, spirit and connections with the creation and creator. Suppose a Caddo Indian was stricken with illness today, different ceremonies like seat lodging, traditional herbs, songs, dances, and prayers are used for healing (Andrews and Boyle 2012). In healthcare facilities clinicians should give patients time, space, and privacy to respect the family’s traditional healers; clinicians should also never interfere or interrupt the healer’s rivals so families will not distrust. (HCC 2013). Ultimately, the Caddo believe that the balance of harmony can be returned back to one’s life through rituals and…

    • 1758 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Native Americans have suffered many losses as settlers began forming what is known as the United States. Those losses can be identified as culture, religion, land, and language. It is important to understand what Native Americans have endured when working with this population. In addition to the continuous need for attention to mental health assessment, cultural obligations should be evaluated and interwoven in clinical practice. Native Americans have suffered much loss, but mental health continues to be an ignored issue among many different tribes across the nation.…

    • 772 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In Maria Chona’s “Autobiography of a Papago Women” (1936), the author speaks in detail about the Folkways of the Papago people and their change and continuity in the face of encounters with other cultures over the centuries. Maria Chona was very closely connected to the land being that she grew up amongst the desert. Culture was a great deal to her and her family since they followed the traditions that were performed by past generations. However, throughout the years the culture became civilized. There was also acts of extreme cruelty and brutality amongst the Papago and Apache people.…

    • 759 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In another study conducted on traditional medicine, it focused on the Sami people, which based their traditional medicine on Shamanism and natural remedies (Sexton & Sorlie, 2007). This study examined the traditional healing practices among this culture of people, and it was noted that the use of natural remedies are used with new age medicine or in place of (Sexton & Solie, 2007). It was noted that among the 16,000 individuals in northern Norway in the study, it was estimated that twelve to thirty two percent of the population have reported using healers for an ailment at some point (Sexton& Sorlie, 2008). These traditional natural healers, or shaman, encourage the use of natural remedies and therapies to heal a person’s ailments (Sexton & Buljo Stabbursvik,…

    • 1015 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Taha Hinengaro Case Study

    • 1003 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Taha hinengaro is the tenet of mental and intellectual wellbeing, which is about the capacity of thinking, feeling and communicating (Durie, 1998). The psychology and psychiatry can be regarded as its equivalent in mainstream perspective, but there are slight differences (Durie, 1998). The former is more analytical, while Māori notion of hinengaro can be described as more holistic (Durie, 1998). This dimension is about mind power and the expression of thoughts, feelings and emotions (MoH, 2015). Mind, body and wider environment are inseparable (Durie, 1998).…

    • 1003 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays

Related Topics