Read this first
The Mayan Traditional Medicine: Theories and Ethics [resume]
Read this first
The Mayan Traditional Medicine: Theories and Ethics [resume]
Paradoxically speaking
it is clear that the tradition of “traditional medicine” is not
traditional but inventive. In the entropic discourse in which any kind
of traditional things has fate of disappearing in future, we can find
easily that traditional entity has authenticity. We can figure out this
type of characteristics of the traditional medicine in modern
ethnographic writings. I will show first the Maya Medicine as both
traditional and modern practices in the Mesoamerica, a cultural area
from southern Mexico to western Honduras and northern El Salvador. Two
representative concepts, holism and cosmology of life and death can be
characterized throughout data. On the one side the Maya is similar with
and the other side is also different from the other traditional
societies. I will present the example of the influence from long term
colonialism by European particularly Spanish. The characteristic of new
world traditional medicine has not only genuine authentic tradition but
also colonial tradition, and the interaction process between two
culture, that we can suggest the hybrid nature. Second the postcolonial
experience on the Mayan is also very important to think on actuality of
the Maya medicine. For long time many western historians and
ethnographers have collected ethnomedical data from long term research
tradition through the conquest and the evangelization. But today the
Maya themselves can reconstruct and reuse their own traditional medical
knowledge for their health, that can be described as the repatriation
of traditional knowledge under the world scenery of the UNDRIPS, the
United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples that was
adopted in 2007. This is not revitalization nor invention of
traditional medicine, but a kind of identification of their own
medicine. Can be the medicine identification tool for the people?
Finally I propose that to discuss on ethical nature of the traditional
medicine would be to think historically on people’s appropriation to
their medicine.
Credit: Mitsuho Ikeda,
The Mayan Traditional Medicine: Theories and Ethics, at "INTERNATIONAL
ASSOCIATION of LAW, ETHICS and SCIENCE FRENCH NATIONAL COMMISSION for
UNESCO CENTRE de DROIT de la SANTE-UNIVERSITE AIX-MARSEILLE ISHIKAWA
PREFECTURAL NURSING UNIVERSITY," The
VIII-th FRENCH-JAPANESE INTERNATIONAL BIOETHICS CONFERENCE, at
EHIME University, Matsuyama City/ August 2-3, 2018.
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