Medicine and Reproduction in Urban Morocco (Women).

Biomedicine and traditional medicine in urban Morocco exist as independent systems of therapy, although both are informed by cultural premises of the larger society. An underst and ing of the medical systems of any society is dependent upon the underst and ing of a broad range of social and cultural phenomena. This study examined Moroccan medicine and patterns of everyday life that influence concepts of health, illness, and reproduction, and the beliefs, values, and practices that surround illness treatment. Notions about gender and reproduction constitute part of this study because they are linked to illness treatment and bodily "dis-ease" in the context of modern urban life. Fifteen months of anthropological fieldwork in a Moroccan city began with observations of childbirth in the hospital and clinic. Interviews and narrative analysis provided information on home births and the experience of illness. Patient-healer interaction was observed in both public and private clinics, and in the homes of two traditional healers. Participant-observation with traditional healers disclosed some of the theory underlying this therapeutic system. The holistic interpretation of both biomedicine and traditional medicine in Moroccan society emphasizes the fact of medicine's cultural construction. Traditional medicine in the city is changing with the development of a syncretism between traditional and biomedical concepts. Biomedicine is seen not as a detached, objective system, but as embedded in its sociocultural matrix. This study suggests the analysis of medical systems both as belief systems and as systems of discourse.PhDCultural anthropologyUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/161167/1/8621378.pd