The Problem of Money : : African Agency & Western Medicine in Northern Ghana / / Bernhard Bierlich.

• VerfasserIn: Bierlich, Bernhard,
• Place / Publishing House: New York; , Oxford : : Berghahn Books, , [2007]; ©2007
• Year of Publication: 2007
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (248 p.)

Based on long-term medical anthropological research in northern Ghana, the author analyses issues of health and healing, of gender, and of the control and use of money in a changing rural African setting. He describes the culture of medical pluralism, so typical for neo-colonial states, and people’s choices of “traditional” (local) medicine (plants and sacrifices), Islamic medicine (charms and various written solutions) and ”modern” therapy (biomedicine, in particular western pharmaceuticals). He concludes that the rural-urban divide is a fiction, that demarcations between these areas are frequently blurred, linked by a postcolonial, capitalist discourse of local markets, regional economies and national structures, which frequently emerge in local African settings but often originate in global and multinational markets.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- List of Illustrations and Tables -- Foreword -- Preface -- 1 ‘New’ and Enduring Social and Economic Formations -- 2 Powers of the Person -- 3 Basic Concepts of Health and Illness -- 4 Medicines, Modernity and Commoditization -- 5 The Herbalist, Medical Pluralism and the Cultural Patterning of Illness -- 6 Health, Wealth and Magic -- 7 A Woman’s Lot: the Practical Realities of Care -- 8 The Problem of Money: Money and Medicine -- Conclusion -- Appendices -- References -- Glossary -- Index