The need for a taxonomy of health in the study of African therapeutics

Abstract

Most medical ethnographies in Africa have focused on notions and taxonomies of disease, their causes and the therapies available to treat them. This ‘negative’ pathology-oriented perspective misses, or underplays, important although often unlabelled practices and ideas of hygiene, adaptation to the environment, normative health, and the conscious maintenance of health ideals, all of which are increasingly important in planning health programs based on popular support and rooted in cultural values. It is argued in the paper that medical anthropology needs to consider, as a single domain, both disease and health, both taxonomies of disease and of health, and the study of this expanded domain. In order to more adequately identify and analyze such an expanded domain, the paper reviews numerous ethnographic works on medicine and health in Africa—including Heinz on the !Ko, Evans-Pritchard on the Azande. Buxton on the Mandari, Ngubane on the Nyuswa-Zulu, and Janzen on the Kongo—exploring their potential for understanding alternative logics in therapeutics and for explaining sources of change in medical and health thought.