Is indigenous health knowledge converging to herbalism?: Healing practices among the Meru and the Maasai of the Ngarenyanyuki ward, Northern Tanzania
Highlights
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- We question whether traditional medicine is converging into “herbal systems”.
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- We address this aspect by focusing on two communities of Northern Tanzania.
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- The case study shows the increasing centrality of herbal remedies in traditional medicine.
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- At the same time TM emerges as a rich and challenging mixture of practices.
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- The grassroots search for a more communitarian approach to medicine is needed.
Abstract
Globalization
and cultural interaction, new lifestyles, the diffusion of “modern
medicine”, the transformation of traditional religious practices and
beliefs, have profoundly challenged and modified indigenous health
systems. This paper questions whether due to these changes traditional
healing systems are to some extent converging into “herbalism” and
losing ties with their original cultural systems.
By
analyzing the healing practices of two communities (Maasai and Meru) in
the rural ward of Ngarenyanyuki (Northern Tanzania), the paper explores
how traditional and modern health knowledge circulates, changes, and
evolves.
Evidence from the case study shows that
herbal remedies play an increasingly key role in traditional healing
practices. Nevertheless, Maasai and Meru health knowledge emerges as a
rich and challenging mix of evolving practices. The paper discusses
these ongoing processes and inputs into the debate on health provision
in African countries by underlining the need for a policy transition to
more holistic healing systems which may provide highly desirable options
in the current context of health reforms.
Keywords
- Meru;
- Maasai;
- Traditional medicine;
- Modern medicine;
- Integration;
- Interaction;
- Herbalism;
- Tanzania
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