| In this thesis I discuss distinctions made in medical anthropology between biomedicine and ethnomedicines and between disease and illness. I argue that these distinctions hinder cross-cultural understandings of medical systems and practices. Such distinctions, I argue, are made in medical anthropology implicitly giving primacy to biomedical categories and explanations. I continue by addressing the shortcomings of a proposal in medical anthropology to overcome this primacy and propose that the dwelling perspective may provide a better avenue for cross-cultural understandings. By looking at medical systems and practices through the dwelling perspective I argue that they provide a reflection and reinforcement of a particular mode of engagement in the world. To illustrate how medical systems and practices reflect and reinforce this engagement, I discuss a Coast Salish shamanic healing ceremony in which a group of shamans journey to the land of the dead. |
