Zwischen mal aire und Malaria – Medizinischer Pluralismus bei den Naporuna im Amazonastiefland von Ecuador

Abstract

Medical practice of the Naporuna consists in the use of "traditional medicine” as well as "modern medicine”: In the case of disease, healers and physicians are consulted, medical plants and biomedical medicines are used. The conventional model of medical pluralism proved not to be useful to describe and to understand people’s ways of thinking and behavior in respect to disease, as found in an empirical medical anthropological field study in Ecuador. Starting from the supposed opposition between mal aire and Malaria, this article describes the medical pluralism among the Naporuna on the base of a great number of case reports. The review of important theoretical questions leads to a vision of medical pluralism beyond the misleading definition of its elements as definite "medical systems”.