Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share David Carey, Jr., "Health in the Highlands: Indigenous Healing and Scientific Medicine in Guatemala and Ecuador" (U California Press, 2023)
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
David Carey, Jr., "Health in the Highlands: Indigenous Healing and Scientific Medicine in Guatemala and Ecuador" (U California Press, 2023)
Health in the Highlands: Indigenous Healing and Scientific Medicine in Guatemala and Ecuador (University of California Press, 2023) explores how, in the early to mid-twentieth century, the governments of Ecuador and Guatemala sought to expand Western medicine within their countries, with the goals of addressing endemic diseases and improving infant and maternal health. These efforts often clashed with indigenous medical practices, particularly in the rural highlands. Drawing on extensive, original archival research, historian David Carey Jr. shows that indigenous populations embraced a syncretic approach to health, combining traditional and new practices. At times, the governments of both nations encouraged--or at least allowed--such a synthesis, yet they also attacked indigenous lifeways, going so far as to criminalize native medical practitioners and to conduct medical experiments on indigenous people without consent. Health in the Highlands traces the experiences of curanderos, midwives, bonesetters, witches, doctors, and nurses--and the indigenous people they served. Carey interrogates the relationship between 'progressive' public health policy and indigenous well-being, offering lessons from the past that remain relevant in the present. Our best way forward, this history suggests, may be a compassionate syncretism that joins indigenous approaches to healing with science and a pursuit of environmental and social justice.
Ethan Besser Fredrick is a graduate student in Modern Latin American history seeking his PhD at the University of Minnesota. His work focuses on the Transatlantic Catholic movements in Mexico and Spain during the early 20th century.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/native-american-studies
View all episodes
By Marshall Poe
4.4
102102 ratings
Health in the Highlands: Indigenous Healing and Scientific Medicine in Guatemala and Ecuador (University of California Press, 2023) explores how, in the early to mid-twentieth century, the governments of Ecuador and Guatemala sought to expand Western medicine within their countries, with the goals of addressing endemic diseases and improving infant and maternal health. These efforts often clashed with indigenous medical practices, particularly in the rural highlands. Drawing on extensive, original archival research, historian David Carey Jr. shows that indigenous populations embraced a syncretic approach to health, combining traditional and new practices. At times, the governments of both nations encouraged--or at least allowed--such a synthesis, yet they also attacked indigenous lifeways, going so far as to criminalize native medical practitioners and to conduct medical experiments on indigenous people without consent. Health in the Highlands traces the experiences of curanderos, midwives, bonesetters, witches, doctors, and nurses--and the indigenous people they served. Carey interrogates the relationship between 'progressive' public health policy and indigenous well-being, offering lessons from the past that remain relevant in the present. Our best way forward, this history suggests, may be a compassionate syncretism that joins indigenous approaches to healing with science and a pursuit of environmental and social justice.
Ethan Besser Fredrick is a graduate student in Modern Latin American history seeking his PhD at the University of Minnesota. His work focuses on the Transatlantic Catholic movements in Mexico and Spain during the early 20th century.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/native-american-studies
More shows like New Books in Native American Studies
View all
Science Friday
6,199 Listeners
Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!
38,560 Listeners
Radiolab
43,866 Listeners
Fresh Air
37,866 Listeners
New Books in History
204 Listeners
Stuff You Should Know
77,754 Listeners
the memory palace
6,871 Listeners
New Books in Psychoanalysis
193 Listeners
New Books in Military History
161 Listeners
New Books in African American Studies
161 Listeners
New Books in Anthropology
49 Listeners
New Books in Environmental Studies
24 Listeners
New Books in Political Science
62 Listeners
New Books in Philosophy
109 Listeners
New Books in American Studies
29 Listeners
New Books in Intellectual History
61 Listeners
Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick | Law, justice, and the courts
3,479 Listeners
Bioneers: Revolution From the Heart of Nature
245 Listeners
Unreserved
125 Listeners
Code Switch
14,540 Listeners
Ologies with Alie Ward
23,951 Listeners
Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe
2,308 Listeners
Throughline
16,065 Listeners
All My Relations Podcast
2,961 Listeners
The Red Nation Podcast
978 Listeners