Injections and the fear of death: an essay on the limits of biomedicine among the Dagomba of northern Ghana

Bernhard Bierlich

Social Science & Medicine, 2000, vol. 50, issue 5, 703-713

Abstract: This article offers a cultural ("indigenous") explanation of why people in their quest for therapy sometimes reject biomedicine. The argument is that in the current debate over the power of biomedicine, there is a lack of scrutiny of its "failures", i.e. of why people occasionally refuse to accept the offers of biomedicine and its most powerful therapy, injection-therapy. After introducing the problem, the relevant literature and the methods used, the article proceeds by first using historical material regarding vaccination campaigns and the treatment of endemic diseases in Ghana and comparative data from elsewhere in Africa to show that people may be ambivalent and have a mixed view of the power of biomedicine. In the context of their experiences, people (possibly, in particular, older ones) have come to know both the (early) failures as well as the successes of injection-therapy. Turning to the ethnographic present (1990-1997) the record of Dagomba notions of health and illness as well as two cases are analyzed to define this ambiguity also among younger members of Dagomba culture. Thus, the article oscillates between ethnography and history to define people's ambivalence and the conflict between biomedicine and local understandings.

Keywords: Injections; Ambivalence; History; Ethnography; Public; health; Ghana (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2000
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(99)00322-6
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:50:y:2000:i:5:p:703-713

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().