Medical Pluralism & Lay Therapy
Management in Kinshasa

By Steven van Wolputte, et al.
November 2001
Uppsala University
ISBN: 91-506-1554-8
132 pages, Illustrated, 5 ¾ x 8 ¼"
$23.50 Paper Original

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A characteristic feature of Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, is that all over the city both initiated & self-made healers practice various forms of African medicine & health care. Such endogenous therapies exist side by side with both biomedical practices & charismatic faith healing offered by hundreds of Pentecostal & independent healing churches. Thus great variety of therapeutic alternatives reflects the social uprootedness of the health-seekers themselves. It is an illustration of the fragmentation of life in this city's poverty-stricken areas. This volume shows how faith healing, folk medicine & healing cults are creative attempts to overcome alienation. Through action research, the authors find way to mediate between different therapies by proposing muitual respect & concern with the patients' well being.

Anthropology
Uppsala-Leuven Research in Cultural Anthropology

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