article
Change and continuity in the medical culture of the Hmong of Kansas City
Medical anthropology quarterly • 8 (2) • Published In 1994 • Pages: 161-177
By: Capps, Lisa L..
AbstractBrief abstract written by HRAF anthropologists who have done the subject indexing for the document
The Hmong in the United States have undergone radical culture change through their recent experiences of the war in Laos, refugee resettlement, and Christian conversion. This article analyzes the influence of these changes on the health ideas and practices of the Hmong in Kansas City, the primary study population. Although shamanism and ancestor worship have been abandoned, attenuated concepts of spirit illness and soul loss exist in health beliefs and patterns of illness, notably fright illness (ceeb). Their eclectic set of ideas and practices is derived from several systems, including Chinese medicine, Protestant Christianity, and biomedicine. To examine the eclecticism in Hmong health ideas, the author applies Murray Last's concept of medical culture which offers a looser and more general framework for understanding the health traditions of an ethnic group such as the Hmong than does that of a more formal medical system (pp. 161-162).
- SubjectsDocument-level OCM identifiers given by the anthropology subject indexers at HRAF
- Acculturation and culture contact
- Sociocultural trends
- Sickness
- Theory of disease
- Shamans and psychotherapists
- Animism
- Spirits and gods
- Missions
- Ethnoanatomy
- Ethnopsychology
- cultureCulture name from the Outline of World Cultures (OWC)
- North American Hmong
- HRAF PubDateThe date HRAF published the document
- 2000
- RegionThe area the document pertains to
- North America
- Sub RegionThe more specific area the document pertains to, which is located within the Region
- Regional, Ethnic and Diaspora Cultures
- Document TypeMay include journal articles, essays, collections of essays, monographs, or chapters/parts of monographs
- article
- Evaluation
- Creator TypesThe type of person writing the document, e.g. Ethnographer, Missionary, Archaeologist, Folklorist, Linguist, Indigenous Person, and so on.
- Medical Personnel
- Nurse
- Document Rating A ranking done by HRAF anthropologists based on the strength of the source material on a scale of 1 to 5, as follows: 1 - poor; 2 - fair; 3 - good, useful data, but not uniformly excellent; 4 - excellent secondary data; 5 - excellent primary data.
- 5: Excellent Primary Data
- AnalystThe HRAF anthropologist who subject indexed the document and prepared other materials for the eHRAF culture/tradition collection
- John Beierle; 2000
- Field DateThe date the researcher conducted the fieldwork or archival research that produced the document
- no date
- Coverage DateThe date or dates that the information in the document pertains to
- not specified
- Coverage PlaceLocation of the research culture or tradition (often a smaller unit such as a band, community, or archaeological site)
- Kansas City, Kansas, United States
- NotesAdditional notes
- Lisa L. Capps
- Includes bibliographical references (p.174-177)
- LCCNLibrary of Congress Control Number
- 84643999
- LCSHLibrary of Congress Subject Headings
- Hmong Americans