Book
Interpreting signs of illness: a case study in medical semiotics
Mouton de Gruyter • Berlin • Published In 1986 • Pages: 18, 284
By: Staiano-Ross, Kathryn.
AbstractBrief abstract written by HRAF anthropologists who have done the subject indexing for the document
The primary emphasis in this work is to present a study of the medical beliefs and practices of the Garifuna or Garifunas living in the town of Punta Gorda in Belize. There is much information here on various types of medical practitioners, diagnosis of disease, and forms of treatment for specific diseases. Staiano, using the concepts of semiotic theory as the basis of her analytic framework, explores the processes of communication, interpretation and negotiation among the Garifuna and examines the way in which signs of health and illness '...serve as metaphors, functioning to represent an object, event, or relationship whose association to the sign itself is never obvious, or as metonyms, acting to 'stand for' some greater whole' (p. xi). Since the Garifuna do not live in isolation from other ethnic groups, nor are they ignorant of Western medicine, this source also presents much information on conflict and competition among biomedical, ethnomedical and sacred medical paradigms, but at the same time showing in the overview how co-existence, co-optation, and to a lesser degree cooperation, can emerge as well.
- SubjectsDocument-level OCM identifiers given by the anthropology subject indexers at HRAF
- Theoretical orientation in research and its results
- Ethnic stratification
- Sickness
- cultureCulture name from the Outline of World Cultures (OWC)
- Garifuna
- HRAF PubDateThe date HRAF published the document
- 2005
- RegionThe area the document pertains to
- Middle America and the Caribbean
- Sub RegionThe more specific area the document pertains to, which is located within the Region
- Central America
- Document TypeMay include journal articles, essays, collections of essays, monographs, or chapters/parts of monographs
- Book
- Evaluation
- Creator TypesThe type of person writing the document, e.g. Ethnographer, Missionary, Archaeologist, Folklorist, Linguist, Indigenous Person, and so on.
- Ethnologist
- Linguist
- 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 ; 1989-1991
- Field DateThe date the researcher conducted the fieldwork or archival research that produced the document
- 1979-1984
- Coverage DateThe date or dates that the information in the document pertains to
- 1960-1984
- Coverage PlaceLocation of the research culture or tradition (often a smaller unit such as a band, community, or archaeological site)
- Punta Gorda, Belize
- NotesAdditional notes
- [by] Kathryn Vance Staiano
- Includes bibliographical references (p. 263-268) and index
- LCCNLibrary of Congress Control Number
- 85029337
- LCSHLibrary of Congress Subject Headings
- Garifuna (Caribbean people)