Change and continuity in the medical culture of the Hmong of Kansas City

Capps, Lisa L.

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..

Abstract
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).

Acculturation and culture contact

Sociocultural trends

Sickness

Theory of disease

Shamans and psychotherapists

HRAF PubDate