Grandfathers, Google, and Dreams: Medical Pluralism, Globalization, and New Healing Encounters in Ghana

Abstract

Across contemporary Africa, pluralistic medical fields are becoming increasingly complex, giving rise to newly emerging constellations of healing practices and a vast array of therapeutic possibilities. We present portraits of four ‘traditional’ healers in southern Ghana who selectively adapt, adopt, and modify elements of biomedical, ‘local,’ and ‘exotic’ healing practices in eclectic and creative ways, positioning themselves strategically in a highly pluralistic, contested, and globalized medical arena. Their practices are informed by ‘traditional’ knowledge, passed down through families and acquired through spiritually directed dreams, but also from medical textbooks, Google searches, ‘scientific’ experimentation, and interactions with the biomedical sector. The healers make use of modern information and communication technologies to increase their geographical reach, and respond to the opportunities and risks of an increasingly global but strongly differentiated therapeutic market. However, while apparently transgressing therapeutic boundaries, they are simultaneously drawing on a discourse of stabilizing and straddling those boundaries to legitimize their practices.

Keywords:

• globalization
• hybridization
• therapeutic assemblages
• traditional healers
• traditional medicine
• West Africa

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This research was facilitated by a Leverhulme Study Abroad Fellowship. We express our profound thanks to the four healers (and their patients), who spend many hours and days sharing their experiences with us. Just before submitting this article, we received the very sad news that Dr. Andoh recently passed away. We would like to pay tribute here to his work and his commitment to the development of West African herbal medicine.

Notes

Figures based on Ghana's 2000 Population and Housing Census (http://www.statsghana.gov.gh/nada/index.php/ddibrowser/3).

We wish to acknowledge the substantial contribution that the four healers (Dr. Sahara, Dr. Sammy, Dr. Nsemka, and Dr. Andoh) made to this study, not only in providing the ethnography, but also for their intellectual and analytical input, which was important in shaping the development of this article. While we (the authors) remain ultimately responsible for the interpretation presented here, its production was a collaborative effort.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kate R. Hampshire

KATE R. HAMPSHIRE is Reader in Anthropology at Durham University, United Kingdom, where she works in the Medical Anthropology and Anthropology in Development Research Groups. Her research lies at the intersection of medical anthropology and social demography, largely in Sub-Saharan Africa. She focuses in particular on young people's health-seeking practices in the context of changing therapeutic landscapes.

Samuel Asiedu Owusu

SAMUEL ASIEDU OWUSU is Lecturer at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana. He recently completed his MPhil on sex education in relation to HIV among informal-sector workers in Southern Ghana, and continues to work on a wide range of research projects on health and well-being in West Africa.