title: A question of medicine answering. Health commodification and the social relations of healing in Sri Lanka.
abstract: Biomedicine although institutionally powerful in Sri Lanka has not been able to depersonalize illness or promote a notion of treatment efficacy disconnected from social relations. An ideology of healing crosscuts the trend toward health commodification. This paper focuses on three concepts fundamental to the interactive dynamics of treatment efficacy: constitution, habit, and power of the hand. A movement between two distinct types of health care seeking behavior is described. One is inspired by finding the right medicine fix, the other by finding a practitioner having a sensitivity toward one's sense of person and all this entails.
authors.affiliation: Department of Anthropology University of Arizona Tucson 85721.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Nichter
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Nordstrom
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D001824:Body Constitution / Q000208:ethnology; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003466:Cultural Characteristics; D003695:Delivery of Health Care; D005260:Female; D006184:Habits; D006694:Holistic Health; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008519:Medicine, Traditional; D008875:Middle Aged; D010342:Patient Acceptance of Health Care; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D013188:Sri Lanka / Q000208:ethnology