







The ethnography titled Drum and Stethoscope: Integrating ethnomedicine and biomedicine in Bolivia is a wonderful read for those getting into ethnic studies, like learning about Latin America, or are experienced individuals in the field.

It was authored by Joseph W. Bastien and published in 1992 by the University of Utah Press. Joseph Bastien was born in St. Cloud, Minnesota to parents Lena Arendt and Bill Bastien. He received a Bachelor’s of Arts in Philosophy from Glen Ellen College, two Master’s degrees in Education and Religious Education from SUNY Maryknoll in 1959. He became a Maryknoll priest in 1963. Bastien then went on to minister to Spanish people in La Paz, Bolivia from 1964 to 1966 starting a youth center and visiting prisoners in the jail referred to as the Panoptico. He then worked with Aymaras in Penas, Altiplano about 14,000 feet in elevation where he became fluent in the Aymara language, organized a leadership school, and taught many Andeans throughout the region. Shortly after 1969, he began graduate studies in Andean Anthropology under John V. Murra at Cornell University. He studied ethnohistory under Leighton Hazlehurst, Latin American history under David Davidson, and rural sociology under Frank Young. These studies became useful in his fieldwork among the Qollahuayas in 1972 in understanding the relationship of ritual to agricultural activity and social institutions. In 1973 he received his Ph.D. from Cornell in Social Anthropology. From there he became a teaching assistant at the university, then an assistant professor at the University of Texas, and a charter faculty there from 1976 to the present day. He currently is the Director of the Anthropology Program at the University of Texas at Arlington and a Professor of Sociology and Anthropology in their College of Liberal Arts. He is professionally affiliated with numerous anthropological, Latin American and Bolivian research, and Institute of Texas botanical associations. In 2000, Bastien was awarded La Cruz Andina de Oro by the Bolivian government for his extensive research, publications, and improvements to the welfare of Bolivians. In 2005, he was appointed a Distinguished Scholar Professor by UTA and still serves as a member.

The author of my ethnography, Joseph Bastien’s, fieldwork in anthropology began in 1963 in Bolivia among the Aymaras of the Bolivian Altiplano. He specialized in spending time among their famous Kallawaya diviners, traveling herbalists, and native medicine practitioners as well as western doctors alike. The ethnography, Drum and Stethoscope, focuses on cultural situations and issues regarding the improving of health of the Bolivian people by use of native beliefs and rituals, medicinal plants, and western doctors. The book takes place among both rural and semi-urban Bolivia, and includes fieldwork from 1963 to 1992. It includes multiple groups of indigenous and more urban communities interacting with one another and mostly takes place in the region of the Altiplano. It is a comparative study of both ethnomedical practices and those of traditional Western biomedicine. Overall, the book is a relatively traditional ethnography in how it is divided into three parts, each focusing on an overarching trend that is witnessed and examples provided of occurring in Bolivian society.



Methodology

The author of this book conducting anthropological studies using a variety of methods typically practiced in the fieldwork of an anthropologist. These methods include chain sampling, where the anthropologists locates and builds a relationship with an informative representative of a community and then that individual identifies other informants who represent the community, participant observation in the daily life and rituals of the various groups of Bolivian people studied, and interviews with select individuals who were either practicing shamans, herbalists, or a hybrid of both biomedicine and ethnomedicine.

The type of data gathered was for the majority qualitative, although quantitative data in the form of numbers of people afflicted by a particular disease, infants who die from a specific condition per year, and the number of community health workers for an average rural population was included in the study and derived from official biomedical sources such as hospital research and Bolivian government studies. The analysis performed on the data involved presenting the quantitative data, extensive and detailed recordings of beliefs, native medical practices, and rituals performed and reasons given by indigenous and more urban Bolivians, and then a provision of explanations for standard medical practices used to treat certain specific diseases and conditions as well as the observed efficacy of ethnomedical practices as well. A large network of sources providing information from government organizations, academic research facilities, and various members of indigenous communities was incorporated with the data. Although the author did much of the personal recordings and compilation himself, he did have several other experts’ work that he pulled from to support his findings. Other disciplines used in this ethnography included religious studies, biomedical fields, and sociology.

Research

The goal of the research done in Drum and Stethoscope was to gather more data on ethnomedicine and its relationship to practitioners of biomedicine and then develop ideas from examples of how the two may coincide to better help the Bolivian people and then potentially others. The main research questions centered around how ethnomedicine practitioners operated, why they were favored by the native people more than doctors or nurses, what role they played in the community, and how their results were not always tangibly definable. Generally, the findings were consensual in the fact that ethnomedical representatives all used a variety of techniques that respected a population’s culture, revolved around the spiritual, and were integral to social relationships in the community. In contrast, biomedicine focused purely on the ailment, its diagnosis, and the treatment of the body of the person through medication or surgery. Bolivian people of different communities found dislike toward the white negative energies of hospitals and the disinterested or uncaring aura of doctors and nurses performing biomedicine, and preferred the help of shamans, herbalists, or midwives to help with a personal or family problem since they regarded the people they treat with much greater cultural respect. Also, many ethnomedical practitioners would send patients they treat to biomedical clinics if they could not cure a condition; however, the reverse was almost never true hence a poor relationship between ethnomedicine and biomedicine in Bolivia developed.

The impact of the findings of this books research is substantial in how it portrays the high degree of acceptance ethnomedicine has and yet the higher rates of successful treatment of more lethal diseases biomedicine performs. The potential applications that could be garnished from this understanding are to try to combine the efficacy of biomedicine with the personalization of ethnomedicine. It is apparent from Joseph Bastien’s recordings that people in Bolivia are much more than just physical beings who become ill, they are social members affected by their feelings, interpersonal relationships, and perception of themselves by their own community. It is important to regard a person not just by their quantitative statistics, a tendancy biomedicine has, but also by their mentality, emotional state, and social interactions as well.



Relevance

The topics studied and research findings of this ethnography are very relevant to our anthropology class’s discussions and learning. The study of Bolivian culture is important in our understanding of the many social dynamics of Latin America. The Bolivians are not one ethnic group but several, some indigenous groups living up in the mountains and others of mixed descent living in more urban settings. There is a lot of tradition and firm hold on spiritual beliefs, which is important to our comprehension of the challenges biomedicine and other forms of Northern American cultural practices faces in integrating even if at the behest of providing the best for of life for these people.

The study of ethnomedicine does offer a similar perspective than that discussed in class in regards to shamanism and the multi-faceted role of a spiritual leader that heals. In this ethnography, the position that these practitioners have in Bolivia addresses a sick person’s social relationships, personal feelings, spirituality and potential ties to dead ancestors, sorcery, eating habits, and problems in the body. It truly shows in a detailed way that the method of healing a person effectively may involve a complex problem of finding the root cause of an ailment, which although arises in the body physically, sometimes does not have a physical root to begin with. This is very relevant to our class for our own understanding of medicine in Western society could integrate use this to help our own healing techniques be more long-lasting and effective.

Ethical Issues and Challenges

Ethical issues raised by this ethnography involve the ways in which ethnomedicine is practiced and the disregard biomedicine has toward native healers. Ethnomedical practitioners sometimes use techniques that may be potentially dangerous, such as using a sheet as a trampoline to launch a pregnant woman in the air to turn her unborn child in the correct birthing direction in utero, or considered uncivilized, such as sacrificing a lama to appease earth spirits. These methods challenge the perceptions of Western culture and the scientific community in continuing a sense of cultural relativity in light of potentially harmful or cruel practices.

The author of this book dealt with these challenges by simply presenting them to the reader to decide for oneself. In the case of practices that were harmful or dangerous, recommendations were made against such for factual reasons. However, in most situations that involved animal sacrifice, the author left the Bolivian people entirely alone and simply involved himself as a participant observer. There is one ethical issue the author did not delve into. Bastian spoke little of the tensions between racial groups in Bolivia. The indigenous groups living in rural areas and those Mestizos that may have interacted with them did not exhibit any bias, which seems unrealistic. It is possible that the author did not cover much of this interaction since his primary focus was on tensions between medical practitioners and less on ethnic groups entirely.

Personal Opinions

It is my personal opinion that I would highly recommend this ethnography to any who are interested in understanding more about ethnomedical practices and holistic treatment. Although I felt that some sections of this book were more drawn out and could have been made concise, I did enjoy this research and would read it again.

Check out Eupterra’s store if you wish a copy of this classic ethnography. I highly recommend it!

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