Thesis
Medical pluralism in a rural Moroccan village
Washington State University
Master of Arts (MA), Washington State University
2012
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/100906
Abstract
Rural Moroccans utilize a pluralistic medical system when dealing with illnesses. Medical options range from self-treatment and traditional healing to biomedicine. This thesis aims to 1) identify and describe the decision-making processes involved in seeking treatment in this pluralistic system, 2) to examine the impact of global political and economic structures and processes on health and illness and, 3) illustrate how the results of this study can be utilized to improve local healthcare. This study combines descriptive decision theory and critical medical anthropology in order to understand medical decision-making within a wider sociopolitical context. The ethnographic decision model is based on data collected from informal interviews, structured interviews, term-frame interviews, contrastive questioning interview, hypothetical situations interviews, and ranking tasks with 15 informants. To test the validity of the model, the hypotheses of the model were compared with illness case histories collected from 62 households. The illnesses case histories resulted in 244 illness episodes and 337 subsequent treatment choices. Overall, the model accounts for 93.5% of the choices included in the test.
Metrics
7 File views/ downloads
50 Record Views
Details
- Title
- Medical pluralism in a rural Moroccan village
- Creators
- Roxanna Jane King
- Contributors
- Barry S. Hewlett (Degree Supervisor)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Anthropology, Department of
- Theses and Dissertations
- Master of Arts (MA), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University; [Pullman, Washington] :
- Identifiers
- 99900525159601842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Thesis