The Problem of Money

Bernhard Bierlich

ISBN 10: 1845453514 / ISBN 13: 9781845453510

Published by Berghahn Books, GB, 2007

About this Item

Based on long-term medical anthropological research in northern Ghana, the author analyses issues of health and healing, of gender, and of the control and use of money in a changing rural African setting. He describes the culture of medical pluralism, so typical for neo-colonial states, and people's choices of "traditional" (local) medicine (plants and sacrifices), Islamic medicine (charms and various written solutions) and "modern" therapy (biomedicine, in particular western pharmaceuticals). He concludes that the rural-urban divide is a fiction, that demarcations between these areas are frequently blurred, linked by a postcolonial, capitalist discourse of local markets, regional economies and national structures, which frequently emerge in local African settings but often originate in global and multinational markets.

Seller Inventory # LU-9781845453510

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Problem of Money
• Publisher: Berghahn Books, GB
• Publication Date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1845453514
• ISBN 13: 9781845453510
• Binding: Hardback
• Condition: New
• Weight: 503 grams

About this title

Synopsis

Based on long-term medical anthropological research in northern Ghana, the author analyses issues of health and healing, of gender, and of the control and use of money in a changing rural African setting. He describes the culture of medical pluralism, so typical for neo-colonial states, and people’s choices of “traditional” (local) medicine (plants and sacrifices), Islamic medicine (charms and various written solutions) and ”modern” therapy (biomedicine, in particular western pharmaceuticals). He concludes that the rural-urban divide is a fiction, that demarcations between these areas are frequently blurred, linked by a postcolonial, capitalist discourse of local markets, regional economies and national structures, which frequently emerge in local African settings but often originate in global and multinational markets.

About the Author

Bernhard Bierlich is a social and medical anthropologist. He is a member of the Danish Galathea 3 research expedition to inter alia West Africa and the West Indies. He is also affiliated with the Department of History at the University of Copenhagen and a Research Associate of the Wilberforce Institute for the study of Slavery and Emancipation, University of Hull.