IK Monitor Websites (8-3)

Indigenous Knowledge and Development Monitor, July 2001

Contents IK Monitor (9-2) | IKDM Homepage | Suggestions to: ikdm@nuffic.nl | © copyright Nuffic-CIRAN and contributors 2001.

Networks

The Society for Ethnomedicine (AGEM)

AGEM focuses on the medical concepts and practices of specific ethnic groups, from the medical knowledge of lay people to the experience of traditional healers and doctors past and present. As an anthropological discipline, and following ethnological methodologies, ethnomedicine describes concepts of health, illness and healing in different civilizations and in populations of varying provenance. In a wider sense, ethnomedicine compares different methods of healing while considering medicine as a cultural paradigm. One of its most important concerns is the creation of a framework and methods for comparing medical systems both within and between cultures, and examining the cultural concepts surrounding illness and our understanding of it. In this way, ethnomedicine provides a justification and an opportunity to apply findings from ethnomedical research to our own medical theories and practices.

The AGEM's main objective is build contacts between people interested in ethnomedical issues all over the world. It produces circulars, the journal Curare and other publications, and organizes internet and online activities, international conferences and meetings. The Society was founded in 1970 as an association of scientists and interested individuals and institutions, aiming to establish interdisciplinary cooperation between the various scientific disciplines of medicine and the cultural and social sciences. Currently, it has some 400 members from a wide range of countries. Additionally there is a group of interested correspondents, institutions and related work groups consisting of another 400 scientists.

http://www.med.uni-muenchen.de/medpsy/ethno/homepage-engl.html.