Short Abstract

This panel welcomes ethnographic explorations of the ethical, political and social implications of medical pluralism, examining how care pathways, the legitimacy of practitioners and power relations between stakeholders are organised around and with those affected.

Long Abstract

This panel engages with the tensions and negotiations that arise when different healthcare systems coexist within the same social space. It argues that while biomedical, local and so-called “alternative” practices sometimes conflict with one another – revealing divisions in the recognition of knowledge and skills (Foucault 1963, 1976 ; Leslie & Young 1992 ; Farmer 2004) – most of the time they accumulate and coexist without confrontation (Zempleni 1968). This panel welcomes ethnographic explorations of the ethical, political and social implications of this “medical pluralism” (Leslie 1980 ; Kleinman 1981 ; Khalikova 2021) examining how care pathways, the legitimacy of practitioners and power relations between stakeholders are organised around and with those affected. We specifically encourage scholars to analyse and reflect on how therapeutic choices are made and on how hierarchies of knowledge and forms of social regulation frame care. Can we explore new forms of "medical pluralism"? Whose "knowledge" counts ? Is it possible to rethink the concept of “medical pluralism” and to discuss its possible transformations and existence in a polarized world?

To address these broader questions, we welcome theoretical, methodological and ethnographic papers that explore these interactions between patients, practitioners, communities and institutions, in order to better understand the tensions and negotiations generated by the coexistence of multiple healthcare systems.

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