Healing and morality: a Javanese example.
Social science & medicine (1982) January 1, 1985 M R Woodward 29 citations
In Javanese traditional medicine, two conflicting healing modalities coexist: one relies on the magical powers of curers (dukun), the other on the religiously validated powers of Sufi saints. Both are rooted in Sufi Muslim concepts of personhood, knowledge, and magical power. Javanese integrate traditional and biomedical cures into a unified health care system by associating magical and biomedical knowledge. Comparison of Javanese medical, religious, and political systems reveals that the structural uniformity of cultural domains arises from the hierarchical organization of cultural knowledge. The study of traditional medicine and medical pluralism cannot be separated from that of worldview.