Author(s): Su Faxiang, An Jingjing
Pages: 49-59
Year: 2014 Issue:  4
Journal: Northwestern Journal of Ethnology
Keyword:  Tibet; rural society; villagers; concept of disease; medical-care-seeking behavior;
Abstract: The greatest benefit that human being has enjoyed from modernization is the setting up of modern medical and hygienic serving system and the popular accepting of the scientific prevention and treatment of different diseases. Although the explanation of disease causes by local people with different medical-care-seeking behaviors seems simple and unreasonable, in the views of anthropologists, it reflects local knowledge and traditional ideas about diseases and pains. Therefore, it is easier to establish hospital and clinic than changing ideas about diseases which have been deeply rooted among rural villagers. In nowadays, one of the most serious challenges that the government of Tibetan Autonomous Region has to confront is how to improve fundamentally health condition of local people based on combining modern medical and hygienic system with Tibetan traditional concepts of diseases and medical-care-seeking behaviors scientifically and effectively. Investigations conducted by the authors of this paper in July of 2012 and July of 2013 has showed local villagers don’t think there is a intense and irreconcilable contradictions between modern medical and hygienic system and Tibetan traditional ways of treating diseases, just as some experts have argued. People in Niu village have taken it for granted that these two medical ways can co-exist and complement with each other. Tibetan villagers have owned enough wisdom to cope with challenges from modernization, positively, rather than passively.