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Wixárika Practices of Medical Syncretism - An Ontological Proposal for Health in the Anthropocene

Jennie Gamlin
By understanding a community’s medical system we are able to see their body ontology and how they live in relation to the world. Drawing on ethnographic research with Indigenous Wixárika communities the author proposes that by centring Indigenous sociality that is more-than-human, we can reconceive our planetary relationships in the broadest sense.
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Jennie Gamlin is a medical anthropologist and Associate Professor at the Institute for Global Health, University College London (UCL), United Kingdom. She leads the Centre for Gender, Health and Social Justice and currently holds the Wellcome Trust University Award ‘Gender, Health and the afterlife of Colonialism: Engaging new problematisations to improve maternal and infant health’. She has worked with Indigenous Wixárika Communities since 2009. Jennie is also a collaborator on the Embodied Inequalities of the Anthropocene project (PI, Sahra Gibbon, UCL/Wellcome Trust).

Learning points

  • Is the concept of ‘ontological anthropocene’ a useful concept for understanding the role of humans in climate change?
  • Indigenous knowledge and practices may be crucial for planetary health. How can anthropologists most effectively bring Indigenous understandings to the attention of policy makers without also appropriating it?

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