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Anthropology · Chapter 12

Medical Pluralism: The Patient’s Path

Almost nobody uses one medical system. People start at home, move outward, and usually run two or three kinds of care at once. Step through three patients and watch the path they trace between household, healer and clinic.

The care landscape

The numbered token is the patient · tap any sector to define it
Folk—
Professional—
Popular—
Three sectors, one patientpick a case and press Next

Kleinman’s three sectors

Who named what: Arthur Kleinman (1980) split every health system into popular, folk and professional sectors and gave clinicians the explanatory model interview. Charles Leslie (1976) named medical pluralism. Lola Romanucci-Ross (1969) described the hierarchy of resort — the order in which people try therapies. John Janzen (1978) showed that a therapy management group of kin, not the patient alone, does the choosing.