'Psychosis of civilization': a colonial-situated diagnosis.

In the late 1930s, when colonial psychiatry was well established in the Maghreb, the diagnosis 'psychosis of civilization' appeared in some psychiatrists' writings. Through the clinical case of a Libyan woman treated by the Italian psychiatrist Angelo Bravi in Tripoli, this article explores its emergence and its specificity in a differential approach, and highlights its main characteristics. The term applied to subjects poised between two worlds: incapable of becoming 'like' Europeans - a goal to which they seem to aspire - but too far from their 'ancestral habits' to revert for a quiet life. The visits of these subjects to colonial psychiatric institutions, provided valuable new material for psychiatrists: to see how colonization impacted inner life and to raise awareness of the long-term socio-political dangers.

[Hitupmã'ax: intercultural education and specific health care for the Maxakali people]. / Hitupmã'ax: educação intercultural e atendimento diferenciado à saúde do povo maxakali.

This study analyzed an artifact (a book on health) conceived by the Maxakali people, called Hitupmã'ax: curar (2008). Parallel to the project for the production of this book, the aim was to understand the negotiation of public health in Brazil from a historical and intercultural perspective of non-Western epistemologies. It was found that the construction of the Maxakali work represented an effort to bridge the gap in the perception of health and health care between indigenous and non-indigenous people. This was then used to demonstrate the importance of this intercultural project for the shaping of public policies for indigenous people in general and particularly for the promotion of the history, knowledge, and culture of the Maxakali people.

Este trabalho analisou um artefato (um livro de saúde) concebido pelo povo maxakali, denominado Hitupmã'ax: curar (2008). Tangenciado o projeto de produção do livro, o objetivo foi entender o processo de negociação da saúde pública no Brasil, dentro de uma perspectiva histórica e intercultural das epistemologias não ocidentais. Constatamos que a construção da obra maxakali representa um esforço para diminuir a distância da percepção e dos cuidados de saúde entre indígenas e não indígenas, e por essa via demonstramos a importância desse projeto intercultural para a efetivação de políticas públicas voltadas para o público indígena em geral e, especificamenete, para a promoção da história, dos saberes e da cultura maxakali.

Hitupmã'ax: educação intercultural e atendimento diferenciado à saúde do povo maxakali / Hitupmã'ax: intercultural education and specific health care for the Maxakali people

Resumo Este trabalho analisou um artefato (um livro de saúde) concebido pelo povo maxakali, denominado Hitupmã'ax: curar (2008). Tangenciado o projeto de produção do livro, o objetivo foi entender o processo de negociação da saúde pública no Brasil, dentro de uma perspectiva histórica e intercultural das epistemologias não ocidentais. Constatamos que a construção da obra maxakali representa um esforço para diminuir a distância da percepção e dos cuidados de saúde entre indígenas e não indígenas, e por essa via demonstramos a importância desse projeto intercultural para a efetivação de políticas públicas voltadas para o público indígena em geral e, especificamenete, para a promoção da história, dos saberes e da cultura maxakali.

Abstract This study analyzed an artifact (a book on health) conceived by the Maxakali people, called Hitupmã'ax: curar (2008). Parallel to the project for the production of this book, the aim was to understand the negotiation of public health in Brazil from a historical and intercultural perspective of non-Western epistemologies. It was found that the construction of the Maxakali work represented an effort to bridge the gap in the perception of health and health care between indigenous and non-indigenous people. This was then used to demonstrate the importance of this intercultural project for the shaping of public policies for indigenous people in general and particularly for the promotion of the history, knowledge, and culture of the Maxakali people.

Hybridising Medicine: Illness, Healing and the Dynamics of Reciprocal Exchange on the Upper Guinea Coast (West Africa).

The present article seeks to fill a number of lacunae with regard to the study of the circulation and assimilation of different bodies of medical knowledge in an important cultural contact zone, that is the Upper Guinea Coast. Building upon ongoing research on trade and cultural brokerage in the area, it focuses upon shifting attitudes and practices with regard to health and healing as a result of cultural interaction and hybridisation against the background of growing intra-African and Afro-Atlantic interaction from the fifteenth to the late seventeenth century. Largely based upon travel accounts, missionary reports and documents produced by the Portuguese Inquisition, it shows how forms of medical knowledge shifted and circulated between littoral areas and their hinterland, as well as between the coast, the Atlantic and beyond. It shows that the changing patterns of trade, migration and settlement associated with Mandé influence and Afro-Atlantic exchange had a decisive impact on changing notions of illness and therapeutic trajectories. Over the centuries, cross-cultural, reciprocal borrowing contributed to the development of healing kits employed by Africans and non-African outsiders alike, which were used and brokered by local communities in different locations in the region.

Demic and cultural diffusion propagated the Neolithic transition across different regions of Europe.

The Neolithic transition is the shift from hunting­gathering into farming. About 9000 years ago, the Neolithic transition began to spread from the Near East into Europe, until it reached Northern Europe about 5500 years ago. There are two main models of this spread. The demic model assumes that it was mainly due to the reproduction and dispersal of farmers. The cultural model assumes that European hunter-gatherers become farmers by acquiring domestic plants and animals, as well as knowledge, from neighbouring farmers. Here we use the dates of about 900 archaeological sites to compute a speed map of the spread of the Neolithic transition in Europe. We compare the speed map to the speed ranges predicted by purely demic, demic-cultural and purely cultural models. The comparison indicates that the transition was cultural in Northern Europe, the Alpine region and west of the Black Sea. But demic diffusion was at work in other regions such as the Balkans and Central Europe. Our models can be applied to many other cultural traits. We also propose that genetic data could be gathered and used to measure the demic kernels of Early Neolithic populations. This would lead to an enormous advance in Neolithic spread modelling.

Football and post-war reintegration: exploring the role of sport in DDR processes in Sierra Leone.

Growing enthusiasm for 'Sport for development and peace' (SDP) projects around the world has created a much greater interest among critical scholars seeking to interrogate potential gains, extant limitations and challenges of using sport to advance 'development' and 'peace' in Africa. Despite this interest, the role of sport in post-conflict peace building remains poorly understood. Since peace building, as a field of study, lends itself to practical approaches that seek to address underlying sources of violent conflict, it is surprising that it has neglected to take an interest in sport, especially its grassroots models. In Africa, football (soccer) in particular has a strong appeal because of its popularity and ability to mobilise individuals and communities. Through a case study on Sierra Leone, this paper focuses on sports in a particularly prominent post-civil war UN intervention­the disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) process­to determine how ex-youth combatants, camp administrators and caregivers perceive the role and significance of sporting activities in interim care centres (ICCS) or DDR camps. It argues that sporting experiences in ddr processes are fruitful microcosms for understanding nuanced forms of violence and healing among youth combatants during their reintegration process.

A reinvenção da acupuntura: estudo sobre a transplantação da acupuntura para contextos ocidentais e adoção na sociedade brasileira / The reinvention of acupuncture: a study on acupuncture transplantation for Western contexts and adoption in Brazilian society

A medicina chinesa originalmente era parte de um conjunto mágico-religioso, fundamentava-se na cosmologia taoísta e sofreu influências do confucionismo e budismo. Passou por diversas modificações durante a milenar história chinesa, foi secularizada após a Revolução Cultural e na atualidade adquiriu características ocidentais. A aplicação de agulhas é um dos seus métodos terapêuticos, que vem sendo traduzido como acupuntura para o Ocidente desde o século XVII. A ampla difusão da acupuntura nas últimas décadas foi acompanhada por transformações sócio-históricas que permitiram sua assimilação em novos contextos culturais. As medicinas orientais foram valorizadas no Ocidente a partir da contracultura, que contestava o conhecimento racional científico como único produtor da verdade e a separação cartesiana entre corpo, mente e espírito. Paralelamente à importação de tratamentos medicinais, ocorreram modificações nas concepções religiosas ocidentais e emergiram novas corporeidades que favoreceram a adoção de práticas orientais de saúde. Como resultado do processo de inclusão da acupuntura em contextos ocidentais, surgiram novos jeitos de praticar a terapêutica chinesa, várias reinvenções da arte de aplicação das agulhas para adaptação à cosmovisão ocidental e ao modo de vida moderno. O objetivo dessa dissertação é apresentar uma reconstrução histórica das transformações da medicina na China e no Ocidente, da transplantação da acupuntura como elemento desvinculado do conjunto simbólico original para países ocidentais, e do processo de adoção da acupuntura na sociedade brasileira, delineando os possíveis modos de praticar acupuntura no Brasil contemporâneo.(AU)

The chinese medicine originally was the part of magic-religious universe, fundamented on the taoist cosmology and later suffered due to the influence of confucionism and budism. It passed through several modifications during the history of milleniums of China; was secularized after the Cultural Revolution and assimilated western characteristics in the recent times. The application of needles is one of its teraphic tecniques, which has been translated as acupuncture to the western culture since XVII century. The ample diffusion of acupuncture in the last decades which was accompanied by the socio-historical transformations permitted its assimilation to the new cultural contexts. The eastern medicinal techniques were valued in the west during the period of counter culture, which contested the rational cientific knowledge as unique producer of the truth e cartesian separation between body, mind and spirit. Parallelly the imporation of medicinal treatments, paved the way in the modification in the western religious conceptions and emerged new corporities which favoured the adoption of eastern practices of health. With the result of the process of inclusion of acunpuncture in the western contexts, new ways of practicing the chinese therapy have emerged, several reinventions of the art of application of needles have taken place in order to adapt to the western cosmovision and to the life in modern times. The objective of this dissertation is to present the historical reconstruction of transformation of medicine in China and in the West; the transplantation of acupuncture as an element desconnected to the original simbolic universe to the western countries, and the process of adoption of acupuncture in the brazilian society, delienating the possible modes of practing acupuncture in contemporary Brasil.(AU)