8 - Confirming the Triumph of Practicality

Summary

The basic premiss of this book, introduced in Chapter 1, is the triumph of practicality. That is, it is assumed that despite the official and formal distinctions in legitimacy and effectiveness between traditional and modern medical systems made by governments and the modern medical profession, people make use of both systems according to their own perception of what is good for them. Furthermore, this trend is deemed to be immune to modernization. The dual use of traditional and modern medicine — well documented in the 1960s and 1970s — is expected to continue despite the process of modernization experienced in Third World countries throughout the 1980s.

Correspondingly, three answers were suggested in the first chapter to Fabrega's (1982: 248) important question on why people use both traditional and modern medicine. These tentative answers were: the presence of pragmatic acculturation, the level of accessibility to both modern and traditional medical services, and the consumers’ subjective perception of the benefits of using those services.

Based on the data from the five nations covered in this study, this concluding chapter summarizes the evidence collected on the above assumptions. The summary is presented in terms of the two mam questions or themes guiding the study, namely, the mam patterns of dual utilization of traditional and modern medical systems and the current role of governments concerning the integration of the two systems.

Main Patterns of Dual Utilization

If one were to encapsulate some of the findings of this study in one sentence, it would be: yes, dual utilization persists and gives no signs of disappearing with modernization. But, of course, such a concise report does not explain why people continue to combine modern and traditional methods of healing. The three answers suggested at the outset, namely, pragmatic acculturation, level of accessibility, and subjective perception of benefits, are supported by the evidence reported in the preceding chapters. Let us review each of these answers briefly.