Soc Sci Med. 2000 Sep; 51(5): 703-11.

Practical logics: the shapes and lessons of popular medical knowledge and practice--examples from Vietnam and Indigenous Australia.

Craig D.

Indigenous Health Programme, Australian Centre for International and Tropical Health and Nutrition, University of Queensland, Herston. [email protected]

Popular medical knowledge and practice exist in forms that people are able to remember, and that they use to manage their daily lives. This knowledge is fundamentally practical and relates to the patterns of everyday life and the rhythms of the body. The broad "polythetic" concepts of this knowledge system are typically drawn from both dominant and other medical knowledges, and combined in pragmatic, mnemonic ways that constitute a hybrid system. Such popular medical knowledge is attuned to local, family and cultural patterns of medical and other authority, and to the personal dispositions and environmental contexts of its users. Health promoters and educators who understand these formal, embodied and familiar dimensions of popular knowledge can potentially mimic this knowledge system, making their interventions a sustainable part of everyday family life.