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MA/PhD Theses Abstracts of Current Students & Alumni |
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Onjoro, Elizabeth Akinyi. 2001. The Integration of Knowledges in Development: The Relative Authority of Western and Indigenous Knowledge in Traditional Birth Attendants Health Practice in Rural Kenya.
Abstract: This research investigated whether the health practices of the traditional birth attendants(TBAs )among the Luo of Migori district, Kenya, integrate biomedical and indigenous medical knowledge, and if so, how is it accomplished. Over the past two decades, a Traditional Birth Attendant Training Program -a Western science-based health initiative -has been implemented in rural Kenya to educate TBAs on aspects of Western health knowledge. The stated purpose of the program was to "improve" TBA' s health practice. Employing a combination of ethnographic methods, including participant observation, structured and semi-structured interviews, and archival research, the project sought to isolate the factors influencing the use of each knowledge system, and the contexts in which each is used. TBAs were divided into two categories, "trained" and "untrained," in order to determine the relative effects on their knowledge usage of exposing some to biomedical training. The ethnographic research revealed that the health practice of traditional birth attendants and the health seeking behavior of the Luo community in general, are influenced more by cultural beliefs and social reality than by the presence of and access to scientific knowledge about disease. Yet, the World Health Organization (WHO) and United Nation International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF), in promoting the TBA training in Kenya and other non- Western countries, ignored the fact that not all illnesses are defined or understood in accordance with the scientific culture. Most importantly, the Westem-biased health initiative ignored the fact that the cultural definition of health and healing determines health practice and health behavior. The data from the TBA training program supports the many decades of evidence and experience that applying a Western model to direct development in the developing world yields underdevelopment, at worst, or no long-term development, at best. Based on the research findings, the dissertation suggests an equitable integration model that may provide some insights for project planners, administrators, and development agents as to how Western and indigenous knowledge can work together to achieve sustainable outcomes.
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