2 WAYS OF EXPLAINING REALITY - THE SICKNESS OF A SMALL BOY OF PAPUA-NEW-GUINEA FROM ANTHROPOLOGICAL AND BIOMEDICAL PERSPECTIVES

Cultural anthropologists and biomedical physicians do not work togethe r as often as they should. The aim of this article is to demonstrate t he advantages of such a concerted effort. After briefly clarifying the author's own point of view and giving an ethnographic description of the Yupno people and their medical system, the focus will be the case of sickness of a small boy, presented from two perspectives, biomedica l and medical anthropological. Typical Yupno concepts of illness will not be correlated with biomedical classifications. The two kinds of in terpretation of the same sickness will be presented as two independent models of explanation. By this means, an attempt is made to avoid the approach often taken in medical anthropological studies: even though a native medical system is being described, it is at the same time mor e or less explained in terms of a biomedical system of reference as we ll as measured and evaluated against it.