Knowledge and Loss: The Case of the Institutionalization of Maternal and Infant Health in a Highland Community of Peru

MONTEBAN M

Quebec

Congreso; Annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association; 2011

American Anthropological Association

Considerable attention has centered on the contributions of biodiversity and the detriments of its loss for human welfare. A parallel concern is the loss, retention, or expansion of local knowledge for it is seen as intricately tied to the maintenance and use of biodiversity. Researchers have thus focused a great deal on how loss or change in local knowledge regarding the use of plants and animals affects outcomes such as health and nutrition. In Peru, the preoccupation regarding local knowledge loss lead to the creation of the Institute of Traditional Medicine, an independent entity under the Ministryof Public Health, which is dedicated to growing and studying Peruvian medicinal plants. In addition, some traditional birthing practices have been incorporated into the work of biomedical practitioners. Parallel to this attention to local knowledge and medicinal practices public health initiatives are reinforcing the institutionalization of maternal and infant health in rural communities that until recently relied more on local medicinal and nutritional knowledge. In some cases local medicinal practices and the use of knowledge regarding the medicinal and nutritional properties of plants and animals are being reinforced and in others they are ignored and seen as obstacles to the implementation of a biomedical public health system. This paper draws on interviews and participant observation with local midwives/healers, mothers, and local public health practitioners conducted in the Peruvian highland Quechua communitIies. These data are used to explore local knowledge regarding biodiversity in terms of food and medicines during pregnancy and breastfeeding; the focus is on the interface between local knowledge and biomedical knowledge within the context of the institutionalization of maternal and infant health. It is argued that public health practices that discount the social-embeddedness of localknowledge lead to changes in this knowledge and in some cases loss.