Women’s Knowledge: Traditional Medicine and Nature

Women’s Knowledge: Traditional Medicine and Nature (Mauritius, Reunion and Rodrigues)

 

The Islands of Reunión, Mauritius and Rodrigues have their own unique medical traditions. 

These medical traditions have emerged from multiple origins through a process of creolisation, but they are also closely tied to the natural world in which they have adapted and evolved. They thus provide a key to understanding the wider societies, which are engaged in a constant dialectic between tradition and modernity.

Beginning at the end of the Seventeenth Century, these islands were gradually populated by populations originating from Europe, Madagascar, Africa, India, China, even Polynesia and Australia. 

The interchange between the medical traditions originating from each of these places has given rise to a common knowledge, transmitted largely by women.

This book brings to our attention the knowledge of medicinal plants and medical practices of these women, with special focus on childbirth. 

It also considers the place of medicinal knowledge within these evolving societies who are actively confronting the threats and opportunities that globalization poses to local identities.

The book was launched at the International Workshop on Bioprocessing, Policy and Practice: Conservation and use of Medicinal plants of the Small Island Developing States (SIDS) of the Indian Ocean and Madagascar (April 20-22, 2011 - Ebène, Mauritius). 

http://www.unesco.org/new/en/natural-sciences/priority-areas/links/related-information/publications/local-indigenous-knowledge-series/women-knowledge/