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Being well or unwell: How the concepts of health and illness interrelate with cosmovision and personhood in Kaqchikel Maya culture
Emkow, Carola
Emkow, Carola
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Abstract
This work is an investigation of how the Kaqchikel Maya conceptualize health and illness and how these concepts are shaped by Mayan cosmovision, spirituality and the notion of personhood.
Concepts are the building blocks of human thought. They are experienced inside the human mind, and expressed through language. Of interest is not only what people think and say about a concept, but also how they say it; both have interesting cultural differences. Thus, it is not only what people say about ‘health’ and ‘illness’ but also how it is said. It is through language, words, metaphoric expressions, as well as grammatical constructions and schemata that concepts are revealed.
My research is motivated by my keen interest in how familiar concepts like ’health’ and ’illness’ are understood in a different cultural settings, how they relate to other concepts (recursiveness), how concepts are expressed in language, and how language relates to cultural details of the concepts themselves. Language is the human tool that not only expresses concepts best, it also serves the transmission of concepts from generation to
generation, thus the preservation of traditional cultural heritage and knowledge. Misunderstandings in intercultural communication are rooted in insufficient knowledge of the other’s concept and culture.
Questions I address in this research are:
– What are the Kaqchikel Maya concepts of health and illness/disease?
– How can these concepts be unearthed by the Kaqchikel language? How can language help us understand them?
– How are the concepts of health and illness related to the concepts of personhood and Maya cosmovision and spirituality? What evidence does the Kaqchikel language
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provide?
– How do traditional healing methods as part of the concept of illness relate to Maya cosmovision and the concept of personhood?
– What implications do the Kaqchikel Mayan concepts of health and illness bear for the Kaqchikel people today?
– What is the importance of the Kaqchikel language in the professional health sector?
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Date
2024-01-01
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University of Kansas
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This item contains archived web content.
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Emkow_ku_0099M_19767.pdf
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- Embargoed until 2174-05-31
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Keywords
Latin American studies, Linguistics, Ethnic studies, cosmovision, health, Kaqchikel, language, Mayan