Diagnostic Emplotment in Q’eqchi’ Maya Medicine

Abstract

ABSTRACTMedical diagnosis is a process of illness discrimination, categorization, and identification on the basis of careful observation and is central in biomedicine and many traditional medical systems around the world. Through a detailed analysis of several illness episodes and healer interviews among Maya communities in southern Belize, we observe that the diagnostic processes of traditional Q’eqchi’ healers reflect patterns of narrative ‘emplotment’ that engage not simply the individual patient but also significant spiritual and cosmological forces. Three diagnostic techniques of the Q’eqchi’ Maya healers are described and their connections to Maya concepts of personhood and cosmovision are presented. This research fosters an appreciation of how Indigenous knowledge systems shape clinical encounters and healing dramas, widening the spheres of clinical narrative co-construction and dialogue beyond the material and physical contexts implicit within Western clinical encounters.