Gramsci, Culture, and Medical Anthropology: Kundry and Parsifal? or Rat's Tail to Sea Serpent?

Abstract

The articles in this theme issue are introduced in the context of the thought of the Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci. I suggest that his concept of hegemony is well known to medical anthropologists but not well understood, and an attempt is made to place it in the broader context of his life and work. I particularly emphasize Gramsci's ideas concerning the part played by culture (and by “intellectuals” who develop and transmit it) in all societies in “the late bourgeois world.” Healers are an important type of intellectual, and healing ideologies play an important part in hegemonic struggles. This is well illustrated at the personal level by the material presented in articles on the relationship between popular and biomedical belief among women in Haiti and between stroke patients and their doctors in California. In the public sphere, Islamic clinics in Cairo and curative rituals among the Manjak of Guinea‐Bissau can also be fruitfully seen in these terms. Finally, I draw an analogy between the presentation by Lévi‐Strauss of some mythical figures, who change character as they change spheres of existence, and the way that culture changes its meaning when it is seen from different perspectives in anthropology.