This paper examines how prevailing Western cultural concepts regarding the soul and spirituality, gender and healing have been challenged and redefined by a growing awareness of cultural alternatives.
Abstract The first part of the paper looks at the various cultural meanings of healing, as practiced by the Hmong people of Southeast Asia and the Daraga people of Western Africa. It examines how these cultures have challenged Western medicine's traditional focus on the body only. In the second part, the paper examines the various cultural concepts of religion and spirituality, and how the growing pluralism of definitions is a challenge for hegemonic Christianity. In the conclusion, the paper examines how these multiplicities of viewpoints have affected and broadened the author's own value system, giving an emphasis on the conflicting cultural concepts regarding gender and sports.
From the Paper "One of the most contentious areas of such cultural collisions involves medicine. Such conflicts are not new, as physicians have already run into conflict with many American religious groups such as the Scientologists and the Jehovah's Witnesses, who prohibit blood transfusions. In a case involving a child, however, a court ruled in 1943 that the state had a right to impose life-saving medical treatment, even if the said treatment conflicts with the family's religion (Fadiman 80).
Since the 1940s, however, physicians, scientists and the general public have begun to understand how other cultures may have radically-different ideas about the causes of illness and disease. The growing diversity of the population now requires physicians and healthcare workers a heightened cultural awareness, to become more understanding of the multitude of health traditions that exist around the world and, increasingly, in the country."
