Josep M. Comelles

Universitat Rovira i Virgili | URV · Department of Anthropology, Philosophy and Social Work

Folkmedicine and primitive medicine (folk medicine and primitive or traditional medicine) are concepts that have been used to label the knowledge and practices of livestock and peasant societies or native peoples by authors who considered them to be on the fringes of scientific medicine. This distinction was present in many professional writings of...

The chapter analyzes the insane people admitted in the Hospital of the Holy Cross (Sanra Creu) in Barcelona. The data came from three manuscripts of admittance (1592-1703) and from letters exchanged between the Board of Trustees and local, courts authorities and military oficcers to admit new inmates (1769-1830).

De la folkmedicina al pluralismo asistencial: una genealogía de algunos conceptos clave en la evolución de los estudios sobre el papel de los ciudadanos y los pueblos en la construcción de sistemas médicos

The aim of this article is to analyze the first stage of the institutionalization of Social Anthropology in Spain from its foundatuiob (1969-1974), until the apporval of the degree in Social and Cultural Anthropology in 1991 as a result of the University Reform Law (1983). The professional consolidationof anthropologists and a polycentric instituti...

The ethnographic regard of Catalan medical doctors during francoism.

Beginning at the end of the 18th century, the emergence of hospital med- icine and, half a century later, the development of experimental medicine and health statistics, transformed the way medicine was taught. This new training model prioritized the “clinical view”, to the detriment of the view on the social environment where professional practice...

This paper explores the turnaround that, since March 2020, has taken place in both health culture and local folk medicine in Catalonia. It includes a conceptual discussion, at the outset, about what the concepts of global ‘health culture’, ‘folk medicine’ and ‘auto-atención’ mean, as well as their re- lationship with ‘medicalisation’ and the ‘medic...

A monograph about the evolution of the Catalan hospitals from the 19th Century Charity Laws to the Health services map in 1980. It is an analysis from the point of view of political economy and the social and cultural meanings of the hospitals in the context of the development of capitalism in Catalonia.

Es realitza una contextualització històrica sobre l’evolució de la missió del metge rural i la construcció del seu tipus ideal. A continuació, es discuteix el valor heurístic de les fonts disponibles per a l’estudi de la medicina rural, al nostre territori, i se’n fa una descripció analítica. Es conclou amb una discussió teòrica a propòsit del valo...

The study of “medical pluralism” and “care pluralism” was and still is a fundamental part of the development and agenda of medical anthropology not only in developing countries but also in Europe. The term “care pluralism” refers to the coexistence of different knowledges and practices relating to the “care, illness and health process”. Care plural...

El concepto de autoetnografia es reciente, no existía hace cua- renta años. Este texto reconstruye el camino seguido de un texto escrito en 1979 hasta el día de hoy. Desde la perspectiva del debate sobre la autoría etnográfica, el autor se describe asimismo como en los textos de naturale- za etnográfica y en los que se experimenta una narrativa a d...

En este texto se analiza la genealogía de la regionalización sanitaria en España, desde la mitad del siglo XX hasta la promulgación de la Constitución de 1978. Tras aclarar una serie de cuestiones conceptuales en torno a la regionalización, se presta especial atención a los elementos más desconocidos de los debates sobre la cuestión, surgidos en lo...

The aim of this article is to analyse the roots of the Spanish health reform which took place once the dictator, General Franco, had died in 1975. After contextualising the place of Spain in the development of Western health systems, we assess three key elements and their influence on the medicalisation of Spanish society. The first is the economic...

Une imagination si elle est assez vive est toujours au présent. Les souvenirs que l'on "revoit", les régions lointaines, les rencontres à venir ou même les épisodes passés que chacun arrange dans sa tête en en modi-fiant le cours tout au loisir, il y a là comme un film intérieur qui se dé-roule continuellement en nous-mêmes. Ainsi le film total de...

This paper analyses the discourses that addressed healthcare reform projects discussed in Spain during the 1970s, before the death of the dictator General Franco, and up to the declaration of healthcare as a right in the Spanish Constitution of 1978. The Spanish health system, which developed from the Compulsory Sickness Insurance launched in 1944,...

A state of art on history and ethnography of hospitals and mental asylum.

This volume presents a selection of the contributions to the Medical Anthropology at Home (MAAH) conference, Assemblages, transformations, and the politics of care, that took place in Bertinoro, Italy, 2014. The authors investigate the moral, material and social assemblages, the mechanisms of transformations, the relationality and the shifting nego...

The evolution of the Spanish hospital system from the Ancien regime to the General Health Law(1986). The political economy and the cultural implications in the development and medicalization of the Spanish local and provincial hospital. The specific cases of Catalonia and the Basque Country as two idiosyncratic cases.

The evolution of ethnographic narratives from an historical perpective, in the verge betwwen medicine and anthropology

La confusión de los psiquiatras. Las narrativas en torno a la crisis del custodialismo durante el tardofranquismo En plena crisis del custodialismo y dentro del contexto político del tardofranquismo, la psiquiatría española estuvo expuesta a un gran abanico de corrientes teóricas e ideológicas que influenciaron la manera de pensar la disciplina. Me...

This article describes the evolution of the Catalan Health System, using the development of a key cultural concept –hospital-centrism– to understand the hegemony of the hospital institution in the current health devices. To this purpose, and using two complementary perspectives such as anthropological history and medical anthropology, the article a...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyse the evolution and characteristics of health education in schools in Spain during the dictatorship of General Franco (1939-1975). Design/methodology/approach Analysis of two kinds of sources. Firstly, the reports from international organizations on health education in schools published in the 1950s...

El objetivo de este artículo es comparar el desarrollo de la educación sanitaria en Italia y España desde el punto de vista del papel jugado por la antropología médica en ambos países, en un contexto marcado por los cambios en el concepto de educación sanitaria que propugnaron los organismos técnicos de las Naciones Unidas, en especial la Organizac...

La SEHCYT y la UAH, un encuentro después de cuarenta años El 30 de octubre de 1974 se celebró la Reunión Constituyente de la Sociedad Española de Historia de las Ciencias (SEHC) y se redactaron y aprobaron sus primeros Estatutos. Poco después se solicitó su admisión en el Registro de Asociaciones del Ministerio de Gobernación, lo que no se logró h...

El propósito de este libro es aportar elementos a la reflexión sobre comunicación, educación y salud desde las ciencias humanas y sociales; Dicha reflexión resulta vital, ahora más que nunca, teniendo en cuenta la enorme expansión de medios de comunicación como la televisión o los basados en las tecnologías 2.0, que permiten que el acceso a los con...

El análisis de la publicidad en televisión e internet de los alimentos funcionales producidos por Danone se utiliza como argumento para explorar las formas con las que, actualmente, la sociedad global construye la folk medicina y participa de la última etpa del proceso de medicalización

The mainlines of the evoltion of the mental health sector under Franco's Regime in Spain. The paper explores the economic issues of the institutions to show the reasons of the persistence of custodialism and its crisis at the end of the dictatorship period

The chapter do a review of the mainlines of bibliography related with the process of mental health desinstitutionalization in late Francoist Spain. Most of the books were translations done in Latin America of classic texts of American culturalism, deviant sociology, psychoanalisis and anti-psychiatry

If Mad Men and Breaking Bad are the two series that have taken the cable channel AMC to such great heights as its competitor, Premium HBO, this post-apocalyptic tale based on a Robert Kirkman comic depicting a world populated by zombies is the show that has brought it audiences in the millions, greater even than many free-to-air productions. Premie...

The aim of this article is to compare the development of health education in Italy and Spain from the point of view of the role played by medical anthropology in both countries. The context is provided by the changes in the concept of health education advocated by the UN technical agencies, especially the World Health Organization and Unesco, durin...

The paper is the English translation with a new presentation (Twenty years after) of a paper published in Italian and Spanish in 1996. The aim of the paper was to explore the genealogy of the concept of folk-medicine, that at the end of 19th Century was employed to describe local popular practices about health, disease and care. The concept was dev...

A presentation od a 3’ movie (Super8) shot in 1979 about the Corpus Christi procession in the town of Hinojos, near Seville. The citizens cover with branches al the streets.It is a singular document from a period with very less visual documentations

A post to introduce a visual ethnography of the Holy Week in Zamora (Castile and Leon, Spain). Go to the video via the following link: https://vimeo.com/177877448

The role of Anthropology in the development of Health Education after the Second World War is unquestionable especially in North America's health programs and mental illness. Its influence in Europe is lesser known. The set up of the Centro Sperimentale di Educazione Sanitaria in 1954, (Perugia, Italy) was a milestone. It established collaborations...

The aim of this paper is to highlight how hospitals, in Catalonia since the late Middle Ages to the currently, adopted a governance model which resulted in the creation and preservation of hospitals or care institutions in virtually all municipalities, even in small, whose frame legal was the private or civil law. Firstly, we observed how individua...

A short state of art of the recent historiography of hospitals to introduce a chapter's book on the Western Europe hospitals in Middle age and Early Modernity

Paul Valery spoke of film as a divertissement pour ilotes. We used to call television the silly box. The box has grown up and it has become a mirror with which we talk, day in and day out, a kind of invisible friend that is a companion for our loneliness and watches over our discomforts (also defining and identifying them). Thus, our aim is to inve...

From ethnography to education: The construction of experience in the health / illness / treatment cycle in medical dramasAbstract:In this article, we wish to discuss three dimensions of medical dramas. First, we wish to highlight the ethnographic value of medical television series, along with their credibility. These reflections include an explorat...

The paper explores the evolution of the causality of the zombi role in Western Culture by the way of motion pictures and TV shows. We gighlight the role of George R. Romero in the definition of the modern zombi and the evolution of causality from a nuclear apocalypse and the actual epidemics. The cultural feature of actual epidemics are relevant fo...

Esta obra pretende aportar nuevas perspectivas al conocimiento de la políticas sanitarias durante los años del despegue económico del franquismo y la transición democrática española . En un contexto de intensos cambios económicos, primero, y políticos y sociales, después, las políticas sanitarias tuvieron que afrontar nuevas realidades y problemas...

Un libro sobre medicina y etnografía, en el actual momento histórico, parece la combinación de campos de estudios casi incompatibles. Desde el punto de vista de los parámetros actuales, la etnografía queda muy lejos de los diseños de investigación biomédicos dominantes. Y, sin embargo, cuando se examina más de cerca la literatura existente, la etno...

A review about medical folklore and ethnography in Catalonia to introduce the contents of the book

The evolution of the use of herbalism in West Catalonia since the Civil war to day. A survey on the main herbal remedies in the area and they status in medical pluralism

The role of media (magazines) in the definition of folk diseases in Francoist Catalonia. The paper review the posts on medical education and popularization of medicine published by Cianòfilo (Josep Espriu aka) in the magazine Destino (Barcelona) and the emergence of the concpt of medical concerns as an alternative to folk diseases.

A discussion about the position of the folkmedicine and medical pluralism in the new agenda in medical antrhopology and history of medicine

The chapter explores the role of media (magazines) in health education in Catalonia (Spain). The axis is about the weekly sewries of papers El consejo del doctor (Doctor's) advice during the 50's in the main magazine published in that time, Destino.

DEL CUSTODIALISMO A LA DESINSTITUCIONALIZACIÓN EN ESPAÑA Y LAS GENEALOGÍAS INTELECTUALES DE LA DESINSTITUCIONALIZACIÓN

A work in progress about the attitedes and criticism of the professionals, mainly doctors and citizens about the firts period of the Spanish Francoist insurance (SOE). The paper include also the influence of the SOE in yhe Spanish process of medicalization and the development of an idiosincrasic health, disease and care culture.

In this article we propose a review of medical anthropology in Spain from a historical perspective. The article discusses different stages: 1. the historical relations between medicine and anthropology, including the emergence of medical folklore (19th-20th centuries), 2. the origin of medical anthropology and the obstacles to the emergence of the...

A short review - in Catalan- of the interest of TV medical shows in medical education, and of its ethographic value. A part of their content is a good representation of the recent changes in medical practica.

In this article, we wish to discuss three dimensions of medical dramas. First, we wish to highlight the ethnographic value of medical television series, along with their credibility. These reflections include an exploration of the relationships between fiction and nonfiction, using examples from Bodies, ER, Grey's Anatomy, and other series. The sec...

The article analyzes the relationship between medicine and anthropology in Italy to highlight the key role of Tullio Seppilli, one of the founders of the international medical anthropology, from its collaboration with the “Centro Sperimentale per l’Educazione Sanitaria” in Perugia after World War II. Seppilli, a professional anthropologist, is loca...

The first episode of E.R. (1994-2009) was a revolution and opened a new era in the production of TV medical dramas. Years later, Grey's Anatomy (2005-active), among other series, became a cultural phenomenon in the USA. The success of this TV genre is related to its subject matter and some debate has been raised concerning its influence on audience...

Spanish medical folklore has its origins in the final years of the nineteenth century as part of the folklore movement, the aim of which was to collect survivals. From the methodological point of view, it can make no contribution to the study of medical pluralism. Nevertheless, there are at least two other ways to consider medical folklore which do...

Lluis Mallart is the founder of Catalan medical anthropology. He has worked on Cameroon forty years. The chapter review his role as ethnographer in the field

Actually, the changes resulting from the questioning of the Welfare State, ideological positions and feminism have launched a debate on supply/demand about Reproductive Health. Our purpose is to evaluate the value of ethnographic narrations of three midwives: Ramona Via, Jennifer Worth and Lisbeth Burger. The casuistry presents in these ethnographi...

A survey of the medical anthropology history in Spain and of the recent trends of research. Recover and enlarge the data collected in some states of art done by the authors ten years ago

El objetivo del presente volumen es evidenciar aún más la necesidad existente de observar el proceso salud, enfermedad y atención en salud mental como un continuum donde la presencia, la historia y la cultura tengan un valor fundamental en la lectura terapéutica y su interpretación. Estos elementos permiten considerar la manera de definir, explicar...

A review on the autobiographies of three midwives: Lisbet Burger (Germany), Ramona Via (Catalonia, Spain) and Jenniofer Worth (UK). The paper checks the ethnographic value of these writings and the different narrative strategies and meanings of their authors. The last part of the paper discuss the motion picture version (the TV Show Call the midwif...

The chapter discuss the cultural and medical discourses about obesity and the so-called "epidemy" of obesity in the last decades.

A presentation of the book contents

In this article we analyse the role of folk medicine and medical folklore in the strate- gies and commitment of biomedical doctors in relation to health education, using as case-study Spain during the last years of the nineteenth century and the first three quarters of the twentieth century. Our analysis takes as a starting point the emergence of t...

In this text the production of anthropological knowledge about tourism by Spanish social anthropologists becomes the object of knowledge itself. To achieve this, the paper begins with an anthropological description of tourism. Then a genealogy of tourism as an object of phenomenological study is put forward, focusing on three epistemological moment...

El hallazgo casual de una colección de instancias de de- manda de trabajo a la Consejería de Sanidad y Asistencia Social de la Generalitat de Cataluña datadas en 1937 y 1938 permite con- templar los cambios en el mercado de trabajo femenino y las acti- tudes y las situaciones de hombres y mujeres en una situación de crisis y sufrimiento social en l...

An case study of the process of medicalization in a coastal county in Catalonia from the 18th Century to 1967.

Universitat Rovira i T/irgrrgrli. Tarragona 1. El reformisme il-lustrat a Catalunya i la transició cap a la benefic&ncia pública La pitjor crisi dels hospitals catalans des del segle XV es produí, paradoxalment, en el període de m h creixement econbmic i poblacional de Catalunya, al mateix temps que a la major part &institucions hospitalkies era fr...

The relationships between the medical discourses ion thalassotherapy and natural therapies and the origins of modern tourism in Northers Catalonia (Costa Brava). The case of the city of Sant Feliu de Guixols

Obesity and health seeking behaviours in teenagers in Catalonia (Spain)

The chapter explores the intersection between science, morality, medicine and religion in the actual phase of the medicalization process.

The everyday work in a mental institution in the rearguard, during Spanish Civil War in Catalonia. Administrative documents content narratives of ethnographic value on the everyday fears and feelings and are a portrait of everyday life in the rearguard.