The Medicalisation of Incest and Abuse: Biomedical and Indigenous Perceptions in Rural Bolivia

Combining
biomedical, psychological, and anthropological approaches to
intergenerational incestuous violence experienced by rural indigenous
[and] peasant women in the Andean region, this book raises new questions
surrounding humanness and the normalisation of sexual violence. Through
original ethnographical research, the author analyses Andean
understandings of incest, medical positivist practices, as well as the
psychiatric ‘treatment’ of incestuous and gender-based violence.

The
book examines the implications that psychiatric institutionalisation
within the context of interethnic, gender, and class schemes, has on
what it means to be human. It also draws on a theoretical framework in
order to understand how discourses shape, and are simultaneously
problematized by individual experiences of sexual violence and incest.
Intergenerational incestuous violence against women is not necessarily
an exceptionalevent, but can be an ordinaryprocess,
one where through the articulation of biomedical and indigenous
medicine, as well as indigenous and mestizo forms of administration of
political power, womenas subjects can become possible.

This
book will appeal to scholars and students with an interest in
gender-based violence, as well as mental-health practitioners and
academics in Latin American studies, anthropology, gender studies, and
sociology.