This project involves the dissertation research of a student of cultural anthropology from Michigan State University. The project will analyze the impact of major environmental change -- deforestation -- on traditional medicine use in a tropical forest community. Deforestation affects the use of both indigenous and pharmaceutical medicines because it shifts health statuses, local economic options and resource bases. By a combination of surveys, in-depth interviews and archival research the student will analyze the social context of medicinal use. The project will take place in Madagascar, where processes of deforestation resulting from shifting rice agriculture are well documented and where ongoing conservation strategies are altering patterns of land and resource use. The study will document the major illnesses perceived by an economically impoverished rainforest community, to identify the medicines most commonly employed by different social sectors, the factors affecting access to the medicines, the social strategies used to compensate for diminishing access to natural resources, and the social forces shaping deforestation. This research is important because deforestation is changing the social, economic, political and medical lives of traditional peoples all over the earth. This careful case study will illuminate general processes of how the health status of traditional people is affected by global environmental change.
