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Social scientific studies of medicine typically assume that systems of medical knowledge are uniform and consistent. But while anthropologists have long rejected the notion that cultures are discrete, bounded, and rule-drive entities, medical anthropology has been slower to develop alternative approaches to understanding cultures of health. This provocative volume considers the theoretical, methodological, and ethnographic implications of the fact that medical knowledge is frequently dynamic, incoherent, and contradictory, and that and our understanding of it is necessarily incomplete and part

Reginald Scot has been acclaimed as an early rationalist for his critical consideration of witchcraft in 1584. At the same time, the Discoverie of Witchcraft appears organized much as later classic anthropological monographs. This article considers whether his methods and writing might indeed correspond to what we recognise as the procedures of medical or psychiatric anthropology.

A new dispensation demands that details, indeed memories, of the old ways be forgotten as fresh ideals and modes of action become paramount. This article proposes that an initial step in forgetting involves neglect – more specifically the neglect of certain patterns of comportment or material evidence or practice that recall a past now considered undesirable. In a millennialist Caribbean community, past memories and technical practices are discouraged by 'ideological work' that constantly weighs the old order against a new world in the process of creation: 'directed forgetting'. For a post‐communist Albanian village, by contrast, neglecting a technology appears a more transparently 'spontaneous' process. For both, memories are insubstantiated in an older material world, which must be avoided or destroyed.RésuméLa tendance est aujourd'hui à vouloir oublier les détails, voire les souvenirs, des anciennes manières de faire lorsque les idées et les modes d'action nouveaux deviennent prédominants. L'article part de l'idée que l'oubli commence par la négligence, et plus précisément par la négligence de certains modes de comportement ou signes et pratiques matérielles rappelant un passé considéré comme désormais indésirable. Dans une communauté millénariste des Caraïbes, les souvenirs et pratiques techniques du passé sont découragés par un «travail idéologique» qui met constamment en regard l'ordre ancien et le monde nouveau dans un processus de création : l'oubli «dirigé». Dans un village albanais postcommuniste, en revanche, le fait de négliger une technologie apparaît comme un processus spontané plus transparent. Dans les deux cas, les souvenirs sont consubstantiels d'un monde matériel ancien, qui doit être évité ou détruit.

The presentation of encounters with two migrant doctors with a past history of extreme sexual exploitation of their female patients presents an uncomfortable coming together of cultural observation, medical ethics and therapeutic transference. Colonial and postcolonial stereotypes evoked by their actions are briefly considered.

Social anthropology has proposed that social institutions and psychological reactions may at times be alternative ways of dealing with similar situations; and that at a high level of generality, they may be conceived of as variants of similar (psycho-social) phenomena. Response to sudden bereavement in Albanian Kosova may follow two routes: the customary law arguing stoicism but retribution, and the psychological idiom of `trauma' recently introduced by Western European aid agencies. Similarities and differences between what at first appear two quite distinct responses are outlined.