I choose life : contemporary medical and religious practices in the Navajo world /

Building on her previous research involving the cultural constructions of personhood, life courses, and the body in ceremonial contexts, anthropologist Schwarz (Syracuse Univ.) focuses on the ways Navajo people accommodate biomedical practices, especially invasive procedures, within the context of medical and religious pluralism. In particular, the author examines surgery, blood transfusions, organ transplantation, and amputation, among other procedures, to elucidate how Navajo patients navigate, negotiate, and reconcile medical choices that often conflict with religious and cultural principles. Using richly detailed ethnographic interviews with patients, traditional doctors and ceremonialists, peyotists, and Navajo Christians, this carefully crafted work lays bare the wide variety of perspectives about biomedical practices and how the Navajo accommodate biomedicine in curing and health promotion. Navajo health is firmly grounded within the broad framework of Navajo views about health and illness, historical representations of colonization, and the interconnectedness of the world, while employing notions about the body to reinforce collective identity in resisting colonization. "I Choose Life" fills a significant gap in medical anthropological and public health literature. The analysis about the nuanced roles religious and medical pluralism have on Navajo medical choices and explanations has wider implications for medical practitioners working in other indigenous cultural contexts. A major contribution. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries. G. R. Campbell University of Montana