Debilidad: a biocultural assessment of an embodied Andean illness.
The writer examines the illness known as “debilidad,” a “women's illness” of which north Peruvian highlanders complain when expressing an embodied exhaustion resulting from a lifelong accumulation of productive and reproductive stresses. She reveals that this illness is also experienced by men and...
| Published in: | Medical Anthropology Quarterly Vol. 13; no. 3; pp. 286 - 316 |
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| Format: | Article |
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Wiley-Blackwell
September 1999
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| Summary: | The writer examines the illness known as “debilidad,” a “women's illness” of which north Peruvian highlanders complain when expressing an embodied exhaustion resulting from a lifelong accumulation of productive and reproductive stresses. She reveals that this illness is also experienced by men and children, and she contends that 82 percent of debilidad occurs in the households of postreproductive women with debilidad. She asserts that the roots of this illness lie in biological factors and the social and economic relations present in the northern Peruvian highlanders. |
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