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Conceptualisation of Health and Illness

A Study of Social Representations among Bondos of Orissa

Shikha Dixit is Associate Professor in Psychology, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India. Her areas of interest are cognitive psychology, social cognition, health psychology, military psychology and qualitative methods. Email: shikha{at}iitk.ac.in

Mamata Mishra

Mamata Mishra is the Senior Project Officer in SIDBI Innovation and Incubation Centre at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India. She has done her doctoral work in sociology at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.

A.K. Sharma

A.K. Sharma teaches sociology at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India. His areas of interest are social demography, sociology of health, social movements and rural development.

The present article attempts to understand the relationship between culture and health through an empirical investigation of health and illness conceptualisation among the members of Bondo tribe of Orissa in India. The investigation of socio-cultural definitions and meanings of health and illness was done using the social representations framework. The dynamic nature of health and illness conceptualisation was investigated among the three groups of Bondos: The upper, isolated group; middle, partially assimilated group; and lower assimilated group. The data was collected through semi-structured interviews, observations and focus group discussions. Qualitative content analysis of responses was done in order to extract the meaning of categories employed by the three groups of Bondos. The content of these categories reflected the content of the social representations of health and illness among the Bondos. The categories employed by the Bondos for sense-making of health and illness states revealed the meanings of health and illness, beliefs regarding causes of illness, healing practices and treatment pattern and the difference in meanings and definitions of health and illness among the three groups of Bondos.

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