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The Context of Medicines in Developing Countries pp 131–148Cite as

The Articulation of Formal and Informal Medicine Distribution in South Cameroon

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Part of the book series: Culture, Illness, and Healing ((CIHE,volume 12))

Abstract

The context of medicine distribution in South Cameroon is more complex than I had foreseen when I set out to do anthropological fieldwork in 1980.1 Perhaps naively, I had expected to find one fairly survey able field of formal services and another small and rather chaotic one of informal activities where medicines were transacted, purchased and consumed outside professional medical control. This chapter is about my discovery that there are not two fields, but only one in which formal and informal activities are closely interwoven. In a sense one could say that the chaos is not restricted to a delimited informal sector but is found everywhere. But one could equally well hold that there is no chaos at all. What appears chaotic and formless (in-formal) at first sight proves fairly structured when one looks more closely and starts to understand the commercial logic of the whole. That is another discovery on which I shall report in this paper.

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Authors
  1. Sjaak Van Der Geest
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Antropologisch-Sociologisch Centrum, University of Amsterdam, Oude Zijds Achterburgwal 185, 1012 DK, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Sjaak van der Geest

  2. Institut for Etnologi og Antropologi, University of Copenhagen, Frederiksholms Kanal 4, 1220, Copenhagen K., Denmark

    Susan Reynolds Whyte

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© 1988 Kluwer Academic Publishers

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Van Der Geest, S. (1988). The Articulation of Formal and Informal Medicine Distribution in South Cameroon. In: van der Geest, S., Whyte, S.R. (eds) The Context of Medicines in Developing Countries. Culture, Illness, and Healing, vol 12. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2713-1_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2713-1_7

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-010-7722-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-009-2713-1

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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