Les acteurs camerounais des médecines venant de chine : entre ordres de médecines et ordre de pouvoir

Abstract

The Ministry of Public Health does not grant status to actors in alternative medicine nor does it give precedence to associative groups in the dialogue for the improvement of their living conditions. At first glance the actors of these medicines occupy a residual place with no political influence. Interestingly enough, at the same time specific but variable types of spaces have emerged recently in the main axes of the city of Yaoundé. They are characterized by their common offer in Chinese therapeutics such as fairs, campaigns, health caravans, shops, wellbeing centers, beauty salons or fitness rooms just to name a few. Cameroonian actors in Chinese medicine provide care services and prescriptions in these improvised consultation places. Immersing ourselves in this world allows us to observe a recent tendency in which they impose their presence in aspects where they make up for the flaws of MINSANTE. Thus, the main question is how do Cameroonian actors of medicines coming from China build their social and therapeutic legitimacy? The main research hypothesis postulates that these actors build their social and therapeutic legitimacy in the midst of the various struggles that stretch between orders of medicine and orders of power. To confront this hypothesis, two theories were used, the theory of the social construction of reality by Berger and Luckmann, and the constructivist structuralism of Bourdieu. The field approach, essentially inductive, mobilizes ethnographic and diachronic approaches to history. We mainly relied on comprehensive interviews. At the end of the data analysis, it appears that: the less the informant identifies with China, the more the need to secure his activity and to prove his legitimacy is felt. In addition, while ACMCs take refuge in associations to face the judgment of conventional therapeutic knowledge holders, these protective structures finally turns out to be spaces for the expression of other forms of conflicts, thereby weakening the credibility of these actors. Finally, through the category of ESA within the ACMC, these actors have a political scope which goes beyond the framework of conflicts marking out associative life to move in interactions where they touch the different categories of politics.