Ethnomedicine as a Socio-Cultural Phenomenon

Abstract

Based on the analysis of a wide range of sources, the increased interest of foreign researchers in the traditional medicine industry has been revealed, there has been a significant growth in the market of ethnomedical services in recent decades. The World Health Organization has identified this problem with the WHO Strategy in the Field of Traditional Medicine 2014–2023. The conducted sociological measurements (focus group discussions, mass survey) also revealed the interest of our compatriots in ethnomedicine. However, this phenomenon has not been sufficiently investigated in Russia both in the space of medical sciences, which turn to the study of traditional practices at best sporadically, and in the field of sociological explication. The Russian Federation has not developed special legal acts and definitions regulating the provision of ethnomedical services. The purpose of this article is to consider ethnomedicine as a socio-cultural factor in the implementation of medical practices, its relationship with official medicine, the designation of the conflict of values of ethnoculture and market economy in the field of medicine, the presentation of recommendations on the basis of the studied material on the adoption of preventive measures to prevent these contradictions. This determines the novelty of the research and actualizes the topic of the work in question in projecting the approaches presented in foreign sources on the multi-ethnic diversity of our country.

Acknowledgments: to the Commission on Social and Humanitarian directions of scientific and educational activities in medicine of the Southern cluster of the Ministry of Health of Russia, the Department of Russian Language and Socio-Cultural Adaptation of the Volgograd State Medical University (Head - Doctor of Social Sciences, Professor T.K. Fomina) for the archives of the works of foreign students.