Next Folk Medicine Live Circle and "Della Medicina" Book Club Date
What is "folkloric"? And what is "folk medicine"?
Next Live Circle will be Wednesday, May 21 @6pm EDT
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Wednesday, May 21 @6pm EDT
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These live circles will be recorded and posted here on substack.
+++Link to join via zoom is at the bottom of this post+++
Our next live circle will be focused around the topic of “folk medicine”, or in Italian, “medicina populare” (medicine of the people).
We’ll discuss the many connotations of the word “folkloric” and how folk practices, such as healing, emerge from within cultures, from the ground up. I’m often asked about the difference between folk medicine and institutional systems of healing, and how they exist within nation states and modern social structures. Much of the world’s people still rely on folk medicine as their primary method of health care even in our globalized technological paradigm.
“It's an attitude, it's an awareness of one's heritage, and it's a community. It's subcorporate music that gives voice to different communities and their struggle against authority.”
~Ani Difranco on folk music
We’ll look at:
The distribution of power in healing systems
Accessiblity
The importance of “context”
Folk medicine and it’s role in antisystemic struggle (this was on the agenda for last time but we didn’t get to it)
Emergent herbalism and subcorporate medicine
How the sacred and spirituality have always been and integral component of folk medicine
As last time, I’ll do some short reading from my book “Della Medicina” as part of the sharing and have an open Q and A.
Because this is an informal and fluid, discussion based circle we may or may not get to everything on the agenda. It’s my intention to allow space for a generative flow of ideas.
Everyone is welcome to simply listen in or join the discussion!
Zoom link below: