ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION Economic considerations are commonly cited as important determinants of health care decision making in less developed countries, yet few ethnographic studies have documented the microeconomic details of health service transactions. In countries having pluralistic health care, we know little about how economic deliberations affect the consultation of different types of practitioners at particular points in an illness trajectory. Little is known about lay cost-reckoning for services rendered, patterns of payment for these services, and sociocultural factors which influence the way in which fees are offered and received. In this chapter, I consider the microeconomics as well as the social relations and cultural meanings of “paying” for therapy in rural South India. Examined will be both market and non-market factors influencing what Bourdieu has termed the “economy of practices” (Bourdieu 1986, 1990)—the practical logics which predispose and guide behavior.1