ABSTRACT

This paper looks at the use of bush and other home remedies amongst AfroCaribbean women in Britain. This seems currently to have received little sociological attention. Rather, there have been analyses of lay beliefs and folk remedies amongst white Britons (Helman, 1984; Blaxter et al.,1982; Dunnell and Cartwright, 1972) and of ‘cultural’ differences in the experience of mental illness (Littlewood and Lipsedge, 1982), or ‘guides’ for health workers, written with varying degrees of awareness, about differences in the experience of health and health care amongst Britain’s ethnic minorities (Mares et al., 1985; Henley, 1979; Fuller and Toon, 1988). There have also been studies of Caribbean folk systems within the Caribbean (Kitzinger, 1982; Littlewood, 1988) but seemingly little about whether or how these practices are maintained amongst Afro-Caribbeans in Britain (Morgan, 1988).