ABSTRACT

This chapter examines how arsenicosis is variously understood and explains by different social factors, such as medical doctors, development planners and lay villagers. It also explains the implication of such disjuncture in terms of health-seeking behaviour of subjects and their participation in mitigation strategies. Biomedical and social construction of arsenicosis is based on entirely different logics and worldviews. The ethnographic findings suggest that practitioners of different medical systems borrow modalities or therapeutic procedures from each other. NGO and development practitioners need to appreciate how people on the ground understand define and prioritize their problems. Finally, anthropologists alone cannot solve this pervasive health crisis faced by rural Bangladesh. Although this ethnography of arsenicosis is rich in first-hand and sociocultural data, the approach only unveils one dimension of this complex phenomenon. The chapter concludes by highlighting the trasting perceptions of the disease amongst different categories of social factors.