ABSTRACT
Absolutist theoreticians of illness assume the universal nature of the premises of their own Western scientific culture. These premises are generalised both within Western societies and to non-Western cultures. These theorists regard Western scientific medicine as a preconceived statement of the nature of illness and disease. Folk illnesses are assumed to be without any biological basis if scientific medicine is unable to identify a unitary disease with the folk condition from its own paradigm. This mistakes the role of theories as classificatory practices. However the significance of these limits still necessarily derives from the way actors interpret the world around them. 'Illnesses' are terms employed by sufferers, and those with whom they interact, to make sense of events in their lives. 'Folk' theories can be as logical and coherent, while attending to different aspects of events and producing a different classification.
