ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the knowledge regarding health-seeking practices, conflicts between biomedical and Native Hawaiian medical practices, and how the politics of health-seeking practices reconfigure forms of cultural identity. It focuses on the health-seeking practices of on-islanders; both on- and off-islanders view these practices as acts informed by their culture, constrained by structures of biomedical institutions. Health-seeking practices have been and continue to be of interest to public health personnel, physicians, and medical anthropologists. Scheper-Hughes and Lock (1987) argue that illness episodes can be seen as acts of resistance against subjugation to constrictive social relationships and broader political relationships. The hegemony of biomedicine leads to a partial erasure of knowledge about where to seek Hawaiian medical care. Health as a symbol of cultural identity is sometimes used to represent the values of caring for the family; at other times it shows strength in resisting institutional constraints on individual behaviors.
