Article Sidebar
Article Details
The author(s) retain copyright on work published by AOSIS unless specified otherwise.
Licensing and publication rights
Author(s) of work published by AOSIS are required to grant AOSIS the unlimited rights to publish the definitive work in any format, language and medium, for any lawful purpose. AOSIS requires journal authors to publish their work in open access under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence.
The authors retain the non-exclusive right to do anything they wish with the published article(s), provided attribution is given to the applicable journal with details of the original publication, as set out in the official citation of the article published in the journal. The retained right specifically includes the right to post the article on the authors’ or their institution’s websites or in institutional repositories.
Previously published work may have been published under a different licence. We advise the community that if they would like to reuse the work to consult the applicable licence at article level.
Note: If you need to comply with your funding body policy, you can apply for the CC BY license after your manuscript is accepted for publication.
Main Article Content
Health, well-being and wellness: An anthropological eco-systemic approach
Abstract
More than two decades ago, Fritjof Capra commended - and indeed advocated – a paradigm shift in health science and care. In his book The Turning Point (1982) he talks of a major shift from the preoccupation with micro-organisms to a careful study of the ‘host organism and its environment’, of ‘significant attempts to develop a unified approach to the mind/body system’ in Western medicine, of ‘a new holistic paradigm’ (as opposed to ‘the old biomedical paradigm’) regarding the problem of health and healing, of ‘a holistic and humanistic approach to primary care’, and of ‘a holistic therapy’ as opposed to ‘the traditional biochemical practice of associating a physical disease with a specific physical cause’. Our concern in this article is with the paradigm shift advocated by Capra in this book and the progress that has since been made.
Opsomming:Meer as twee dekades gelede het Fritjof Capra ‘n pleidooi gelewer vir ‘n paradigmaskuif vanaf die biomediese model na ‘n meer holistiese, ekosistemiese model van gesondheid en genesing. Die vraag
wat in hierdie artikel aan die orde kom is of praktisyns in die veld van die gesondheidswetenskappe sedertdien daarin geslaag het om die oorgang na die aanbevole paradigma te maak. ‘n Oorsig van die literatuur sedert 1982 toon dat die skuif nog nie regtig gemaak is nie. ‘n Ander literatuuroorsig toon voorts dat die terme ‘gesondheid’, ‘well-being’ en ‘wellness’ as uitruilbaar beskou word en dat hulle betekenisse meermale afhang van die gebruikskonteks. Op grond van hulle bespreking van die
antropologiese ekosistemiese benadering tot gesondheid en genesing stel die outeurs voor dat die terme ‘gesondheid’ en ‘wellness’ as korrelatiewe gebruik word, en dat die term ‘well-being’ gebruik word vir al die domeine van menslike lewe en bestaan wat kan bydra tot gesondheid, oftewel ‘wellness’.
