Abstract
Here Jones describes the local market place and the place of traditional medicine in the market. She looks at the ways in which traditional healers are seeking to benefit financially from traditional medicine by ‘developing’ it and by making it into pills. Building on her discussion of harvesting practices in the previous chapter, she further explores the trade in traditional medicine, on both a local scale, as well as the international demand for herbal medicines. In this chapter Jones also looks at some of the other reasons her research participants have for wanting to commodify their medicine, those being; dosage requirements and safe storage. Jones shows that for some this relates more to community perceptions of what a medicine is, rather than being common practice.
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Notes
- 1.
Nali foods, trading as Nali Limited since 1983, processes a range of condiments from the bird’s eye chilli, a species of chilli endemic to Africa. It is a family owned company.
- 2.
Nsima is ground maize and it is usually cooked until it is firm enough to be moulded into shape using a large spoon.
- 3.
In relation to products sold locally, the word “hybrid” is used to distinguish between local varieties and those that have been raised in modified environments, for example, chickens that have been raised in factories rather than animals that are free ranging in the neighbourhood. With regard to agricultural crops, “hybrid” refers to those varieties that have been genetically modified at breeding stations (Nangoma and Nangoma 2013).
- 4.
National Banking Service, a major player in Malawi’s banking system.
- 5.
70 percent of Coca-Cola’s revenue comes from outside of the United States of America (Oxfam 2013). Retrieved from https://www.oxfam.de/system/files/land-and-sugar-stats-and-facts.pdf.
- 6.
As an observer, I saw this marketing exercise as a ‘machine’ that had been carefully constructed for the purposes of promoting what I saw as typically western consumerism.
- 7.
At the time of fieldwork, I could buy a loaf of freshly baked bread, a bag full of fruit and vegetables and a half a dozen eggs with this amount of money.
- 8.
Information on the Convention on Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) can be retrieved from http://www.cites.org/.
- 9.
Bushman’s Secret (Desai et al. 2006) is a documentary about the commoditization of the Hoodia cactus. Hoodia gordonii has been used by the Khomani San as an appetite suppressant for at least the last few centuries.
- 10.
Muti or muthi means medicine.
- 11.
I visited the Victoria Market in Warwick Street in Durban in August 2012. The difference in the scale of traditional medicines being sold there, in comparison to what was for sale in the markets in and around Mulanje, was dramatic.
- 12.
Anamed’s vision statement can be accessed from https://anamed.org/en/.
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Jones, T. (2018). The Market. In: Raising the Dust. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-8420-1_7
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