Research Project
Gastarbeiters as agents of development in Socialist Yugoslavia
This project is concerned with researching people`s health-seeking behaviours in Kosovo and the medical knowledge and services offered in the country. The main research question is, what is the relation between possibilities and choices of medical treatments for patients from Kosovo?
Based on the local context, special emphasis will be put on the practices and choices between biomedicine and alternative medicine, treatments in the public or private sector, inside or outside the country, and combinations between all mentioned categories.
By using ethnographic methods of research (interviews, conversations, participant observation, media analysis, and law analysis), the study demonstrates that contemporary medical pluralism in Kosovo is the result of a combination of factors: the lack of trust in biomedical knowledge and institutions (and its limited capacities), the impact of information from the (social media), family and friends, the availability of markets, and the sustained presence of folk and religious healers in the country. This research aims to document Kosovo`s medicoscape and analyse how local, regional and global socio-economic and political forces influence people`s medical treatment opportunities and choices.
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