Les Médecins au Cambodge - Odris

TITLE AND SUMMARY
DOCTORS IN CAMBODIA. TRADITIONAL SOCIAL ELITE OR MODERN
PROFESSIONAL GROUP UNDER FOREIGN INFLUENCE ?
Until now, social science research has focused mainly on Western medical
doctors with few attention to physicians in other parts of the world. This research
intends to contribute to the anthropological knowledge of the medical profession, by
describing the specific case of Cambodia, which is a traditional society undergoing
drastic social changes. This work includes three parts. The first one gives an
historical perspective of the various Cambodian regimes, their ideologies and
policies/implementations related to public health since the French protectorate (1863)
until the United Nations Transitional Authority (1993). Under each regime, the
Cambodian doctors have adapted themselves to specific social and political
situations generated by the historical turmoils, including the Khmer Rouge regime.
In the second part, the Cambodian medical profession is analyzed in the present
days with special interest in their social position and general characteristics during in
the years following the Pol Pot regime. The whole medical and therapeutic field is
also described, including modern as well as traditional and “neo-traditional”
practitioners who offer various medical services to Cambodian people beside the
modern physicians. It appears that “neo-traditional” healers have benefitted the most
from recent social changes (liberalization, state-sponsored “legitimate tradition” in
the 1980s).
The last part provides provides a view of the field work material gathered in
various hospitals of the country. Medical activity carried out in those hospitals are
analyzed as negotiations between the Cambodian staff and their Western
counterparts from NGOs (nurses and doctors) who provide hospital with a medical
support. The daily interactions between all individuals involved in medical work
(including patients) show confrontations and potential conflicts between Western and
Cambodian values (professional as well as cultural ones). The main features of the
present Cambodian medical profession is finally analyzed (e.g. medical authority and
ethics, patient/doctor’s relationship, official and unofficial distribution of duties
between nurse, doctors and patients).