Local Responses to Globalising Processes: The Use(s) of Pharmaceuticals in Maputo, Mozambique

After the explosion of the pharmaceutical industry and the beginning of pharmaceuticals mass production in the mid-twenties century, these technologies quickly started to be disseminated all over the world, making them also available in poor countries. As widely discussed, globalisation involves both processes of standardization and hybridization. If it is true that medicines are nowadays part of the materia medica of all societies through the development of multinational companies, these resources assume a large variety of meanings and particularities within different contexts, and the way these instruments are engaged in local practices vary significantly. This paper is based on an ongoing research about medicines’ consumption patterns in Mozambique, which aims to understand what dynamics of pharmaceuticalisation are emerging in local consumption cultures. The project focus on local responses to these globalizing processes, directing the main attention at lay practices and conceptions towards pharmaceuticals, and their relation with other options, such as traditional herbs or other substances. Medicines constitute a privileged object to analyze lay conceptions and practices towards biomedical technology, due to their intrinsic characteristics that not only enable a private and individual consumption, without the presence or vigilance of a health professional, but also increase the perception of certain conditions – whether health related or not – as something that can be managed. In a context where traditional medical systems co-exist with biomedicine, the main questions that arise are: How is lay knowledge about pharmaceuticals constructed and how does it shape social practices? To what extent are pharmaceutical’s consumption patterns in local contexts in Mozambique changing towards the modern trends of therapeutic, preventive and enhancive consumption? The findings presented in this paper result from the conduction of individual and group interviews to community members and health professionals, as well as from a household survey applied in Maputo.