Modernidad alternativa: medicinas locales en los Altos de Chiapas

this paper suggests that modernity is a cultural condition that following its local appropriation, re-signification, and adaptation, adopts a distinct local configuration that distinguishes it from the universalized, acultural modern blueprint. i argue that herbal medicine has been turned into an instrument for the "modernization" of "traditional" medicines. the political relationship of domination and subordination between local and cosmopolitan cultures triggers the production of cultural hybrids that contain both this inequality and a sense of political ambivalence, as well as the unfolding of mimetic strategies that further local insertion in the global market of ethnic medicines.