Abstract
This paper aims to trace the social and cultural origins of the high prevalence of problematic drinking in a Taiwan indigenous area, and the difficulties of medical intervention, during the author’s fieldwork under a local hospital’s outreach abstinence plan in Wufeng to intervene the drinking behaviors. In this study, the author carries out an ethnographic work, which reveals the intersubjectivity between indigenous people and medial staffs, as well as the reflective thinking on medical intervention. It is found that, in one way, drinking was seen as a ritual behaviors for its local culture of worship ancient spirit. In another way, drinking as “self medication” behaviors may be caused by a collective depressive state related to cultural trauma. The abstinence strategies prescribed by modern medicine contradict to local people’s living style, which have been deprived during societal change throughout the history of colonization and modern state governing.