This discourse analytic study explores constructions of culture and illness in the talk of psychiatrists, psychologists and indigenous healers as they discuss possibilities for collaboration in South African mental health care. Disjunctive versions of what ‘culture’ is in relation to the illness of a person form an important site for the negotiation of power relations between mental health practitioners and indigenous healers. The results of this study are presented in two parts. Part I explores how a professionalist discourse structured western psychiatric and psychological practice as rational, pragmatic and effective. ‘Cultural differences’ were variously deployed to support and subvert western psychiatric power. Part II explores the various constructions of ‘African culture’ – as ‘collectivist’ and ‘pathogenic’ – and the ‘African mind’ – as ‘primitive’ and ‘irrational’ – and how these formulations work to disqualify egalitarian positioning for indigenous healers within formal mental health care settings in South Africa.
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