rather like a disembodiednomanof the dead person, that is, it has agency
and desires and feelings as shown in dreams which the living have.
So, in the Melpa way of thinking,nomancorresponds neither to some-
thing fully material like a body part nor to something fully spiritual like a
soul. Instead, as an embodied notion, it partakes in elements of both a
material and a spiritual character and so mediates the body/mind distinc-
tion in its own distinctive way. As a conceptnomanis a frame-breaker and
a frame re-maker, in a fashion that replicates in micro our argument in
macro in this book as a whole.
Returning to the category of mental health, we suggest that a defini-
tional stance closer to the Melpa sense ofnomanwould be useful in trying
to think of forms of therapy, situating the therapy in social practice and its
management as well as in biomedical treatment based on substances and
their application.
Putting this in the terms we began with, the mistaken opposition or
division between nature and culture, we can suggest that in a biomedical
worldview the body is seen as natural and therefore universal, whereas
mind is seen as cultural and variable. Biomedicine then attempts to reduce
this mysterious mind to the material, to the body, by the use of physical
treatments. There is no doubt that such treatments can have efficacy, but
they are also potentially risky and inconclusive. Science will continue to
improve our knowledge of materiality and treatments that can be applied
to it. But efficacy is more likely to be achieved by a combinatory approach,
linking treatment not simply to an ethereal notion of culture but to praxis,
social practice, as the Melpa do with issues involvingnoman. In proposing
a mindful anthropology, then, we could also put it this way: we propose an
anthropology that takes seriously and incorporates into itself indigenous
philosophies as a means of enriching our own interpretative ways of deal-
ing with the world.
54 BREAKING THE FRAMES