The Epistemics of Symptom Experience and Symptom Accounts in Mapuche Healing and Pediatric Primary Care in Southern Chile

Because symptoms are quintessentially subjective phenomena, individuals generally exercise primary epistemic rights and speaking privileges concerning their experience of symptoms. Yet in some diagnostic practices, this ordinary association between self-knowledge and speaking rights is disrupted, and the responsibility to report on illness is allocated to someone other than the ailing person. This article documents two such settings, Chilean pediatrie primary care and Mapuche medicine, and discusses how the epistemological frameworks of these healing traditions and the pragmatic concerns of their participants influence the distribution of legitimate knowledge about illness and the allocation of speaking responsibilities across practitioners, patients, and family caregivers.