However, one might also see in these discourses the penetration of trans-local
discourses about healing into the local setting, a way of reflecting about social
change and a social means to position oneself vis-a` -vis this perceived change. It is
remarkable how the wide range of practitioners available in the area fades into the
background as people focus predominantly, in theorizing about healing, on the
potential compatibility or competition between deities and doctors. National and
trans-local discourses about progress in many contexts have made biomedicine into a
symbol of modernization and cosmopolitanism (see also Pigg 1990), as opposed to
the hill dwellers’ superstitious practice of ritual healing through possession. The
dichotomy has entered local ways of thinking and introduced a new kind of
reflexivity. To stress one’s disbelief in healing through possession might become a
means of integration into this ‘modern’ society. To underline the higher power of
one’s own territorial god may, in turn, serve to defend one’s identity and to state the
possibility of being modern while at the same time preserving one’s own traditions.