This volume analyses the very first community-based enterprise active in the herbal sector in India, the Gram Mooligai Company Limited (GMCL). The analysis presented in this volume demonstrates that the GMCL example provides a unique model of how a community-based enterprise could represent an alternative and promising model for development of local communities. It is an unconventional form of entrepreneurship, in that it is based on regarding collective and individual interests as fundamentally complementary, and viewing communal values and the notion of the common good as essential elements in venture creation.

Community-based enterprises are the result of a process in which the community acts entrepreneurially to create and operate a new enterprise embedded in its existing social structure and network. This book argues that community-based enterprise could represent a strategy for fostering sustainable local development while at the same time maintaining traditional knowledge in ethnomedicine and conserving the local ecosystems.

A comprehensive overview of how complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and traditional medicine (TM) affect women's reproductive health, this volume brings together a diverse collection of perspectives from the field to explore the role of CAM and TM across cultures. Providing a detailed analysis, authors address the cultural values and medicinal uses of CAM and TM for reproductive health among women in different sociocultural environments and geographic settings. Maria Costanza Torri and Jennie Hornosty's edited collection explores how traditional practices can improve the well-being of women and highlights the differences and complementarities between traditional medicine and biomedicine. Accessible and pedagogically rich, this is a crucial contribution to medical anthropology, sociology of health and medicine, women's health, public health, and health policy.