1st Edition

The Performance of Healing

Edited By Carol Laderman, Marina Roseman Copyright 1996

    Medical systems need to be understood from within, as experienced by healers, patients, and others whose minds and hearts have both become involved in this important human undertaking. Exploring how the performance of healing transforms illness to health, initiate to ritual specialist, the authors show that performance does not merely refer to, but actually does something in the world. These essays on the performance of healing in societies ranging from rainforest horticulturalists to dwellers in the American megalopolis will touch readers' senses as well as their intellects.

    Introduction, Carol Laderman, Marina Roseman; Chapter 1 Initiating Performance, Laurel Kendall; Chapter 2 On Failure and Performance, Edward Schieffelin; Chapter 3 Imaginal Performance and Memory in Ritual Healing, Thomas J. Csordas; Chapter 4 The Poetics of Healing in Malay Shamanistic Performances, Carol Laderman; Chapter 5 Presence, Robert R. Desjarlais; Chapter 6 Sounds and Things, Paul Stoller; Chapter 7 The Meaning of Nonsense, the Poetics of Embodiment, and the Production of Power in Warao Healing, Charles L. Briggs; Chapter 8 “Pure Products Go Crazy”, Marina Roseman; Chapter 9 From Diagnosis to Performance, Janet Hoskins; Chapter 10 Dying as Medical Performance, Megan Biesele, Robbie Davis-Floyd;

    Biography

    Carol Laderman is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at City College--CUNY. She is the author of Wives and Midwives (1983) and Taming the Wind of Desire (1991). Marina Roseman, the author of Healing Sounds from the Malaysian Rainforest (1991) is Assistant Professor in the Departments of Music, Anthropology, Folklore and Folklife, and Associate Faculty of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.

    "The contributors broaden the field of medical anthropology by demonstrating that healing involves the senses in treatments whose efficacy depends in part on dramatic performance." -- American Rehabilitation
    "...an exceptionally well-integrated and consistently well-written volume...I recommend it to anyone interested in religious practice and the human condition
    ." -- Religious Studies Review