Medical anthropology
January 1, 2005
Murphy Halliburton
76 citations
In Kerala, India, spirit possession appears to be declining and changing form: spirits that once had distinct names and personalities are now more anonymous. Psychological terms like 'tension' and 'depression' are increasingly used by patients and in popular media. These shifts suggest an erosion of local context and a rise of universal categories, a hallmark of 'modernity.' Yet the modern itself can become just another context, as when possession language appears in a psychological advice column. The article draws on research among possessed and mentally ill patients and on media depictions of mental health.
Medical anthropology
August 1, 1990
M L Lyon
18 citations
Order is central to healing, and a model of healing built around order can bridge biological and cognitive domains. Drawing on Javanese mystical practices that unite human and natural orders, the paper uses this example as a metaphor for an expanded notion of order. It examines how order is conceptualized in medical anthropology, science, and medicine, emphasizing the role of analogy and metaphor. This perspective moves beyond conventional biomedical categories, offering a basis for reconceptualizing fields like psychoneuroimmunology.
Medical anthropology
January 1, 2022
Margit Anne Petersen, Aja Smith, Dorthe Brogaard Kristensen et al.
12 citations
People pursue a good life not only by coping with crises but also by actively seeking improvement. In contemporary Denmark, three self-improvement practices—psychedelic micro-dosing, meditation and mindfulness, and fitness self-tracking—are compared using Foucault's concept of technologies of the self. These practices produce and reflect different notions of the self, yet all involve managing vulnerabilities by accepting, controlling, and balancing tensions between self-making and relation-making.
Medical anthropology
January 1, 2021
Asaf Sharabi
11 citations
In the Western Himalayas, being a medium of a god is common and normative. This article describes three mediums whose strong criticism of religious practices and the caste system caused mixed feelings in their community. Villagers typically cope with deviant mediumship by ignoring the person or gossiping to express skepticism or label the possession as inauthentic. These usual approaches failed for these three mediums. Consequently, some community members invoked the biomedical concept of madness to stop what they saw as deviant mediumship.
Medical anthropology
February 17, 2025
Lewis Daly
2 citations
Among the Makushi people of Amazonian Guyana, a traditional system of communal work called mayu, grounded in an ethic of helping each other out, serves as a form of self-help distinct from Western self-care. Mayu is a convivial event accompanied by feasting, drinking, and celebration of social relationships, and it extends beyond humans to include the agency of nonhuman beings. Shamanism and plant-charms are integral in mediating these generative relations of shared selfhood.
Medical anthropology
October 2, 2024
Alex K Gearin
1 citation
People who drink ayahuasca, including shamans, neo-shamans, and atheists, often report gaining special knowledge, supporting the cross-cultural idea of ayahuasca as a plant teacher. Secular enthusiasts interpret this metaphorically, while animists and others take it literally. This article examines ontological collisions at a healing retreat in the Peruvian Amazon, focusing on Shipibo shamans and their international clients. It explores how embodied experiences like purging and visions inform both literal and metaphorical views of healing and illness. By addressing incommensurable ontologies, the article highlights how a polyontological framework approaches ontological collision without necessarily privileging specific ways of knowing.