Religion, Medicine and Healing is an anthology developed from a critique that many people have formulated concerning the relations of contemporary western biomedicine and local healing traditions.

Many local traditions, it happens, are in danger of being forgotten, not transmitted, and are even discredited by orthodox biomedicine. At best, most local traditions have survived as fragmented pieces of once greater totalities. Everywhere, Western biomedicine has occupied spaces that were once the domains of local specialists.

Based on the unique experience and knowledge of the contributing authors, Religion, Medicine and Healing goes beyond mere descriptive ethnography by engaging important theoretical discussions of ‘performance’, ‘aesthetics’, ‘personhood’, ‘soul’, and ‘life-forces’.

Now available in eBook format, Religion, Medicine and Healing:

• Uses native exegeses to provide meaningful statements by specialists of ‘the unseen world’, the ‘other worlds’ of beneficent or malevolent spirits.
• Includes graphic representations made by native artists of the spirits and deities.
• Describes what it means to become a healing specialist in native societies of Amazonia, Malaysia and Central Asia.
• Offers a transition in this anthology’s global panorama, from the ancient priestly knowledge of the present-day Maya, to Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).
• Provides readings and lectures explore some of the world’s oldest medical knowledge (Hindu Vedas, the Tibetan Buddhist Gyu-dzshi tradition, healing rites of Christianity, and the qawalli devotional music of the Sufi Chishti Order.
• Explores nature religions.