Description
In this seminar, we will explore semiotic/communicative aspects of health and healing, focusing on ritual healing practices and ""emplotment"" in therapeutic narratives, both in small scale societies and in modern biomedical settings. The seminar will include discussions of ritual, symbolism, narrative, clinical care, postcolonial revitalization movements, spirit possession, and the social production and ethnographic description of healing experiences in sociopolitical context. The course will combine the perspectives of medical anthropology, psychological anthropology and the social anthropology of religion and ritual. The aim is to illuminate a particular mode of human social communication and semiotic intervention, studied by anthropologists, that is very ancient and widespread and is implicated in socialization, healing and religious or psychological/political manipulation.
Module deliveries for 2024/25 academic year
Last updated
This module description was last updated on 19th August 2024.
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