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This paper poses a theoretical question: how, !f at all, can 'critical medical anthropology' and 'performance theory' be combined? More specifically, the author discusses the relative advantages and disadvantages of each, with respect to a healing cult in the Central Himalayas of North India. The paper has four parts: first, an ethnographic description of the cult itself second, a brief introduction to critical medical anthropology; third, a short discussion of the performative approach to healing rituals; and finally, an attempt to combine the two approaches. The author concludes that the two approaches can indeed combined, so long as one recognizes (1) that caste and gender are also appropriate objects for critical medical anthropology; and (2) that aesthetics is always already political. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses different positions by psychiatrists and anthropologists taken towards ‘folk’ mental health care and summarizes what has been said in favour of the folk sector. Further, examples indicating a changing relationship between the Indian state and the folk sector are outlined, including the impacts of the fire tragedy at the dargah of Erwadi in 2001. On this basis it is argued that a prevailing ignorance of the folk sector has provided it with some autonomy, while at the same time, recent attempts at collaboration tend to utilize folk practitioners rather than valuing their positive elements in their own right. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Despite its large number of practitioners, medical anthropology has given little attention to Indian homeopathy. In historical accounts, homeopathy's popularity is explained by its position as a modern, yet non-colonial form of medicine, which became indigenized during the last ISO years. Other scholars argue that homeopathic concepts converge with Indian ideas on healing. However,few empirical data have been gathered on homeopathic practice in contemporary India. In this paper, we explore the perspectives of college-trained homeopaths in urban West Bengal. How strongly do they feel indebted to classical and canonical homeopathic writings? Can we observe attempts of indigenizing homeopathy by blending it with common ideas of Indian medical culture? While the homeopaths in our study report practising an orthodox version of homeopathy, we can also identify creative solutions when they are responding to their patients' expectations: conforming to the idea of single-remedy prescription by simultaneous use of placebos, short-cut homeopathic anamnesis, complementing homeopathic drugs with therapeutic nutritional advice, and developing a system of seasonal drugs are all evidence for silent hybridization of homeopathic and local ideas. In the homeopathic consultation, time pressure becomes a significant challenge and Bengali homeopaths grasp the most important homeopathic symptoms quickly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the thought-provoking theological and philosophical implications of the adage urging the healer to heal him/herself medical anthropology has, with some notable exceptions, given relatively little attention to the problems of well-being experienced by healers themselves, as distinct from those of their patients. This paper focuses on the conflicts experienced by men and women who become healers and how they try to resolve them. The case taken is of the Angami people of Nagaland, northeastern India. There are broadly two kinds of healer, each of whom is subject to contrasting pressures and conflicts. Shamans depend on tutelary spirits who may at various points control the shaman him or herself who may have been initially reluctant to become a shaman. Other healers such as herbalists and masseurs may sometimes use but do not rely on tutelary spirits and draw instead on their own non-divinational skills. An increasing number of such healers have become Christian and are obliged to adapt their practices accordingly, including the divinity of a new God, sometimes denying a previous personal or family connection with shamanism. At issue in both cases is a struggle between human and divine agency, which, writ large. is a struggle between human self-determination and external forces of control, this being possibly reflected in the fact that Nagaland has for many years been the scene of an armed struggle against the Indian government for political autonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though rates of depression are comparable across cultures, similar rates may obscure the diversity of the experience and meaning of depression and related behaviour. Appreciation of the social and cultural contexts is crucial in developing culturally sensitive intervention strategies to reduce the burden and disability of depression. Data are required not just to elucidate biological or cognitive understandings of the disorder, but also its social and cultural contexts, especially in non-Western settings. This paper reports cultural epidemiological research studying depression-related experience, meaning, and behaviour with the EMIC in the psychiatric outpatient clinic at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS), Bangalore, India. Patients spontaneously emphasized somatic symptoms when asked about the problems that brought them to seek help, but on further probing, they acknowledged feelings of depression and sadness, which they related to various social problems and interpersonal issues. The personal significance and meaning of the symptoms were shaped by cultural notions concerning the human body in health and in sickness. Culturally salient symbols (like heat and cold) and ethnophysiological concepts like nara (nerves) figured prominently as causative factors in their accounts. Patients were dissatisfied and disappointed with allopathic physicians whom they had previously consulted for their problems, who seemed to them not to appreciate their needs and expectations in treatment. Findings show that it is important that clinicians attend not only to questions of diagnosis and clinical formulation according to professional concepts, but also to the experience and meaning of their patients' problems. A cultural epidemiological framework facilitates this process by integrating emic and etic perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]