Review by Choice Review
Anthropologist Turner (Univ. of Virginia) aims to convince readers of the truth and factuality of spiritual and ritual healing. For evidence, the author draws on her extensive experiences in a variety of fieldwork locations and on an array of excerpts from writings by anthropologists and ritual practitioners. She classifies healing experiences by cause--energy, power, or spirits--highlighting throughout the book the role of communities rather than religion, region, or time period. Readers looking for in-depth anthropological analyses of these healing experiences, including their political, historical, and social specificities and dimensions, will need to look elsewhere. For readers who seek evidence that people worldwide experience divinely inspired healing, the book will have appeal. The text may encourage readers interested in a particular kind of healing experience to pursue the author's original text and argument, which offers a way of popularizing this often-arcane area of the anthropology of religion. The danger of collapsing specific and key differences among these varied healing experiences and the lack of critical probing into their culturally specific meanings, however, make the book of limited use for academic courses. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. General readers. C. E. Rothenberg McMaster University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
