Practice, Performance, and Experience in Ritual Healing

Abstract

The past 20 years have seen a florescence in studies of religious and ritual healing. This article broadly surveys this literature on a global scale, organizing and presenting the studies by geographical region. Summaries of major themes in the regional literatures follow each section, and suggest that differences and similarities may be as much a product of theoretical orientations brought by students of healing to their work, as of empirical features observed ethnographically. A concluding section raises the issue of therapeutic efficacy, summarizing the major contributions during the two decades covered by this article.