Healing Performances

In various ways, the essays presented in this volume explore the structures and aesthetic possibilities of music, dance and dramatic representation in ritual and theatrical situations in a diversity of ethnographic contexts in Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia. Each essay enters into a discussion of the “logic” of aesthetic processes exploring their social and political and symbolic import. The aim is above all to explore the way artistic and aesthetic practices in performance produce and structure experience.

The rich traditions of myth, ritual, performance, and worship that are integral to popular medicine in Bali are central themes in this study by Hobart (medical anthropology, Goldsmiths' College of London U., UK). Based on ten years of research in Bali, descriptions of the specific practices of individual healers are located within the larger context of the complex Balinese traditional medical system. The annual festival of Galungan, its mythical figures and their masks, is described at length. Other topics include the role of shadow theatre, and family and community structure. Annotation ©2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Angela Hobart is the coordinating lecturer at Goldsmiths College on Intercultural Therapy and lectures at the British Museum on the Art and Culture of South East Asia.

Bruce Kapferer is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen, Adjunct Professor at James Cook University and Honorary Professor at University College London.