Narrative and the Cultural Construction of Illness and Healing - Paperback

by Cheryl Mattingly (Editor), Linda C. Garro (Editor)

Inspired by the possibilities of narrative, the essays in this direction-setting volume present stories drawn from a range of ethnographic contexts. Stories of illness and healing are often arresting in their power, and they can illuminate aspects of practices and experiences surrounding illness that might otherwise be neglected. Recognizing the value of increased theoretical consciousness among those eliciting and analyzing narratives, these contributors explore narrative from a variety of perspectives.

Front Jacket

A valuable collection. . . . The essays in the volume are all fresh, the result of recent work, and the opening chapter by Garro and Mattingly places the current trend in narrative analysis in historical context, explaining its diverse origins (and constructs) in a range of disciplines.--Shirley Lindenbaum, author of Kuru Sorcery

"A good place to consult the narrative turn in medical anthropology. Thick with the richness and diversity and stubborn resistance to interpretations of human stories of illness. An anthropological antidote for too narrow a framing of the complex tangle of ways-of-being and ways-of-telling that make medicine a space of indelibly human experiences." --Arthur Kleinman, author of The Illness Narratives

Author Biography

Cheryl Mattingly is Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Department of Occupational Science at the University of Southern California. She has published extensively on narrative and received the Polgar Prize from the Society for Medical Anthropology in 1999. Her most recent book is Healing Dramas and Clinical Plots (1998). Linda C. Garro is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Recipient of the Stirling Award from the Society for Psychological Anthropology in 1999, she has published widely in medical, cognitive, and psychological anthropology.