The drafts of meaning in present precarious circumstances: A transnational ethnography of spiritual healing in rural regions (Eifel)

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Michael Simon
• Subject Area: Social and Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology
• Term: from 2012 to 2015
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 213337922

Spiritual healing understood as a performative aspect of medical cultures, often subsumed in literature under lay medicine, is no relict of preenlightened times. Beside academic medicine it rather belongs to the canon of popular health practices of postmodern societies and is a vital component of same. The processual assemblage of orally communicated forms, such as faith healing, and practices declared as non-European (such as shamanism) can be seen as an innate attribute of recent healing cultures especially in precarious circumstances. Based on a qualitative-empirical and protagonist centered ethnography this project considers the question how the inherent relations are configured in everyday life, individual negotiations and also social networks. In the context of a mesoanalytical regional study both practising healers and their patients as well as approbated doctors and psychotherapists from rural areas (Eifel) are accompanied and interviewed. The Scientific objective of this project is the cultural analysis of subjective techniques of knowledge acquisition and its implementation into everyday functioning constructions of orientation and identity as reflected in recent conceptions of health.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants