The Jugaad Project

All tagged healing

Oct 28

Oct 28 A Theory of Relational Affliction and Healing: Evil Eye in Iran and Greece

Rose Wellman and Dionisios Kavadias offer a comparative ethnographic study of the evil eye in contemporary Iran and Greece. With rich ethnographic detail, the authors explore the ongoing significance of evil eye affliction as well as the diagnostic approaches and remedies used for removal of this curse. Their analysis shifts focus from previous paradigms of social cohesion to local cultural logics, ways of knowing, and realities that foreground bodily integrity and experiences of energy. They present evil eye as a case study in relationality and embodied affliction/healing.

Oct 27

Oct 27 Body, Goddess and Healing: The Tattoos of a Goddess

Maheshvari Naidu

Articles

The author explores the affective and physical ‘territorialisation’ of the body during measles, and how vernacular Tamil beliefs consider this a visit from the Goddess called Mariammen. She traces the interruption (and disruption) into the devotee’s life through the material presence of measles as the immaterial, yet tangible existential presence of her anger splayed ferociously out across the body. The healing instance of measles, invokes and provokes a bodyscape of heat and cooling to match the temperament of the goddess. The essay deconstructs the poly-semiotics of healing as a kind of purging and takes an under-the-skin look at the materiality of both body and goddess in this context.

Oct 27

Oct 27 Curing with Our Mother Corn

Cyndy Margarita Garcia-Weyandt

Articles

In this article, the author discusses the myriad of ways agricultural practices are interconnected with healing modalities. Using environmental justice and healing justice frameworks, the author examines how Our Mother Corn (“Native Corn”), as a Wixárika relative, prescribes and assures the health of Wixárika families. Drawing from ethnographic research, the author examines Wixárika communities’ views on health. To be healthy, Wixárika families maintain a harmonious relationship with their ancestors—including Our Mother Corn—to receive wellness from them. In the article, the author questions current healing frameworks and problematizes the current traditional practices.

Oct 27

Oct 27 2021 Fall Issue - Healing

Lillia McEnaney & Urmila Mohan

Editorials

What processes, movements, and epistemological or physical structures make productive spaces for healing? How can we think about healing in a sense that moves via and past the physical, interrogating temporal ways of being throughout time, place, and space? How can relationality, place-based thinking, and embodied ways of knowing come together to form a collective consciousness around healing when framed as well-being, care, mindfulness and gratitude? Fundamentally, if anthropology and cultural studies are about paying attention to certain contexts what does the praxis of healing mean and do in varied contexts?

Feb 26

Feb 26 2021 Spring Issue - ReBuilding

Urmila Mohan

Editorials

ReBuilding relates processes of damage and restoration, loss and healing, and the never-ending making and doing of things in human lives. In light of the pandemic, and historical and socio-cultural issues that long pre-dated 2020, the question of how we rebuild and remake is in urgent need of consideration. The articles, interviews and essays in this issue encourage us to reflect on the religious and secular beliefs and practices that cohere communities as they cope, create, resist, protest and move forward.