ABSTRACT
The healing effects of faith have been noted in medicine, with more or less resistance, for a long time. This chapter argues that biomedicine could become more effective–and even more scientific–if it paid more attention to the importance of human imagination, subjectivity and the role of faith in therapeutic processes. It explores the tendency of evidence-based medicine (EBM) to reduce patients from subjective, imaginative and inherently social human beings to standardised bodies in need of repair from a medical anthropology viewpoint. The chapter examines the objectivity of medical knowledge production by highlighting the importance of performativity, faith and social interaction in therapeutic encounters. It discusses the history and practice of EBM and shows how scientific methods have served to distinguish official medicine from competing healing traditions in Europe. The chapter provides a contrast to EBM and its inherent difficulty in coming to terms with human subjectivity, by presenting healing practices in the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomble.
