ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses the music, movement, players, audience, props, plots, comedy, poetry and dialogue that constitute the performance of healing. It speaks about views of the self and its components, the use of healing sounds, and the messages, both spoken and silent, conveyed in these performances. The performance of healing represented in the book emerges from the convergence of several theoretical orientations which have reinvigorated research in medical anthropology. The book addresses to members of the medical, psychiatric, and psychological professions, as well as the anthropological and performance-oriented, joins other essays and voices in a call to understanding concepts and textures embodied in different ways of healing. It concerns rituals and other performative genres of locally recognized significance that Singer collectively termed 'cultural performances' while focusing in particular on those which concern culturally-constructed expressions of illness and health.
