ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates different approaches to the anthropology of the body as this site of investigation both informs and is informed by studies of ethnomedicine. The next set of papers are concerned with the way in which affliction and the experience of suffering are framed by discourse and healing is mediated through narrative. Central to Glass-Coffin’s analysis is the tension between the social relations of an unstable market economy where profit begets envy, and the social ideals of close family ties, cooperation, and reciprocity. The day-to-day dynamics of survival in this redistributive market economy clash with idealized precapitalist values, resulting in competing directives. The confessional cult leader described by Taylor is a culture broker who has mediated the dilemma between traditional gift values and market values and restructured the flow/blockage dialectic in favor of the market system.
