2018-2019 University Catalogue 
    
    Mar 29, 2024  
2018-2019 University Catalogue [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

RELG 232 - Health and Healing in Asian Religions


A look at how illness, health, and healing are understood and experienced in parts of Asia where illness is not defined merely as a physiological problem, but is also seen to have important spiritual, aesthetic, social, and political causes and effects. Similarly, while biomedicine defines health as the absence of disease, in traditional Chinese and Indian medicine, health is about achieving balance between different elements in the body, such as wind, water, and fire. Students will develop an appreciation for the culturally and historically patterned ways in which people come to identify and treat bodily, psychological, and social distress. For instance, students will examine spirit possession in a variety of contexts as both a form of affliction and as a mode of healing. Students will look at the role of traditional healers; how cultures vary in what they consider to be the causes of illness; who gets sick; what forms illness takes; and how the social, political, and aesthetic dimensions of health and healing affect treatment outcomes. Readings will be drawn from the fields of ethnomedicine, medical anthropology, and the anthropology of religion, to explore how illness and health are conceptualized and experienced in different cultures and across different sites of healing.

Credits: 1.00
Prerequisites: None
Major/Minor Restrictions: None
Class Restriction: No Senior
Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression
Liberal Arts CORE: None


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