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Pluralism, performance and meaning in Taiwanese healing: a case study
1Department of Anthropology, University of Washington, Seattle 98195.
Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry
|March 1, 1991
Abstract:
A case of presumed psychosis in a 16-year-old Taiwanese girl is examined to show the role of performance in creating meaning in a plural medical system. The case illustrates that there is no necessary correspondence between diagnoses, authorities, and therapies; that consensus, if achieved at all, is tenuous and context-dependent; that meaning is created by performance, rather than the other way around; and that understanding of how therapies work depends on their efficacy.