Exactly where is the common ground between religion and medicine in phenomena described as "religious healing?" In what sense is the human body a cultural phenomenon and not merely a biological entity? Drawing on over twenty years of research on topics ranging from Navajo and Catholic Charismatic ritual healing to the cultural and religious implications of virtual reality in biomedical technology, Body/Meaning/Healing sensitively examines these questions about human experience and the meaning of being human. In recognizing the way that the meaningfulness of our existence as bodily beings is sometimes created in the encounter between suffering and the sacred, these penetrating ethnographic studies elaborate an experiential understanding of the therapeutic process, and trace the outlines of a cultural phenomenology grounded in embodiment.

Thomas J. Csordas is Armington Professor of Anthropology and Religion at Case Western Reserve University and author of The Sacred Self and Language, Charisma, and Creativity.

"Brilliant and quite sensitive accounts of the range of bodily experience and meaning across several cultures. This collection of essays places Csordas at the forefront of American anthropology." --Vincent Crapanzano, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Comparative Literature, CUNY Graduate Center

"No one writes more interestingly about cultural embodiment and its role in the healing process than Tom Csordas. A collection that strides between medical anthropology, the anthropology of religion and psychological anthropology, and is stuffed full of important theory, telling ethnography, and many other things besides that speak to what is most deeply human in experience." --Arthur Kleinman, Professor of Anthropology and Psychiatry, Harvard University