100
ANTHROFQLOGYQUARTERLY
“knows” it is healed, and in doing so,
Desjarlais goes beyond the symbolic effi-
cacy of healing to underscore the role of the
kinesthetic (p. 195).
The numerous interpretations of Yolmo
cultural symbols throughout the book, al-
though necessary for definingthe spaces and
graces of the body, undermine Desjarlais’s
own critique of symbolic theories of ritual
healing. But he breathes such life into the
body that his critique of postmodem “dis-
courses of healing” remains sound and
intact.
One weakness in h e book is that Desjar-
lais neglects discussing his apprenticeship
with Meme. Other writers on spiritual
healing in the Himalayas have pointed out
that these relationships are relatively long-
term, arduous, and require multiple trance
experiences. Did Meme view him as an
apprentice? Also, the narrative emphasis on
body and experience tends to silence the
people whose emotions we hear relatively
little about directly. Indeed, the experienc-
ing body becomes diffusely reified as it
shifts from named individuals, to practitio-
ners, to social categories (“women”), to
spaces of illness and knowledge and things
in motion, to a cultural body. Nonetheless,
the book makes a significantcontribution to
cultural theories of the body and medical
anthropology and can be used for teaching
in upper-level undergraduate and graduate-
level courses.
and Shamanism: Curanderos
and in
Joralemon and Douglas Sharon. Salt Lake
City: University of Utah Press, 1993(cloth).
x + 306 pp.
BETHA. CONKLIN
Department of Anthropology
Vanderbilt Universiry
This remarkable ethnography explores a
thriving tradition of u h a n shamanism.
MEDICAL
Peru’s northern coast is famous as a center
of curanderismo,a folk healing system that
blends popular Catholicismwith indigenous
symbolism. In midnight ceremonies held at
backyard altars near cities like Tmjillo and
Chiclayo,mestizo shamans ingest mescaline
brews of San Pedro cactus and perform
songs, prayers, and ritual cleansings. The
setting will be familiar with anyone who has
seen Sharon’s classic film. Eduardo the
Healer (1978). about charismatic Eduardo
Calderh, who is one of 12 curers examined
in this book.
Sorcery and Shamanism looks at how
shamans and their clients use the discourses
of sorcery and curing to cope with economic
chaos and gender politics in contemporary
Peru. Curanderos work by manipulating
complementary forces of good and evil,
right and left, up and down. Joralemon and
Sharon structured their text around a similar
dynamic of examining curanderismo from
two distinct vantage points, reflected in the
book’s two-part organization.Part 1, written
mostly by Sharon, with contributions from
Joralemon and Donald Skillman,focuses on
shamans and the symbolism, metaphysics,
and historical roots of their healing art. Part
2. written by Joralemon, looks at clients’
experiences and the social impact of curan-
derismo from the viewpoint of critical
medical anthropology.
This is collaborative research at its best.
The text builds on multiple shifts in perspec-
tive, moving between shamans and their
patients, cosmology and political economy,
shamanism as belief system and shamanism
as business. The result is one of the most
comprehensive, richly nuanced studies in
the ethomedical literature.
part begins with short chapters on 12
curanderos’ life histories and ritual prac-
tices. This broad scope is a welcome
counterweight to tendencies that have
plagued shamanism studies since Eliade’s
search for shamanic archetypes. Joralemon
and Sharon explicitly re&t reductionist
approaches that represent ethnomedical be-
BOOKREVIEWS
liefs as homogeneous systems and exoticize
shamans and ethereal metaphysicians. In-
stead, they emphasize differences in individ-
ual curanderos’ practices and show them as
down-toearth men (no female curers are
included) concerned with bottom lines and
business trips as well as spiritual journeys.
Accounts of the authors’ relations with
each shaman are woven through the text.
They reveal the frustrations and unforeseen
events of fieldwork and highlight the special
problems and responsibilitiesthat come with
studying shamanism today.
While sometimes honored as a national
folkloric tradition, curanderismo is techni-
cally illegal in Peru. For centuries shamans
have faced police harassment, arrests, and
condemnation from church and civic offi-
cials. The curers in this study dealt with
repression (and hied to get an edge on their
shamanic competitorsas well) by cultivating
ties to people of higher standing and by
adopting the trappings of pseudo-official
status: business cards, framed documents.
and consultation rooms like those of medical
doctors. Increasingly,curanderos also came
to see anthropologists as resources in their
quest for legitimacy.
For years anthropologistshave argued for
recognizing the value of traditional medi-
cine. This book explores what happens when
that battle is pastially won, though not
exactly in the way academics had in mind.
In a provocative discussion of “the re-
searcher effect,” Joralemon notes that aca-
demic attention has been ‘‘good for busi-
ness” among curanderos (p. 163). In the
1980s. documentary films and media cover-
age of research on Peru’s folk healers
confened on them a new respectability,
which was reinforced by the growing regard
for traditional medicine in international
health and development circles. As anthro-
pologists’ work brought Eduardo Calder6n
international renown, he became a guru to
New Age seekers from Europe and North
America and adopted a new discourse of
power animals, chakras, and planetary con-
101
sciousness. His case illustrates the problem
of defining “authenticity” in a world of
permeable cultural boundaries, where to-
day’s local healer may become next year’s
talk show celebrity.
Sharon and Joralemon found the specter
of Calder6n’s stardom haunting their work
with other Peruvian curers, who had become
acutely aware of the public-relations bene-
fits of being studied by foreigners. One
shaman took to starting his curing sessions
by loudly announcing the presence of
“docton from the great universities of the
United States.” Foreign researchers’ anen-
dance at rituals helped another curer’s
clientele grow from just a couple of patients
to more than 30 in a few months. Joralemon
explores how the ethnographer-research
subject relationship changes when the “sub-
jects” begin to use their researchers for their
own professional purposes.
Incorporating foreign ideas and symbols
is nothing new in Peruvian shamanism.
Diverse cultural influences are evident in
curers’ elaboratemesas (altars) composedof
numerous ritual objects: preColumbian
artifacts, Catholic icons, military swords,
crystal balls, Amazonian rattles, Buddha
statuettes. The dozen shamans’ mesas are
analyzed in more detail than most readers
will want. Nonspecialists might skim these
passages and turn to Sharon’s insightful
synthesis, which suggests links between
urban curanderismoand native Andean and
Amazonian cosmologies.
In part 2 the focus shifts from shamans to
their clients. The authors. assisted by a team
of Peruvian and North American re-
searchers, interviewed 129 individuals who
consulted four of the curanderos. Case
histories reveal the diverse problems that
lead people to curanderismo and show how
different shamans’ curing methods address
patients’ feelings of being at risk.
The chief condition that curanderos treat
is daiio, or sorcery. Earlier interpretations
have seen d d o as an “escape valve” for
expressing complaints, suffering, and ag-
102
gressive impulses in a rigidly stratified
society. Joralemon challenges this homeo-
static model. He points out that shamans do
not just dissipate social tensions: their
sorcery and accusations also intensify con-
flicts. The metaphors of mistrust and suspi-
cion that permeate the discourse of dailo are
instrumental forces in the politics of every-
day life.
Anthropologists recognize that illness
and sorcery accusationscan be mechanisms
of social control, or loci of strategic resis-
tance. Joralemon shows how both dynamics
operate simultaneously in dailo. ?he major-
ity of curanderos’ clients are women. Sha-
mans often attribute female ailments to
husbands’ abuse or philandering, but dis-
place ultimate blame onto other women
whose love magic leads men astray. Gossip
about these diagnoses pressures abusive
men to reform. Yet while curanderos’
discourses may challenge male domination
of specific women patients, they still rein-
force basic values of machismo and female
dependency. “Women gain moral leverage,
but not control,” Joralemon observes. “Still,
in a social system that only minimally
constrains the actions of men in regard to
women, anything that provides pressure for
moral accountability is a strategic resource .
. .while male authorityperse is not seriously
challenged,. .. its limits are continually
tested by the threats and realities of magical
aggression” (pp. 268-269).
This is an excellent text for teaching
shamanism in medical anthropology
courses. The clarity of writing and the
authors’ skill in presenting sophisticated
ideas in an engaging manner make it useti11
at both undergraduate and graduate levels. It
offers a wealth of information for specialists
interested in ethnomedicine. cosmology,
and ritual.
At a time when New Age romanticism
often treats shamanism as just anotherexotic
self-help therapy, this book reminds us that
shamanism has always been a fundamen-
tally social practice. Its vivid portrait of
MEDICAL
ANTHROPOLOGY
QUARTERLY
relations among curanderos, their clients,
and the anthropologists who study them
illuminates shamanism’s relevance to con-
temporary lives in a changing world.
Mother Father Deaf. Living between
Sound and Silence. Paul Preston. Cam-
bridge,MA Harvard University Press, 1994
(cloth and paper). x + 278 pp.
NORAELLEN GRWE
School of Public Health
Yale University
Paul Preston set out to study hearing
children of deaf parents. The result is a book
that provides insight on the worlds of both
the hearing and the deaf.
Deaf individuals in the United States
often share a common set of experiences.
Ninety percent of deaf children are bom to
hearing parents, most of whom have little
previous experiencewith deafness. Until the
1970s. few hearing parents were encouraged
to learn sign language. This meant that many
deaf children, now adults, never established
good communications with their families.
Links to families were further weakened
when these children were sent to residential
schools. Often separated for months from
their families, they tended to rely heavily on
deaf peers. Most of them eventually found
their way into deaf society, where through-
out their adult lives, their social networks
and supports revolved around their partici-
pation in deaf clubs and associations.
However, what of the children of these
deaf men and women? In most deaf families,
the probability that children of deaf parents
will be born hearing is very high. The social
world of these hearing children will be
shaped by their parents’ hearing impair-
ments. Are these children part of deaf or
hearing culture? Preston is among the first
to look systematically at this population. He
extensively interviewed 150 individuals
from around the country. As the hearing