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University of California Press

Aghor Medicine

Pollution, Death, and Healing in Northern India
by Ronald L. Barrett (Author), Jonathan P. Parry (Foreword by)
Paperback eBook
Price: $34.95 / £30.00
Publication Date: Mar 2008
Edition: 1st Edition
Title Details:
Rights: World
Pages: 240
ISBN: 9780520252196
Trim Size: 6 x 9
Illustrations: 10 b/w photographs, 4 line illustrations, 1 map, 3 tables
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About the Book

For centuries, the Aghori have been known as the most radical ascetics in India: living naked on the cremation grounds, meditating on corpses, engaging in cannibalism and coprophagy, and consuming intoxicants out of human skulls. In recent years, however, they have shifted their practices from the embrace of ritually polluted substances to the healing of stigmatized diseases. In the process, they have become a large, socially mainstream, and politically powerful organization. Based on extensive fieldwork, this lucidly written book explores the dynamics of pollution, death, and healing in Aghor medicine. Ron Barrett examines a range of Aghor therapies from ritual bathing to modified Ayurveda and biomedicines and clarifies many misconceptions about this little-studied group and its highly unorthodox, powerful ideas about illness and healing.

About the Author

Ron Barrett is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropological Sciences at Stanford University.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Foreword
Jonathan P. Parry
Note on Transliteration, Abbreviations, and Names
Acknowledgments

Introduction
The Cosmic Sinks
Fire in the Well
The Reformation
The Wrong Side of the River
Dawa and Duwa
Death and Nondiscrimination
Conclusion

Glossary
Notes
References
Index

Reviews

“Fascinating in its exploration. . . . Adeptly introduces the reader to this system of healing and would be a worthwhile read for anyone interested in multicultural medicine.”
— Feminist Review
“A must for those interested in India’s plural medical system and the importance of medicine answering.”
— Medische Antropology
“This is a brilliant book, lucidly written, abounding with insights on medicine, religion and politics in contemporary northern India that will be of interest to social scientists and historians of medicine and religion well beyond its regional framework.”
— Social History Of Medicine
"Aghor Medicine moves seamlessly between an ethnography of religion and medical anthropology. The stories of suffering and renunciation, of collective experience that turn Indian hierarchy and discrimination upside down are quite marvelous. The writing is clear and direct and the interpretations balanced and scrupulously documented. Barrett has written one of the best accounts on local traditions "modernizing" in ways that combine indigenous significance with globally crucial changes that react against health and social inequalities."—Arthur Kleinman, Harvard University

"Ronald Barrett's fine account of aghor medicine reveals essential characteristics of India's popular culture, and, since an ashram in California has an important role in the story, of American popular culture as well."—Charles Leslie, author of Death Row Letters (forthcoming)

Awards

  • Wellcome Medal for Medical Anthropology 2010, Royal Anthropological Institute