Nomad RSI - Therapeutic diversity and the environment

Olivier Schmitz (2006), Paris: Imago, 256p.
Language: French.

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In spite of the success of biomedicine, there are many other healing practices living and developing today which are based upon the manipulation of certain “forces”, spirits, waves or energies. Who are the practitioners of these therapeutic forms and who are their clients? What are the representations of disease and of the body that animate these therapeutic practices? Over the course of a long period of field study, the author considered these therapies, which attribute the origins of the sickness and misfortune of individuals to the invisible world: cults based on saints and trees that heal, pilgrimages to springs and fountains, magicians, sorcerers, radiesthesists and geobiologists. The picture that emerges from this is one of a popular form of urban medicine, in which practitioners ground the legitimacy of their magico-religious discourse on disease and its causes on the advances of science and technology. Through participating in consultations, observing the stages of treatment and collecting experiences from the healers and their patients, the author has uncovered, at the very heart of our modern society, a magical universe in which our contemporaries attempt to find meaning and relief from their suffering.

The book has been presented at the Bistrot des Ethnologues (Montpellier, France) on 23 Nov. 2007.
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