Cosmos, Gods and Madmen

The social anthropology of sickness and health has always been concerned with religious cosmologies. The chapters cover a range of ethnographic areas and examine notions of personhood, agency, uncertainty and control among other questions. In so doing, the contributors seek to contextualise understandings within wider cultural understandings found in these areas, linking these concepts to the wider social fabric.

Roland Littlewood is Professor of Anthropology and Psychiatry at UCL. He is a former president of the RAI and has undertaken fieldwork in Trinidad, Haiti, Lebanon, Italy and Albania, and has published eight books and around 200 papers.

Rebecca Lynch is an Assistant Professor in Medical Anthropology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). She has conducted fieldwork in Trinidad and the UK. Taking an approach that crosses the intersection between religion and medicine, she has published on socio-cultural, moral, and scientific constructions of the body, health and illness, and on bodily interaction with the non-human through technology, protocols, bodily fluids, and spirit agents.

Roland Littlewood is Professor of Anthropology and Psychiatry at UCL. He is a former president of the RAI and has undertaken fieldwork in Trinidad, Haiti, Lebanon, Italy and Albania, and has published eight books and around 200 papers.

“The essays in Cosmos, Gods, and Madmen range over a wide array of topics across multiple geographic areas… Not all of the chapters touch on all three of the terms in the book’s title, but they all contain important and fascinating ethnographic material and make some useful theoretical and methodological recommendations. It will not be news to any anthropologists that religion and supernatural agency is frequently implicated in the diagnosis and cure of illness, mental or otherwise, but the case studies are a welcome addition to the literature on medical anthropology and the anthropology of religion.” • Anthropology Review Database

““Despite high levels of unpredictability and uncertainty, and in some instances even the failure of miracles, what is most striking is the universal and powerful incentive and motivation behind this search. In terms of the book’s wider contribution, it provides an effective and timely response to the current comparative biomedical focus within medical anthropology, by reconnecting with its social origins.” • Anthropology & Medicine

“The introduction to this book is very well-written and lays out the topic and scope clearly… The chapters have been collected carefully and offer much to the study of religion and healing” • Stefan Ecks, University of Edinburgh