The Failure of Therapy

Belief, Embodiment and the Limits of Pentecostal Healing in Papua New Guinea

Bibliographic Data

ID2143153
AuthorsR Eves (0000-0001-9407-4729, Department of Pacific Affairs, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume87
Issue3
Pages584-599
Publication date2022-05-27
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueEthnos (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0014-1844 • E-ISSN: 1469-588X
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00141844.2020.1801786
OpenAlexW3046350802
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited50

I explore the view that efficacy in Pentecostal healing depends on confidence, or \nunwavering belief. My focus is on emic notions of failure - how people explain \nfailures of therapy in their own terms - rather than on failures in the procedure \nemployed or the inadequacies of the healer. Although anthropologists have \ncriticised the notion of belief, my ethnographic example suggests that it remains \nuseful, particularly since in this case it is central to the assessment of failure. The \nPentecostals discussed here see belief in a more material way, as embodied and \nintimately bound up with the reformative project of becoming a born again Christian

Belief system · Embodied cognition · Emic and etic · Epistemology · Ethnography · Ethnology · Focus (optics · New guinea · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Philosophy · Psychology · Rangeland Management and Livestock Ecology · Religion, Society, and Development

Tools

Open DOI