Carolina Academic Press

We have no microbes here; healing practices in a Turkish Black Sea village.

Önder (Turkish language and culture, Georgetown U.) describes women's healing methods in Medreseönü, a Turkish Black Sea village, in this ethnography. Following earlier visits as part of her dissertation research, she made regular trips to the village beginning in 1990 to see relatives of her husband and conduct research on health care practices. Each chapter details the local setting and gives an analytical investigation of the culture and its healing practices, with a focus on ideas of illness, health, birth, and death. This illustrates women's participation in the "construction, maintenance, and redesigning" of culture. Chapters also consider religion, the life of a rural Turkish woman, ritual, reproduction, and the place of institutions of clinical medicine. The book's audience consists of those in medical or general anthropology, gender studies, Islamic studies, European studies, and ritual studies. In addition to the general index, a name index is provided. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)