Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T23:52:30.607Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Pouring out Postsocialist Fears: Practical Metaphysics of a Therapy at a Distance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 September 2012

Larisa Jasarevic
Larisa Jasarevic*
Affiliation:
International Studies Program, University of Chicago
*
[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper examines the healing practice of strava, which translates as “great fear.” With a long oral history in Bosnia, it has become particularly popular since the end of socialism and the 1990s war. This postsocialist therapy, informed by gifting dispositions, is a bustling business that intervenes into disorders that people commonly relate to the new economy. Strava treatment presupposes distance, since the therapist rarely touches the bodies at hand, and concerned intimates commonly arranged interventions in a patient's absence. Inspired by Bruno Latour's advice to expand our notion of agency in directions indicated by those we study, I depart from the earlier accounts of strava as a traditional and symbolic folk practice. Instead, I explore its claims to efficacy in competition with psycho-pharmaceutical treatments of anxiety and depression in contemporary Bosnia. Of particular interest is a commonplace therapeutic blunder—the accidental mixing of “fears” water and Coke, which therapists shrug off as inconsequential. This points to a model of action best explored outside the pragmatics of science studies, employing insights gained from a rereading of Mauss', Tylor's, and Frazer's classic theories of sympathetic magic. I examine what makes strava water—carefully prepared with prayers and handled by the therapist's and patient's wishing breaths—ritually potent, while Coke remains ineffectual. I show that this therapy is the domain of wishing, which does not interrupt a sphere of new political economy, but nevertheless intervenes in the bodies that suffer from it, and effectively redraws the limits of the social.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 54 , Issue 4 , October 2012 , pp. 914 - 941
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Boddy, Janice. 1989. Wombs and Alien Spirits: Women, Men, and the Zar Cult in Northern Sudan. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1997. Marginalia—Some Additional Notes on the Gift. In Alan, Schrift, ed., The Logic of the Gift: Toward an Ethic of Generosity. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bringa, Tone. 1995. Being Muslim the Bosnian Way: Identity and Community in a Central Bosnian Village. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Comaroff, Jean. 1980. Healing and Cultural Order: The Case of the Barolong Boo Ratshidi of Southern Africa. American Ethnologist 7: 637–57.Google Scholar
Comaroff, Jean. 1992. Bodily Reform as Historical Practice. In John, Comaroff and Jean, Comaroff, Ethnography and the Historical Imagination. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Danforth, Loring. 1989. Firewalking and Religious Healing: The Anastenaria of Greece and the American Firewalking Movement. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. 1992. Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Fabijanić, Radmila. 2004. Zapisi, Hamajlije i Moći od Pomoći Odjeljenja za Etnologiju Zemaljskog Muzeja u Sarajevu [Charm periapt, amulets, and holy relics in the Ethnological Department of the State Museum of Sarajevo]. Glasnik Zemaljskog Muzeja Bosne i Herzegovine 46: 37–88.Google Scholar
Farquhar, Judith. 1994. Knowing Practice: The Clinical Encounter of Chinese Medicine. Boulder: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Farquhar, Judith. 2002. Appetites: Food and Sex in Postsocialist China. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Favret-Saada, Jeanne. 1980. Deadly Words: Witchcraft in the Bocage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Foster, Robert. 2008. Coca-globalization: Following Soft Drinks from New York to New Guinea. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Frazer, James George. 2009 [1890]. The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Glück, Leopold. 1890. Hamajlije i Zapisi u Narodnjem Ljekarstvu Bosne i Herzegovine [Amulets and inscriptions in folk medicine of Bosnia and Herzegovina]. Glasnik Zemaljskog Muzeja 2: 49–53.Google Scholar
Good, Byron. 1994. Medicine, Rationality, and Experience: An Anthropological Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Grdić-Bjelokosić, Luka. 1896. Narodna Gatanja [Folk divination]. Glasnik Zemaljskog Muzeja Bosne i Herzegovine 7: 141–60.Google Scholar
Harvey, David. 1991. The Limits to Capital. New York: Verso.Google Scholar
Harvey, David. 2010. The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Healy, David. 1997. The Antidepressant Era. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Healy, David. 2002. The Creation of Psychopharmacology. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Healy, David. 2006. The New Medical Oikumene. In Petryna, Adriana, Lakoff, Andrew, and Kleinman, Arthur, eds., Global Pharmaceuticals: Ethics, Markets, and Practices. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Jasarevic, Larisa. 2010. The Intimate Debt: Health, Wealth, and Embodied Experience in the Bosnian Market. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Jasarevic, Larisa. 2011. Lucid Dreaming: Revisiting Medical Pluralism in Postsocialist Bosnia. Anthropology of East Europe Review 29, 1: 109–26.Google Scholar
Jasarevic, Larisa. 2012. Grave Matters and the Good Life: On a Finite Economy in Bosnia. Cambridge Anthropology 30, 1: 25–39.Google Scholar
Kleinman, Arthur. 1980. Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture: An Exploration of the Borderland between Anthropology, Medicine, and Psychiatry. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Klima, Alan. 2008. Thai Love Thai: Financing Emotions in Post-Crash Thailand. In Inda, Jonathan Xavier and Rosaldo, Renato, eds., The Anthropology of Globalization: A Reader. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar
Kulinović, Fejzibeg Muhamed. 1989. Nešto o narodnom praznovjerju i liječenju Muhamedovaca u Bosni i Herzegovini [A note on folk superstition and healing of Mohammedans in Bosnia and Herzegovina]. Glasnik Zemaljskog Muzeja 10: 503–30.Google Scholar
Lampe, John, Prickett, Russell, and Adamović, Ljubiša. 1990. Yugoslav-American Economic Relations since World War II. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Latour, Bruno. 2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1976. Structural Anthropology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Lindquist, Gallina. 2005. Conjuring Hope: Magic and Healing in Contemporary Russia. New York: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Lipa, Aida. 2004. The Austro-Hungarian Period in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Cultural Politics in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Creation of the Western Type of Art. At: www.kakanien.ac.at/beitr/fallstudie/ALipa1.pdf.Google Scholar
Lock, Margaret and Gordon, Deborah. 1988. Biomedicine Examined: Culture, Illness, and Healing. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.Google Scholar
Lūse, Agita and Lázár, Imre. 2007. Cosmologies of Suffering, Post-Communist Transformation, Sacral Communication, and Healing. New Castle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar
Mauss, Marcel. 2001 [1902]. A General Theory of Magic. Brain, Robert, trans. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Medawar, Charles and Hardon, Anita. 2004. Medicines out of Control?—Antidepressants and the Conspiracy of Goodwill. Amsterdam: Aksant Academic Publishers.Google Scholar
Napolitano, Valentina. 2002. Migration, Mujercitas, and Medicine Men: Living in Urban Mexico. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Neumann-Fridman, Eva Jane. 2004. “Ways of Knowing and Healing: Shamanism in the Republics of Tuva and Buryatia in Post-Soviet Russia.” In Winkelman, Michael and Peek, Philip, eds., Divination and Healing: Potent Vision. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.Google Scholar
Pekarić, Vehid. 1998. Spoznaja Duhovnog Svijeta i Liječenje Duševnih Bolesti [The truth of the spirit world and the healing of mental illness]. Gračanica: Grin.Google Scholar
Petryna, Adriana, Lakoff, Andrew, and Kleinman, Arthur, eds. 2006. Global Pharmaceuticals: Ethics, Markets, and Practices. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Plestina, Dijana. 1992. Regional Development in Communist Yugoslavia: Success, Failure, and Consequences. San Francisco: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Postone, Moishe. 1993. Time, Labour and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx's Critical Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Pugh, Michael. 2005. Transformation in the Bosnian Political Economy since Dayton. International Peacekeeping 12, 3: 448–62.Google Scholar
Radenković, Ljubinko. 1996. Simbolika Sveta u Narodnoj Magiji Južnih Slovena [The symbolism of the world in the folk magic of South Slavs]. Niš: Prosveta.Google Scholar
Steiner, Karl. 1903. Bosanska Narodna Medicina [Bosnian folk medicine]. Glasnik Zemaljskog Muzeja 3: 563–66.Google Scholar
Elizabeth, Stites, Lautze, Sue, Mazurana, Dyan, and Anic, Alma. 2005. Coping with War, Coping with Peace: Livelihood Adaptation in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1989–2004. Feinstein International Famine Center, Friedman School of Nutrition Policy and Science, Tufts University and Mercy Corps International. At: http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/98E8BFFC00C9FB83C1257019003774D3-FIFC%20MCI%20Bosnia%20Livelihoods%20Study.pdf.Google Scholar
Štulanović, Muharem. 2007. Liječenje Kur'anom od Ograjisavanja, Sihra-Vradžbine i Uroka [Koranic healing of spirit intrusion, sihir-sorcery and evil eye]. Novi Pazar: El-Kelimeh.Google Scholar
Taussig, Michael. 1980. The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Taussig, Michael. 1987. Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Thorndike, Lynn. 1905. The Place of Magic in the Intellectual History of Europe. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Trivković, Stevo. 1886. Gatalice [Divinatory practices]. Bosanska Vila 15: 237–39.Google Scholar
Truhelka, Ćiro. 1889. Bosanci žive u vjeri o dobrim dusima i o zlodusima [Bosnians live with belief in good and evil spirits]. Gradja Zemaljskog Muzeja 1, 4: 237–39.Google Scholar
Turner, Victor. 1968. Drums of Affliction: A Study of Religious Processes among the Ndembu of Zambia. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Tylor, Edward. 1920 [1871]. Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Art and Custom. London and New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.Google Scholar
Ugljen, Sadik. 1893. Olovo kao Narodni Lijek [Lead as folk medicine]. Glasnik Zemaljskog Muzeja 5: 168–70.Google Scholar
Vlahović, Petar. 1972. Običaji, Verovanja, i Praznoverice Naroda Jugoslavije [Customs, beliefs, and superstitions of the Yugoslav folk]. Beograd: Beogradski izdavačko-grafički zavod.Google Scholar
Walker, D. P. 2000. Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.Google Scholar
Weiss, Brad. 1998. Electric Vampires: Haya Rumors of the Commodified Body. In Michael Lambek and Andrew Strathern eds., Bodies and Persons: Comparative Perspectives from Africa and Melanesia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Winkelman, Michael and Philip, Peek, eds. 2004. Divination and Healing: Potent Vision. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.Google Scholar
Woodward, Susan. 1995. Socialist Unemployment: The Political Economy of Yugoslavia, 1945–1990. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Woodward, Susan. 1996. The West and the International Organizations. In Dyker, David and Vejvoda, Ivan, eds., Yugoslavia and After: A Study in Fragmentation, Despair, and Rebirth. London and New York: Longman.Google Scholar