Cosmos, Gods and Madmen

Download or read book Cosmos, Gods and Madmen written by Roland Littlewood and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2016-06-01 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The social anthropology of sickness and health has always been concerned with religious cosmologies: how societies make sense of such issues as prediction and control of misfortune and fate; the malevolence of others; the benevolence (or otherwise) of the mystical world; local understanding and explanations of the natural and ultra-human worlds. This volume presents differing categorizations and conflicts that occur as people seek to make sense of suffering and their experiences. Cosmologies, whether incorporating the divine or as purely secular, lead us to interpret human action and the human constitution, its ills and its healing and, in particular, ways which determine and limit our very possibilities.