A Narrative Loop:Belief in Mountain Deity and Non-Illness Experience in the Lunatic Stories from Sha Village
Combining ethnographic and phenomenological methods,this paper presents the narrative of illness and pain around the belief in mountain deity through the restoration of the lunatic story from Sha Village.An empirical and logical analysis of the non-illness experience contained in the narrative brings about the following conclusions.First,Arthur Kleinman's illness narrative of"somatization"cannot fully explain Chinese under-standing of mental illness,because there are a large number of non-somatization illness narratives in China's eth-nic minority areas and rural areas.Secondly,Kleinman's narrative of illness focuses on individual narratives,with the body as the centre,and does not mark group narratives and holistic narratives centered on the social and inter-generational nature of people.In contrast,the lunatic stories from Sha Village organize individual,group and holistic narratives into a closed loop with clearly defined hierarchy.Lastly,Kleinman does not identi-fying the characteristics of amnesia caused by mental illness from other chronic illnesses,and he fails to give ex-amination to the non-illness experiences such as amnesiatic structure,routinization,narrative loop,etc.,which have critical importance for the daily life of patients with mental disorders.
Kleinman Thesislunatic storybelief in mountain deitynon-illness experience
NETL
NSTL
万方数据
