title: Healing efficacy and the construction of charisma: A family's journey through the multiple medical field in Russia.
abstract: In the varieties of non-biomedical healing in Russia, the efficacy of treatment is based on the patient's recognition of the healer's charismatic legitimacy that translates directly into the power to change the lived reality of the ailing body. This paper considers charismatic healing power as emerging in the dyadic relationship between a healer and a patient, and analyses aesthetic and social elements of the charismatic bond between healer and patient. The paper is based on the ethnography of the multiple medical field in contemporary Russia, reflected in the narrative of a family's encounters with its various representatives in search for treatment alternatives for an incurable chronic disease. The acceptance of a healer's charisma is shown to build on an immediate embodied experience, but it is also suggested that this experience cannot be understood if divorced from its social diacritics.
authors: a Department of Social Anthropology , University of Stockholm , Sweden.
authors: Galina
authors: G
authors: Lindquist