One of the world's most intensively studied societies, Bali has hosted scholars and writers as renowned as Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, Miguel Covarrubias, Fred Barth, and Hildred and Clifford Geertz. Staying Local in the Global Village is part of a continuing tradition in which Balinese and foreign scholars reflect on the processes of transformation that link Bali to Indonesia and the world beyond. The chapters in this volume are based on research carried out in the early 1990s, when Suharto's New Order still enjoyed widespread legitimacy in Indonesia. Even then, political consensus in...

What is the current state of traditional healing practices in contemporary Asian societies? How are their practitioners faring in the encounter with Western science and its biomedical approach? How are traditional healing practices being transformed by the politics of health within the modern nation-state and by the processes of commodification typical of modern economies? How do patients in Asian societies see the various healing options now open to them?

The authors, all of whom are anthropologists, observe the clashes and complementarities between traditional therapies and...