The dominance of 'illness narratives' in narrative healing studies has tended to mean that the focus centres around the healing of the individual. Meza proposes that this emphasis is misplaced and the true focus of cultural healing should lie in managing the disruption of disease and death (cultural or biological) to the individual's relationship with society. By explicating narrative theory through the lens of cognitive anthropology, Meza re-frames the epistemology of narrative & healing, moving it from relativism to a philosophical perspective of pragmatic realism.

Using a novel...