Introduction / Imre Lázár, Agita Lūse -- Talking with the departed ones : shamanic death ritual in a post-socialist society / Galina Lindquist -- Downloading cosmic energy : intersection of faith-based and health-care practices (the Novosibirks case) / Tatiana Barchunova -- Interpreting a case of vitiation / Vilmos Keszegh -- Metaphors of the New Age purification practices / Dorota Hall -- Regressing into the past : past lives and collective memory in post-socialist Slovenia / Barbara Potrata -- Embodied and displaced history : spiritual empowerment in post-communist Hungary / Imre Lázár -- The body of the saint : iconographies of suffering in a Catholic commemoration ceremony in Vukovar, Croatia / Michaela Schäuble -- The voices of collapse : destructive and self-destructive expressions among the former miners in Walłbrzych (south Poland) / Thomas Rakowski -- 'Apocalypse Now!' : interpretations of HIV/AIDS in an urban township in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe / Alexander Rödlach
Summary
The edited volume elaborates on a range of themes that emerged during a workshop of the 8th biennial of the European Association of Social Anthropologists in Vienna in 2004. Among these themes are: the paradoxical permanence of 'transition' in post-communist countries, the accompanying persistence of social suffering and the structural conditions that give rise to it. A final theme focuses on the resources that people mobilize to cope Other suffering and trauma. Ways of coping manifest a stan ..