Holy local system: religious treatment of mental sickness in rural China.

Kleinman pioneered the use of intensive case studies in China and elsewhere. Drawing on this approach, this paper shows how two rural Chinese converts to Christianity recovered from prolonged mental sickness incurred during the Cultural Revolution many years earlier. The apparent 'cure' is part of local narrative in which rural Chinese Christians' first contact with Christianity has the pragmatic aim of seeking treatment to relieve physical pain, but leads to conversion and believed divine deliverance from psychological as well as physical suffering. In acquiring what they regard as new moral life and becoming dignified 'divine selves', they adopt new language and behavior and subtly change their relationships with family and the local power structure, thereby establishing a 'holy local system' that is regarded as able to withstand external crises and temporary setbacks. Setting up the holy local system highlights the inadequacy of rural bio-medical assistance, provides treatment for sickness and pain often blamed on Chinese society's relentless pursuit of economic development, and so introduces some compensatory if illusory rural stability.

Rural Christians' view of sickness treatment behavior: a case study from a Shandong village, China.

There are few studies of Christian views of disease and treatment behavior in rural China. Based on Village G in Shandong Province, this paper describes how, under conditions of rural social and medical deprivation, Christians regard physical (routi) and mental (jingshen) sickness as resulting from disturbances to communal peace. Sickness occurs when everyday sinful words and actions allow the devil to enter or when God uses the devil to test worshippers' beliefs. In either case, it is the devil who directly causes sickness. Christian treatment is through scripture, communal and individual prayer, and expurgation. Diagnosis and treatment thus reflect both theodicy and the emergence of a kind of devil culture in the context of rural social crises.