Localised Communities and Mass Healing Practice: The Case of Guangxi, China

Abstract

Healing, as a way of maintaining health in human beings, has been derived primarily from social and cultural concepts and events. This article investigates what may be termed as ‘mass healing practice’ and the way in which this form of healing has been passed down through generations in Guangxi’s local communities. It examines the environmental as well as social and cultural elements underlying the localised healthcare tradition and analyses how this form of mass healing practice continues to largely exist on its own in present day Guangxi. This article briefly compares mass healing practice with the practice of modern western medicine and traditional Chinese medicine in other social contexts, and presents the argument that mass healing practice and mass healing education developed in Guangxi’s isolated local communities are more elaborately rooted in the social and cultural matrix of such communities relative to the other forms of healthcare practice. This is because indigenous mass healing practices and education in isolated communities are not only related to people’s everyday life, but are also understood, in varying degrees, as community-wide social activities.