The Culture of Charisma: Wielding Legitimacy in Contemporary Russian HealingAuthor(s): Galina LindquistReviewed work(s):Source: Anthropology Today, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Apr., 2001), pp. 3-8Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and IrelandStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2678219 .Accessed: 10/05/2012 22:00

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The culture of charisma

Wielding legitimacy in contemporary Russian healing

G ALINA LINDQUIST Galina Lindquist is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Stockholm University. Her work includes Shamanic performances on the urban scene: Neo-shamanism in contemporary Sweden (Stockholm Studies in Social Anthropology, Almquist & Wiksell International, 1997). Her email is aatmare @ hotmail, com.

An important premise for the anthropological study of

healing systems is that they are cultural domains, consti- tuted by local systems of knowledge, meaning, and social relations. People undertake their quest for health with more conviction if the medical systems they resort to are

meaningful for them, if the conceptualizations of health, disease and cure correlate with their more general cos-

mology, and fit within broader patterns of personal and collective identity construction. It is this meaningfulness of the systems of healing within the broader domains of

meaning-making, their place with reference to the domi- nant structures of knowledge and power, that may be understood as their legitimacy.

This legitimacy may be particularly contestable in a

society where multiple medical systems coexist, intertwine, and compete for state funding and paying clients. In such a

situation, discursive and performative strategies of legitima- tion can become a part of persuasiveness, whether of an individual healer or of the ideology behind a certain therapy, which might have bearing on the therapeutic efficacy of treatment. Unravelling strategies of legitimation that partic- ular healers undertake can therefore provide a glimpse of

healing systems as reflecting broader cultural dynamics, as windows onto social change - a quest started early on in medical anthropology (see, e.g., Comaroff 1981).

The purpose of this paper is to analyse strategies of legit- imation employed in the field of non-biomedical healing in

contemporary urban Russia. It has been noted that people's health-seeking strategies sometimes reflect more than

simply the practical possibilities of access and affordability - more even than the pragmatic search for therapeutic effi-

cacy (Burns McGrath 1999). The therapeutic choices may also be indicative of moral and ideological undercurrents that determine how the users conceive of bigger collectivi- ties in which they belong - a community, a nation, or even the world (imagined as a global entity); and of how they see their place within those formations. It is in this sense that

health-seeking strategies can be windows on broader cul- tural transformations and controversies.

The constitution of Legitimacy In Russia, individual health-seeking strategies may be

pragmatic last resorts; but they also may be statements of

identity, of cultural and ideological convictions, and of attitudes to past and present. In the health-seeking prac- tices of afflicted persons these strategies of cultural posi- tioning may be overshadowed by pragmatic concerns

(Lock and Kaufert 1998). Healers' attempts to wield legit-

imacy through particular repertoires of treatment methods and through rhetorical strategies of self-presentation can be recognized as deriving from these same processes. Like their patients, healers appropriate the existing regimes of authoritative knowledge in complex and ambivalent ways. The dominant mode of response to the conflicting claims of these regimes, 'ambivalence coupled with pragmatism' (ibid. :2), is discernible in the strategies of healers as well as in those of patients.

The question of legitimacy has been extensively dis- cussed in medical anthropology in relation to biomedicine. In these discussions, biomedicine is regarded as the domi- nant 'regime of authoritative knowledge' (see, e.g., Jordan

1997). The anthropological critique of biomedicine is usu-

ally deployed to demonstrate how this regime, by con-

sensus, but sometimes by manipulation and subtle

coercion, is made to carry more weight than other existing knowledge systems, due to its 'structural superiority', that

is, its association with a stronger power base (e.g. Davis-

Floyd and Sargent 1997). However, alternative healing practices are also reflections of broader multiple regimes of power and knowledge. This paper addresses the issue of

legitimacy of non-biomedical healing systems. These are considered as cultural domains in their own right, and as

integrated by one practitioner in his own, idiosyncratic ways of wielding charismatic power that in practice trans- late into therapeutic efficacy.

In the plural medical field of today's Russia, healers' arsenals of treatment means are constructed, sometimes

appearing as a bizarre bricolage. Their public personas, the

images they project, are similarly often constructed

through their narrations of their lives, as well as through the material constitution of their treatment locales and the

apparel of their physical gestalts. As an example, I shall describe a healer for whom this project of public self-pres- entation has acquired the dimensions of art and ethos. I shall contextualize his endeavours by looking briefly at the field of medical care in contemporary urban Russia, and

by tracing the more general strategies of legitimation used in articulating its constituent parts.

In outlining these strategies, I will take as a starting point the types of legitimacy originally suggested by Max Weber (1947), and adapted by Carol MacCormack (1981, 1986) to the field of medical care: rational-legal, tradi- tional and charismatic legitimacy. Applied to healing sys- tems, legitimacy translates into the power of persuasion that compels people to follow certain prescriptions and to

subjugate themselves to certain practices. To analyse legit- imacy in health care is to understand why, and how, people submit to the authority of specific individuals (healers or biomedicai practitioners), placing themselves within the

systems of knowledge and power that these individuals

represent. In Weber's 'traditional' type of legitimacy, people cope because they believe in the 'sacredness' of a certain order of power; in the 'bureaucratic' type, it is the rational decision that makes them obey an institutionalized technocratic regime. Weber viewed charismatic power as based on affective devotion of followers to the figure of

authority, and their motives to subjugate themselves as

'inspirational' (Burgess 2000). The subsequent critique of Weber highlighted the teleo-

logical, evolutionary character of these ideal types. This

typology of legitimacy is based on Weber's vision of human

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Matushka Melania is the owner of a luxurious office with guards, secretaries, and a comfortable waiting room, where clients can watch video recordings of her TV shows. Matushka, Little Mother, is an affectionate form of address for a prioress in Russian Orthodox cloisters. The visual details of the ad - the icons and an oil- lamp in the background - are devices of 'traditional' legitimation through reference to the church. Melania calls herself a 'hereditary Russian Orthodox Babka ' - a contradiction in terms, as the church anathematizes magic and healing as the works of devil. Melania 's appearance - a beautiful, well-groomed, self- assured woman in her early forties, with somewhat stern and authoritative manner - contrasts with the image of the approachable village wise woman evoked by the term 'babka '.

The illustrations included here are from the newspaper Orakul (The Oracle'), for the year 2000, but they also appear in other similar newspapers, notably Tainaia vlast ('The Secret Power'). I am grateful to three anonymous referees for their comments.

1. To be granted a licence, one must have a medical degree from a college or nursing school. Since the beginning of the 1990s there have been advanced training institutions, or courses, which admit practising healers and give them a basic biomedicai education. People who have displayed some healing abilities, and who may have practised healing informally with some success, can follow these courses to obtain a document that certifies them as 'folk healers', and also counts as a licence. This gives them a legal right to advertise as 'healers', and to be employed in 'centres', clinic-like or para-medical establishments that present their services in the vocabulary of biomedicine.

ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 17 NO 2, APRIL 2001

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The 'Salon of Supreme Magic' is presided over by the seventh- generation heiress to the ancient Babylonian teachings, head of the Seventh Legion Order of the Three Winds, Hierarch of the 1st degree, Master of Black Magic and Voodoo. The range of services on offer includes more extreme varieties such as, for example, 'egiliet'- rendering your husband or lover impotent with all women except for you.

society as essentially developing from 'lower', affective and even instinctual forms of social action to more rigorous or

rationally located ones. In practice, however, people's ways of and motives for coping with power, including that of the

regimes of authoritative medical knowledge, seem to be

pragmatic, combining Weber's ideal types and devising new

ways never envisaged by grand theories. Another criticism of Weber's typology of domination

and legitimacy concerns the problematic character of his notion of charisma (for a detailed analysis, see Csordas

1997). Commentators agree that, by the very nature of his

thought, Weber could not conceive of charisma as a mys- tical personal quality, acultural and ahistorical. However, his identification of 'charismatic legitimacy' as a separate type may be understood to this effect. By contrast, fol-

lowing Csordas, we may attempt to deconstruct charisma and to find its specific situational 'locus' with a concrete individual healer. The ethnographic research which fol- lows shows that in non-biomedical healing, where charis- matic authority is often the most important type in the

therapeutic relationship, the healer wields this authority by tapping into all existing regimes of 'authoritative knowl-

edge', as well as by drawing on the whole array of avail- able symbolic, discursive, and performative resources.

Furthermore, the sources of legitimacy that must ulti-

mately be integrated to forge charismatic authority are not

fixed, as Weber's typology implies, but are historically and

culturally conditioned. I will argue that an important source of legitimacy in Russia, as elsewhere, is the power of alterity (cf. Taussig 1993).

In using alterity or otherness as a source of legitimacy, healers draw on their own versions of globality - the world

seen as a single place, where meanings, forms, techniques, practices, material objects, and people move across national borders and take root in local arenas (cf. Hannerz

1996). These versions of 'globality' are both culturally shared and individually idiosyncratic constructions which

provide a stock of means for innovation and cultural cre-

ativity and constitute a motor for broader changes.

The healing locale Unlike many of his fellow practitioners who operate on an amateur and part-time basis, Georgii is a licensed healer.1 The healing centre where he works occupies a large, some- what dilapidated premises on the ground floor of a huge apartment building constructed in the prestigious architec- tural style of 'Stalin's empire', a ten-minute metro ride from the centre of Moscow. Inside, the centre is unpreten- tious. It consists of two small rooms, occupied by the two

acting healers, and one big hall divided into small cubicles

by old, worn cloth curtains, with couches used for massage and acupuncture. Apart from the healers, the staff consists of two masseurs, an ultrasound specialist, two secretaries who answer the phone fourteen hours a day, a bookkeeper, and a general nurse. The centre's income is brought in by the healers, and staff salaries are paid out of this money. It is equipped with ultrasound and ECG equipment, and a battered old computer running the AMSAD diagnostic program.2

Georgii is the main attraction of the centre. Even at times when the economic depression meant that there were few

patients and the centre was bringing in little money, there were always long queues of people waiting to be treated by him. Georgii is a man in his mid-thirties, although he claims

to have turned fifty, perhaps to accommodate some of the more spectacular episodes of his invented biography and to strengthen the aura of wisdom lent by age and

experience. His resemblance to the historical figure of

Rasputin, the famous Russian self-proclaimed

Grigorii Efimovich Rasputin (1869-1916), the healer-monk who played a crucial role in the downfall of the Romanov dynasty.

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'White andpactical magic' are offered by this 'International Master'. The distinction between 'white' and 'practical' magic obviously reflects thefuzziness of the moral domain on the boundaries of legimitacy. Thus, 'elimination of rivals' clearly falls outside the domain of 'white magic' but may be urgently required for practical reasons. The range of services also includes 'correction of fate', attraction of lovers and money, and a 'protective energy shield'.

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2. This computer program is based on the premise that the spine is central to the well-being of the body, and that every vertebra of the spine is connected to a specific internal organ. Disorders of internal organs are understood to result directly from wrongly positioned vertebrae. This is expressed in biological magnetic currents that can be measured on the surface of the body, specifically on the palms of the hands and the forehead. When the patient holds an electrode in each hand, and another electrode in the form of a metallic band is placed on his forehead, the computer screen shows the person's spine with the vertebrae in different colours, connected by straight lines to the corresponding viscera. These schematics can be printed out. There is a legend

ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 17 NO 2, APRIL 2001

monk-healer who treated the son of Tsar Nicholas II for

haemophilia and contributed to the demise of the royal family, is clearly not fortuitous. He is of medium height and stout, if not fat, a trait he shares with many Russian Orthodox priests. Like them, he has shoulder-length hair

swept back from the forehead, and a beard that falls onto his wide chest. His face is exceptionally handsome in an icon-like way, with clear and regular features, and a grave and piercing gaze. This stern appearance presents a

striking contrast to the sudden glances of tenderness and

compassion which he focuses on a patient while listening to his or her story. Georgii's ecclesiastical features are framed in the highest-quality garments, in the latest Western fashion - flannel, leather, suede and blue denim in

exquisite combinations which betray his healthy financial

position and keen interest in the world of clothes. A large crucifix on his chest and several massive rings with crosses on his fingers, with rubies and turquoise in heavy gold settings, complete the picture.

Georgii has a reputation as a very powerful healer.

Among his specialities are child cerebral palsy, hormonal

growth deficiency in children, diseases of the bones and

spine such as osteochondrosis and scoliosis, and also sys- temic diseases like lupus. His patients, like those of most

healers, are those on whom conventional biomedicine has

given up. There are always two patients lying on the couches in Georgii's treatment room, with glass pyramids suspended above their heads, 'for focusing the cosmic

energy on their second chakras' as he explained to me. On the walls of the room, acupuncture charts hang next to Russian Orthodox icons, candles and a lampada (oil- burning icon lamp). A tape recorder plays New Age music

during the treatment. A trained masseur who teaches massage and bone-set-

ting in a nursing school, Georgii is also adept in acupunc- ture and zone therapy (acupressure), and he prescribes herb mixtures to his patients, claiming to have gathered these himself during summers spent wandering in the mountains of the Altai, the Urals and Tibet. Most insis-

tently, however, he urges his patients, as part of their treat-

ment, to buy herbal/vitamin/mineral medications

produced by the American company New Ways, an enter-

prise operating in Moscow through the pyramid sales

system. Georgii himself is one of the firm's Moscow dis- tributors. Selling these products requires a great deal of

persuasion, given that a bottle of New Ways vitamins costs three times an average monthly salary, and as much as the whole cycle of fifteen treatments by Georgii.

Healing sessions at the centre might include massage and chiropractic treatment for bone and spinal diseases,

though Georgii no longer carries these out himself, as the centre employs two other masseurs. His sessions may include acupuncture and acupressure for inflammatory diseases like arthritis or cirrhosis of the liver, but this is all

optional. The essence of his treatment, and the only ele- ment he uses in his work with children with cerebral palsy or with systemic diseases such as lupus erythematosus, is the 'bio-energy treatment'. The treatment itself takes about three minutes. The patient lies on the couch, under the

glass pyramid, and Georgii makes passes with his hand over the ailing parts of the body, or all over the body. These are surgically precise, confident, aesthetically accom-

plished gestures, but quick as the flutter of a butterfly's wing. They are mimetic movements that iconically repre- sent the operations he performs virtually, in order to smooth out tissues, draw out pus or excise foreign bodies such as cysts. This performance of healing is a masterly pantomime which enables one to see clearly the operation done, with the concrete sequence of healing procedures perfectly embodied in the act.

The strange thing, however, is that the observing anthro-

pologist is the only, and very rare, spectator, because the

patient always lies with her eyes closed. Other possible spectators may be a child's mother or a patient's close kin, but this is far from always the case. The marvellous pan- tomime theatre of Georgii and other healers is not meant for spectators. After this brief performance he lights a candle on the wall in front of one of the icons (the lampada always burns, as is traditional in Russian Orthodox house-

holds), puts on New Age music, and leaves - to attend to another patient, to answer the telephone, to chat with the staff of secretaries and other paramedics who solve cross- words in the waiting room, or to disappear with one of the

girls who are always in attendance waiting for this moment

(he has a number of female admirers who often follow him wherever he goes).

When I asked Georgii why his treatment takes such a short time, he explained somewhat vaguely that with his

quick passes he sets into operation a curing program within the 'bio-energy-information field' of the patient. He also told me that while he was chatting with me or doing some-

thing else, part of his mind was with the patient, ceaselessly continuing the healing work, and that he actually knew

exactly what the patient was doing lying there on the couch, what she was feeling, if the pain was stronger or weaker, if she stirred, scratched or coughed, thereby disturbing the needles. Nor did he need to look at his watch in order to know when it was time to release the patient. It all sounded

fantastic, if it were not for the queues of patients waiting their turn, and the stories of miraculous cures from the clinic's staff, who were rather critical of other aspects of

Georgii's personality and behavior. As I heard repeatedly during my fieldwork, it is not

unusual for healers to 'suffer from mythomania'. They are

powerful individuals, seen by themselves and others as

capable of changing the physical reality of the human

body. Being able to change the present, many of them seem to want, and dare, to change their own past as well.

They do this by weaving narratives of their own life so as to mould their present gestalts for the enquiring listener, be it an anthropologist or a journalist interviewing them for a media programme.

Georgii told me that he had three academic degrees, and that he used to be fluent in four foreign languages. But he decided to take a break in his academic career and enrolled in an elite paratroop regiment. He was sent to Vietnam, became shell-shocked there, and lost his foreign languages - and with them, the ability to learn languages at all. 'My first teacher was Baturin, a famous Russian healer then

living in Tashkent, founder of a chiropractic and

osteopathy school [and a promoter of Tibetan medicine]. I

This 'leading expert' promises 'convincing restoration of health at the first session', 'dematerialization of tumors', and cure from terminal diseases. The absence of licence number in his ad makes these promises legally precarious, but allows him to present himself additionally as a witch: his other services include 'realistic magic support for business ' and the solution of love and money problems.

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for the colours, on the spectrum from red through blue to green, corresponding to the gravity of affliction of the internal organs. If, on the schematic, your spine and viscera are all coloured blue to red, this means you are in trouble. Healers usually have patients diagnosed in this way before and after treatment, so that the results of the therapeutic intervention become not only perceptible but graphically rep- resentaba and visible as well.

3. Narod is conventionally translated as 'people' or sometimes as 'nation'. But in the history of Russian thought, narod also connotes a mystical entity or community that in itself bears a supreme value and the knowledge of truth. In the pre- revolutionary discourse of the radical intelligentsia, this conno- tation was spelled out in the expression 'narod-bogonosets' - 'the God-bearing People'. The notion is associated with the traditional Russian values of endurance and patience, as in 'nash mnogostradal'nii narod' - 'our long-suffering people' - but also with primordial vitality and strength.

4. This connection between Russian Orthodoxy and the mystical Folk Spirit, narodnost, complemented and augmented by the third pillar, the Divine Right of the Monarchy, has deep roots in the Russian culture. It was identified long before the revolution, in the triad 'Russian Orthodoxy, the Divine Right of the Monarchy, Folk Spirit' (Pravoslaviye, samoderzhavie, narodnost), as one of the cornerstones of Russian statehood and national identity.

ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 17 NO 2, APRIL 2001

The 'centre for development and scientific research in human psychology ' is an example of scientific- bureaucratic legitimacy. It offers rejuvenation of skin and internal organs, along with the usual 'luck, fortune, and money ', and trains healers, using 'the best hypnosis techniques available in the world'. The no-nonsense photos of the experts, of the kind used in official documents, present a stark contrast with the evocative gestures of the witches and healers in the illustration below.

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In this ad for a 'parapsychology salon', the slogan 'That Which is Hidden Will Be Revealed: Clairvoyance, Magic, Healing' places the emphasis on the mystical and the mysterious. The images of the healers are clich?s of folk fantasie s of witches, with stereotypical paraphernalia such as the crystal ball. This ad also reflects the multi-ethnic composition of Moscow: one healer is Armenian, another Georgian. Services include 'description of the person who put the evil eye on you '; tracing missing persons: protection from a random bullet; and casting spells on banknotes to make them multiply, bringing material abundance.

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ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 17 NO 2, APRIL 2001

became interested in massage and bone-setting when I went through his treatment myself, convalescing after the shell-shock. When I watched how the masseur worked, I realized this was what I wanted to do. I went to Baturin and asked him to accept me as his student. He looked at me and said: "You don't need to be my student. You are already

better at this than I am. You are a born healer." Still, I was his apprentice for a number of years. But my first real teacher was a Tibetan monk. I spent three years in Tibet with him, learning bone-setting and herbal remedies. He

spoke perfect Russian, because he was from Buriatiia. He

taught me to touch patients, listen, and ask questions, to

Seraphim Kassandr? is presented in his ad as 'the living legend of magic, our age's Caliostro, a high priest of Voodoo initiated personally by the supreme Voodoo archpriest Babalua Vonban Conbobo '. He claims that 'only the secret knowledge of the ancient Voodoo magic can work genuine miracles '.

make more precise diagnoses. But nobody can teach you to heal. You are born with the gift, but it emerges gradu- ally. I stayed with him for three years, and then he said: "Now you are ready to leave: you know all I know." After that I studied with sorcerers in Iran and with shamans in Siberia. But my next personal teacher after my Tibetan

guru was an old wise woman (babka or babushka) from Briansk [a forest area in mid-Russia]. Baba Nastia lived in a tiny hut deep in the forest with her sister who helped her with herbs and with the household chores. Patients came to her themselves, she was known far and wide. When I first came to her, she was very stern with me. I had to sweep her

yard and scour her pots for half a year, and only watched from a distance how she treated her patients. Once her dog hurt its paw, and Baba Nastia saw me heal it. Then she said to me: "Come in now. I will show you how to heal." I

stayed with her for about a year. She taught me a lot about

bone-setting and herbs. Many diseases can be healed by bone-setting to begin with. Everything starts from the

spine. And in the end she also told me: "You are ready to

go and work on your own. I have taught you all I know."' Once I remarked on his crucifix, and he told me that he was also a priest, ordained by a Greek Orthodox bishop somewhere in a distant monastery in Greece. 'He gave me the crucifix as a sign that I was ordained,' he said.

Strategies of legitimation According to MacCormack (1986), rational-legal legiti- macy in health care places a healing system within the con- text of a modern bureaucratic state, rationalist

epistemology and a reductionist and mechanistic cos-

mology. The worth of practitioners is judged on the basis of formal examinations leading to legal entitlements, and

by their professional position within the institutions estab- lished by the state.

In today's Russia, this type of legitimation is of great importance. It underlies biomedicai health care, the main medical system that the state continues to finance (to a

degree) and that the majority of people still resort to on a

daily basis. This has its pragmatic reasons, since very basic biomedicai health care is still free - an important consid- eration for those who barely manage to survive from day to day, as many Russians do. Ideologically and affectively, the persuasiveness of this system draws on the high authority of natural sciences, which for many people, especially the intelligentsia, still remain the basis of their world view. Legitimation through biomedicine can be dis- cerned in the physical organization of the centre described

above, with its diagnostic apparatuses, and the healers'

proudly displayed Ministry of Health licences and medical

diplomas. Georgii refers to the state scientific establish- ment when he mentions his four university degrees, and his work as a teacher in a medical college. High-tech modern biomedicine also backs up his sales pitch for the medications of the New Ways company, which, though 'natural preparations', are stressed to be developed, pro- duced and tested 'scientifically' (both in the accompa- nying brochure that he sometimes shows to patients, and in his presentation of them).

The second type of legitimacy, which MacCormack, after Weber, calls traditional legitimacy, places healers and their methods within a deeper temporal range and within the contexts of personal and national identity. It is associ- ated with concrete human links connecting generations of kin and providing continuity between past and present, vil-

lage and city. In present-day Russia, traditional legitimacy draws not only on concrete lineages and locales, but also

appeals to the nostalgia for the pre-industrial rural past, the values of 'land' (zemlya) and 'people' (narod).3 Alterna-

tively, traditional legitimacy might draw on 'small' local

traditions, like the shamans of Chukotka or the lamas of

Buriatiia, evoking the unbending spirit of distant ethnic

groups which has miraculously survived the ideological and political steamroller of the Soviet state.

Another, and very important, facet of 'tradition' is repre- sented in Russia by the Orthodox church, whose very iden-

tity and pride lie in having resisted changes brought about

by both Western and domestic (Communist) modernity and in preserving the essence of the national Russian soul.4

Resorting to this legitimation strategy, and defiantly blending these two facets of 'tradition', healers can adver- tise as 'a hereditary Russian Orthodox babka\5 claiming to have received their knowledge and skills from an unbroken

lineage of powerful village healers. Or they might offer

healing through 'Russian Orthodox prayers from the Church prayer books'. The photographs that often accom-

pany written advertisements for healers may present them in monastic garments and ecclesiastical head-dresses, with ancient church books in hand, against the backdrop of icons and icon lamps (lampada) - the objects that epitomize the Russian Orthodox religious folk spirit.

In Georgii's mythology of the self, traditional legitima- tion plays a crucial role. His teachers represent the great Russian tradition (Baba Nastia) and the small non-Russian ethnic or native traditions (the Siberian shamans as well as the healer from Buriatiia, who is also a Buddhist lama). The reference to the church is salient, read in his entire

appearance, in his crucifix and the rings decorated with

crosses, and explicitly spelled out by his claim to have been ordained as an Orthodox priest. Healers' reference to the church as a bearer of tradition, their wilful co-optation of the church for legitimation, is however rather precar- ious. The Russian Church, together with biomedicine, is adamant in vilifying all kinds of healing, anathematizing it as a work of the devil.6 This may be the reason why Georgii, in turning to the church for legitimation, chooses not Russian but Greek Orthodoxy. In the view of some

Russians, notably a more radical section of the scientific and Western-oriented intelligentsia, the Russian Orthodox

Church, as a highly visible social institution, is corrupt, opportunistic, conservative, and associated with darker

political forces of xenophobic nationalism. Accordingly, Georgii's religious reference is to Russia's spiritual pre- cursor, Orthodox Greece, and to the rural, ascetic, monastic tradition, untainted by mundane involvements with the powers-that-be.

Another kind of legitimacy, not mentioned by Weber and MacCormack, is constituted through reference to the

foreign origin of the craft. In many societies, methods,

knowledges, systems, and individual healers from afar are often considered especially powerful, even if sometimes

highly dangerous. This is true of the attitude to Western medicine in Third World countries, and also of the 'cross- cultural healing' notable, for example, in Africa, where

people often seek the help of medical/ritual specialists from other ethnic groups (Rekdal 1999). In today's Russia, a large proportion of healers (and gurus) eagerly resort to this strategy of legitimation through alterity. Advertisements feature 'the seventh-generation heir to ancient Babylonian teachings, Master of Voodoo', as well as Masters of Indian and Tibetan medicine. There are

experts who claim to master 'the secret techniques of ancient Scandinavian runes', and a number of followers of Reiki - 'a Japanese tradition which allows you to extract the life force, to become one with it, and to transmit it

through your hands'. In his narratives, Georgii forges legitimacy as a man of

power and knowledge by referring to alterity as a combined set of influences that constitute a very particular version of 'the global', the world seen as a single place. This larger world, as it emerges from his ethos, is however strikingly reminiscent of the map of the world presented to Russian

5. Babka, or babushka, is a folk term for village or neighbourhood female healers who, traditionally, treated diseases in people and livestock for symbolic fees or free of charge. The traditional babka is a wise old woman who possesses a gift of healing power as well as a vast repertoire of spells and herbal remedies. There are many contemporary urban healers/gurus who advertise as babki (pi.). These, however, are often businesslike young women who receive their patients in modern consulting rooms with fax machines and electronic security equipment, like Mother Melania (see illustration, p.3).

6. The grounds on which healing is rejected by these two sources of social authority are however quite different. Biomedicine and natural science often dismiss healing as superstition and healers as charlatans who dupe gullible people. At the same time, there is a whole field of 'paranormal studies', where healing is researched by laboratory methods as part of the 'unknown' (nepoznannoe). By contrast, the church does not deny the power of healing, but claims that it comes from the devil. According to the church, healing can achieve short-term physical betterment at the cost of the perdition of the soul that will then burn in eternal flames.

Bauman, Zigmund. 1998. Globalization: The human consequences. New York: Columbia University Press.

Burgess, Peter J. 2000. Law and cultural identity. Arena Working Papers. Available at: www.arena.uio.no

Burns McGrath, Barbara 1999. Swimming from island to island: Healing practices in Tonga. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 13 (4): 483-505.

ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 17 NO 2, APRIL 2001

children of the Soviet era in their geography lessons. The

USSR, occupying one fifth of the earth's land area, was a

metonym for the world, just as Russia was a metonym for the Soviet Union, despite the rhetoric of the multinational state that was also current during this period. Somewhere on the other side of the world there was the USA - an evil counterbalance to the good represented by Russia, as is still the case for some contemporary Russians. Clearly, the USA is a source of fascination for Georgii, as it is for many of his

compatriots, as his paratrooper story and his purported involvement in Vietnam indicate. Yet for him the USA is also a cause and a place of loss, since he loses his four for-

eign languages because of the Vietnam war, and thus severs his symbolic connection with the North American and

European world. The route from Russia out into the Western world is thus closed to him; all his other global pathways move from the outside inwards. His current involvement with America - his connection with the New

Ways natural medicine company - is a purely pragmatic undertaking, not a source of learning, not an input into his

knowledge and healing art, but a materialistic supplement to his healing, even as it represents, also pragmatically, a source of income.

Deconstructing charisma

Georgii comes across as an undeniably charismatic indi- vidual. Charisma, a seemingly ineffable force of attraction that some people exude, occurs in different historical and cultural contexts. In many instances it manifests itself,

among other things, as a power to heal. Charismatic power on the part of a healer implies the strongest loyalty of his clients (who in many instances are better conceptualized as followers), as it engages the consciousness of the

patient in toto, in a passionate act of devotion. But in the context of healing this kind of power is also the most

fragile, as it is contingent on the perceived efficacy of ther-

apeutic intervention. If the patients fail to experience the

healing as effective, the trust and devotion to the charis- matic healer is withdrawn, and the God-given gift of the

healing power is denied. As it is understood to come from

God, so God can always take it away. Georgii's charisma is manifested in his reputation as a

'powerful' healer, and in the consensus on the efficacy of his interventions. The complementary embodiment of his

healing power is the male erotic power that lends him his

image as a womanizer (much sneered at and ridiculed by the other, female, healer at the centre, but highly culturally valued in Russia), and that attracts women to him in droves.

(It is worth remembering that the charismatic power of

Georgii's apparent role model, the legendary Rasputin, was also expressed in his putatively unlimited sexual prowess.)

The healing gift as a divine endowment is stressed

repeatedly in Georgii's narratives. Thus, his teachers tell him again and again that nobody can teach healing; rather, one is born with this capacity as a kind of divine gift. This theme of God's gift figures prominently in a broader dis- course on healing. Healers say that they recognize it in other people by intuiting it at first sight. Sometimes it reap- pears in healers' children, manifested at a very early age as an inexplicable radiation or 'energy'. Or it is expressed in some spontaneous healing feats, as when a child heals a

family pet just by laying a hand on the sick animal (this is a story told by Georgii about his own five-year-old son). This narrative also returns in Georgii's ethos, in the story of Baba Nastia who finally decided to initiate her disciple after he healed her dog.

Insofar as charisma can be seen as a quality of the indi-

vidual, it consists, as Willner suggests, in his capacity to

project successfully the image of himself as an extraordi-

nary person (1968:4). Deconstructing charisma would then mean discerning what qualities can contribute to this

capacity to project, what images are projected, and what means are used to project them. In Georgii's case, it is his

performative talents and his personal endowments that make him an attractive and desirable man in the terms and

symbols of his culture. But it is also his ability to tap into the discourses that, in Geertz's words, connect him with 'entities [bearing] ultimate, order-determining power' and with 'symbolic centers of the social order' (1977:151). The locus (in Csordas's terms) of Georgii's charisma is 'a new moral synthesis' (Csordas 1997:147) that he achieves

by referring to contemporary political processes and salient cultural discourses, narratives and oppositions, by welding together the performative, discursive, and sym- bolic resources offered by his culture.

Conclusion The strategies of legitimation outlined in this paper using the example of one particularly striking individual can be

discerned, in various combinations and with varying pat- terns of emphasis, in medical practitioners in all sections of the pluralistic health care system in Russia. These

strategies of legitimation are also likely to inform the

health-seeking behaviour of the users of medical care. The first of them, rational-bureaucratic legitimacy, still underlies the dominant part of health care system in Western countries. The second, traditional legitimacy, is

likely to be prominent in countries and among population groups where the search for group identity nourished by 'roots' plays an important role. The third, legitimation through alterity, seems be increasingly important, espe- cially in places and with people who are in a position to

enjoy the advantages of communication and mobility. Even those who are deprived of access to globalizing technologies, however - those who, as Bauman (1998) poignantly remarks, are by dint of their social position locked in immobility - increasingly tend to imagine the world as a single place, and their lives as being shaped, empowered and imperilled by 'global connectivities' (cf. Tomlinson 1999). Local folk models of globality are

likely to be reflected in the methods of legitimation by alterity to which local healers will resort. These folk models of globality deserve careful study, because they are determined by, and reflect, the locality, its history and culture.

Healing in Russia may be clad in the ritual and poetry of the folk tradition, or in the armour of ingenious machinery, the fruit of Russian technical inventiveness. Its perceived essence is concealed under layers of occult or para-scientific terminology and behind speculations about the unknown and unknowable 'bio-energy-infor- mation fields'. But beyond all this, healing in Russia

appears as a form of what I would like to call 'power transactions'. Its main agency, as locally imagined, is a

pure power of consciousness, crystallized in the directed force of intent (cf. Kapferer 1997), and flowing from the hands of the healer to the ailing parts of the patient's body. Healers in Russia, as elsewhere, are charismatic individ-

uals, standing out against the background of the sick, suf-

fering and enduring masses.

They are audacious personalities who dare to take

responsibility and control over the bodies and lives of

others, in the face of a condescending biomedicai system and a castigating church, the critical doubt of patients, and

tough competition among themselves. As figures of

power, they arouse admiration and fascination as well as

apprehension and mistrust. These feelings, corollaries of

power, are indispensable elements of the therapeutic effi-

cacy of healing. But the masks and garments through which the healer constructs him- or herself as a man or woman of power are offered, contested and confirmed by culture. ?

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