A well written and structured mature ethnographic work that investigates into the micro-politics of secularism in refreshing ways. It constitutes an important contribution to the study of neglected practices and worldviews at the margins of Turkish society, which were forced into exilic locations by secularist as well as normative Islamic discourses. -Anthropos A fine ethnography that examines the cultural ... Read morepolitics of healing practices in contemporary Turkey. It offers a fresh and original account of the cultural discourses and modes of aesthetic representation and perception that congeal around questions of religious healing. -Robert Desjarlais, Sarah Lawrence College A very impressive, theoretically sound and consistent, and empirically detailed account of how state power and its secularist project in Turkey excludes, despises, attacks, and yet contains and controls the religious therapeutic authority. -Berna Turam, Northeastern University Healing Secular Life is a remarkable examination of the intersecting worlds of secularism and religion in Turkey, as seen through the experience of popular religious healing. Dole's great accomplishment is to project the aesthetic and moral sides of therapeutic remaking of people's lives and worlds as the ethnographic framing for understanding how politics and religion come together in the sensibility of ordinary people who are living through an extraordinary time. A fascinating and compelling ethnography. -Arthur Kleinman, Harvard University Show Less