Social scientists and physicians alike have long known that the socioeconomically disadvantaged have higher rates of disease than those not hampered by such constraints. But what are the mechanisms and processes that transform social factors into personal risk? How do forces as disparate as sexism, poverty, and political violence become embodied as individual pathology? These and related questions are key not only to medical anthropology but to social theory in general.

In Haiti, History, and the Gods, Joan Dayan charts the cultural imagination of Haiti not only by reconstructing the island's history but by highlighting ambiguities and complexities that have been ignored. She investigates the confrontational space in which Haiti is created and recreated in fiction and fact, text and ritual, discourse and practice. Dayan's ambitious project is a research tour de force that gives human dimensions to this eighteenth-century French colony and provides a template for understanding the Haiti of today.

This chapter addresses the current state of Haiti as an archetype of a postcolonial and post-dictatorial country plagued by economic and political instability. Caple James explores the different reasons why the Haitian transition to democracy was both unpredictable and dangerous for individuals, communities and the entire nation through one case study she encountered while doing field work in the country.

Vodou is among the most misunderstood and maligned of the world's religions. Mama Lola shatters the stereotypes by offering an intimate portrait of Vodou in everyday life. Drawing on a 35 year long friendship with Mama Lola, a Vodou priestess, Karen McCarthy Brown tells tales spanning five generations of Vodou healers in Mama Lola's family, beginning with an African ancestor and ending with Claudine Michel's account of working with Mama Lola after the Haitian earthquake.