Healing Cultures

This book showcases the diverse range of healing cultures, and explores how government action can have an impact through determining, promoting, protecting or destroying traditional cultural aspects of healing and wellbeing, based on a case study of Sri Lanka. It argues that diverse forms of healing practices matter not only because of their value in the health and wellbeing of the community, but also because they strongly contribute towards the intangible cultural heritage of the country. Identifying the diverse forms of healing practices existing in the country and the role of the existing regulatory mechanisms determines the potential for protecting the diversity of healing. Despite Sri Lanka being historically rich in traditional knowledge and expression, very little, if anything, has been written on regulating traditional practices related to health and wellbeing in the country, a lacuna which this volume fills.