The Power of Remainder : Politics and Poetics of Healing in Buddhist Myanmar

In The Power of Remainder, Céline Coderey redefines how we understand health, healing, and marginality in Myanmar. Focusing on the Buddhist communities of Rakhine, she explores their rich and diverse "medical repertoire" and argues that this repertoire reflects an intricate interplay of biological, social, cosmological, and political forces.

Based on thirty months of fieldwork between 2004 and 2019, this ethnographic study reveals the interconnectedness between plurality, positionality, and efficacy. The necessity for diverse healing approaches is driven not only by the desire to live and thrive, but also by the categorizations and hierarchies imposed on medical practices, knowledge, and people. These categorizations—shaped by governance and nation-building—affect how healers deploy resources and how users access them, ultimately influencing their effectiveness. At the heart of this work lies the innovative concept of "remainder," which reimagines healing as a process of navigating what is left behind, left out, or left unresolved. Far from being merely constraining, these remainders offer a creative space for resilience, adaptability, and hope. This duality—where marginalization gives rise to innovation—positions The Power of Remainder as a bold challenge to conventional understandings of healing.

By bridging religious studies and medical anthropology, Coderey dismantles traditional disciplinary silos, showing how the boundaries of medicine and Buddhism are locally constructed, negotiated, and transcended, reflecting and affecting values and therapeutic actions. The Power of Remainder redefines the frameworks through which we view health, agency, and the possibilities of healing.