Details

Working with Spirit

Experiencing Izangoma Healing in Contemporary South Africa
Epistemologies of Healing, Band 3 1. Aufl.

von: Jo Thobeka Wreford
38,99 €
Verlag:	Berghahn Books
Format:	PDF
Veröffentl.:	01.05.2008
ISBN/EAN:	9780857450159
Sprache:	englisch
Anzahl Seiten:	184

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Beschreibungen

Titelbeschreibung

In the current model of health dispensation in South Africa there are two major paradigms, the spirit-inspired tradition of izangoma sinyanga and biomedicine. These operate at best in parallel, but more often than not are at odds with one another. This book, based on the author’s personal experience as a practitioner of traditional African medicine, considers the effects of the absence of spirit in biomedicine on collaborative relationships. Given the unprecedented challenge of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the country, the author suggests that more cooperation is vital. Taking a critical look at the role of anthropology in this endeavor, she proposes the development of a “language of spirit” by means of which the spirit-inspired aetiology of izangoma sinyanga may be made comprehensible to academic scientists and applicable to medical interventions. The author discusses white izangoma in the context of current debates on healing and hybridity and insists that there exists a powerful role for izangoma in the realm of societal healing. Above all, the book constitutes a start in what the author hopes will develop into an ongoing intellectual conversation between traditional African healing, academe, and biomedicine in South Africa.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations Acknowledgements
 Introduction Going about it - Fields, sources and contributors Structuring the book
 Chapter 1. Conversations in anthropological theory and method Acts of collaboration - Izangoma and HIV/AIDS interventions in East and Southern Africa Experiential practice, reflexivity and a language for spirit Methodological issues and the notion of mimetic ethnography
 Chapter 2. On the Question of Ancestors Conceiving ancestors The sacred pragmatism of Izangoma Sinyanga
 Chapter 3. Biomedicine and Izangoma sinyanga: Fundamental misunderstandings and avoidable mistakes Medical disjuncts in the time of AIDS Professionalizing Izangoma – Government, HIV/AIDS, and the ‘traditional’ in South African medicine Indigenous discovery, pharmaceutical profit Further contestations and uncomfortable predicaments
 Chapter 4. On ‘Being Called’ (Ukubiswa) Sickness and diagnosis Answering ‘the call’ Ways of seeing Dreams and stuff
 Chapter 5. Graduation (Goduswa) and ancestral evidences
 Chapter 6. What got into you? Ancestral en-trancement What got into you? Not always bad: the literature of trance Handling Spirit
 Chapter 7. "Long-nosed Izangoma" and relationship issues in the Izangoma community Working with the white Long-nosed Izangoma? A place for the white?
 Chapter 8. Witchcraft and Izangoma Sinyanga in the time of AIDS Virtually modern, actually real Umbilical relationships and questions of motive Treating AIDS, treating witchcraft
 Postscript and Final thoughts
 Glossary of terms and acronyms
 References Index

Autorenportrait

Jo Thobeka Wreford accepted a community architectural post in Zimbabwe in 1992, where she met the Xhosa healer with whom, in 2001, she graduated as a sangoma. She now divides her time between her healing practice and research in sangoma and HIV/AIDS at the University of Cape Town. In 2004 she was awarded a Research Scholarship with the AIDS and Society Research Unit (ASRU), Centre for Social Science Research (CSSR) at the University of Cape Town.