Healing traditions: African Medicine, Cultural Exchange, and Competition in South Africa, 1820-1948
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Annotation In August 2004, South Africa officially legalized the practice of traditional healers. Largely in response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and limited both by the number of practitioners and by patients & rsquo; access to treatment, biomedical practitioners looked toward the country & rsquo;s traditional healers as important agents in the development of medical education and treatment. This collaboration has not been easy. The two medical cultures embrace different ideas about the body and the origin of illness, but they do share a history of commercial and ideological competition and different relations to state power. Healing Traditions: African Medicine, Cultural Exchange, and Competition in South Africa, 1820 & ndash;1948provides a long-overdue historical perspective to these interactions and an understanding that is vital for the development of medical strategies to effectively deal with South Africa & rsquo;s healthcare challenges. Between 1820 and 1948 traditional healers in Natal, South Africa, transformed themselves from politically powerful men and women who challenged colonial rule and law into successful entrepreneurs who competed for turf and patients with white biomedical doctors and pharmacists. To understand what is & ldquo;traditional & rdquo; about traditional medicine, Flint argues that we must consider the cultural actors not commonly associated with African therapeutics: white biomedical practitioners, Indian healers, and the implementing of white rule. Carefully crafted, well written, and powerfully argued, Flint & rsquo;s analysis of the ways that indigenous medical knowledge and therapeutic practices were forged, contested, and transformed over two centuries is highly illuminating, as is her demonstration that many & ldquo;traditional & rdquo; practices changed over time. Her discussion of African and Indian medical encounters opens up a whole new way of thinking about the social basis of health and healing in South Africa. This important book will be core reading for classes and future scholarship on health and healing in South Africa.
Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande
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Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande, first published in 1977, was based on anthropological reseaches carried out in the Southern Sudan during the late 1920s. For a decade of so, the book had little discernable impact; but from the early 1950s to present day its influence has grown incalculably, so that it is now difficult even to discuss beliefs about witchcraft or sorcery without reference to it. This abridgement of E.E. Evans-Pritchard's acknowledged masterpiece is intended to make it more accessible to students and the general reader.
Witchcraft, Violence, and Democracy in South Africa
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Large numbers of people in Soweto & other parts of South Africa live in fear of witchcraft, presenting complex & unique problems for the government. Adam Ashforth explores the challenge of occult violence & the spiritual insecurity that it engenders to democratic rule in South Africa.
Pentecostalism and Witchcraft: Spiritual Warfare in Africa and Melanesia
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This open access book presents fresh ethnographic work from the regions of Africa and Melanesia where the popularity of charismatic Christianity can be linked to a revival and transformation of witchcraft. The volume demonstrates how the Holy Spirit has become an adversary to the reconfirmed presence of witches, demons, and sorcerers as manifestations of evil. We learn how this is articulated in spiritual warfare, in crusades, and in healing or witch-killing raids. The contributors highlight what happens to phenomena that people address as locally specific witchcraft or sorcery when re-molded within the universalist Pentecostal demonology, vocabulary, and confrontational methodology.
Witchcraft Violence and the Law in South Africa
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Witchcraft Confessions and Accusations
by
Historians as well as anthropologists have contributed to this volume of studies on aspects of witchcraft in a variety of cultures and periods from Tudor England to twentieth-century Africa and New Guinea.
Witchcraft in Post-Colonial Africa: Beliefs, Techniques and Containment Strategies
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This is a comparative ethnographic study of witchcraft and associated violence between the kingdoms of Kom and Venda in Cameroon and South Africa respectively. The book shows why despite its prevalence in both societies, witchcraft does not lead to open violence in Kom, while such large-scale violence is commonplace in Venda. It reveals that this difference can be explained by factors such as the variations in local ideas on witches, differences in the role of traditional authorities, and various state interventions on witchcraft matters. The book demonstrates, through a rich collection of detailed cases, that contrary to anthropological theory that views witchcraft as a mechanism for the expression and resolution of social tensions and conflicts, witchcraft may at times become a disturbance of amicable social relations. Witchcraft accusations may occur in a context where strained social relations have not preceded them. The knowledge and experience that people have about witchcraft is sufficient to trigger an accusation and a violent reaction. Different forms of witchcraft account for variations in witchcraft attributions and accusations. This comparison provides a contribution to witchcraft policy discourse amid widespread citizen anxiety over witchcraft, and the increasing call on the post-colonial state to intervene and protect its citizens against occult aggression.
