Healing the exposed being : a South African Ngoma tradition / Robert J. Thornton.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Thornton, Robert J. (Robert James), 1949- author.

Contributor:

Alumni and Friends Memorial Book Fund.

Project Muse.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Traditional medicine.

Healing.

Rites and ceremonies.

South Africa--Mpumalanga.

Rites and ceremonies--South Africa--Mpumalanga.

Healing--South Africa--Mpumalanga.

Traditional medicine--South Africa--Mpumalanga.

Physical Description:

xvi, 336 pages : illustrations ; 28 cm

Place of Publication:

Johannesburg, South Africa: Wits University Press, 2017.

Summary:

This ethnography explores the Ngoma healing tradition as practised in eastern Mpumalanga, South Africa. "Bungoma" is an active philosophical system and healing practice sonsisting of multiple strands that is basedon the notion that humans are intrinsically exposed to each other; while this is the cause of illness, it is also the condition for the possibility of healing. This healing seeks to protect the "exposed being" from harm through augmenting the self. Unlike Western medicine, it does not seek to cure physical ailments but aims to prevent suffering by allowing patients to transform their personal narratives of self. Like Western medicine, it is empirical and is presented as "local knowledge" that amounts to a practical anthropology of human conflict and the environment. The book examines this anthropology through political, economic, interpretive and environmental lenses and seeks to bring its therapeutic applications into relation with global academic anthropology.

Notes:

Issued as part of book collections on Project MUSE.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 292-307) and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Alumni and Friends Memorial Book Fund.

ISBN:

9781776140183

9781776140190

1776140192

1776140184

9781776140206

1776140206

9781776140213

1776140214

OCLC:

987428527

Publisher Number:

99975451555