Higher powers : alcohol and after in Uganda's capital city / China Scherz, George Mpanga, and Sarah Namirembe.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Scherz, China, author.

Mpanga, George (Social scientist), author.

Namirembe, Sarah, 1988- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Alcoholism--Uganda--Kampala.

Alcoholism.

Recovering alcoholics--Uganda--Kampala.

Recovering alcoholics.

Alcoholics--Rehabilitation--Uganda--Kampala.

Alcoholics.

Alternative medicine--Uganda--Kampala.

Alternative medicine.

Physical Description:

x, 143 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2024]

Summary:

"Higher Powers draws on four years of collaborative fieldwork carried out with Ugandans working to reconstruct their lives after attempting to leave behind problematic forms of alcohol use. Given the relatively recent introduction of biomedical ideas of alcoholism and addiction in Uganda, most of these people have used other therapeutic resources, including herbal aversion therapies, engagements with balubaale spirits, and forms of deliverance and spiritual warfare practiced in Pentecostal churches. While their engagements with possession, aversion, and deliverance are at times severe, they contain within them understandings of the self and practices of sociality that point away from models of addiction as a chronic relapsing brain disease and toward the possibility of release. Higher Powers offers a reconceptualization of addiction and recovery that may prove relevant well beyond Uganda"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Batuzaala mu Baala : seeking connection and flow in Kampala's bars

Once an addict . . . : learning the chronic relapsing brain disease model in Kampala's rehabilitation centers

Put something in his drink : sensory shifts in Kampala's herbal medicine shops

Not you : hoping for deliverance in Kampala's pentecostal churches

Call and response : responding to spirits in Kampala's shrines.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND) license. To view a copy of the license, visit. http://creativecommons.org/licenses.

ISBN:

9780520396791

0520396790

OCLC:

1395425272