Healing the Exposed Being: The Ngoma healing tradition in South Africa

Robert Thornton

Healing the Exposed Being

The Ngoma healing tradition in South Africa

- Get access
  
  Check if you have access via personal or institutional login
  
  Log in Register

Robert Thornton

Publisher:: Wits University Press
Online publication date:: March 2018
Print publication year:: 2017
Online ISBN:: 9781776140190

Subjects:: Anthropology: General Interest, Anthropology

Export citation

Information

Contents

Metrics

This ethnography explores the Ngoma healing tradition as practiced in eastern Mpumalanga, South Africa. ‘Bungoma’ is an active philosophical system and healing practice consisting of multiple strands, based on the notion that humans are intrinsically exposed to each other and that this is the cause of illness, but 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 a ‘local knowledge’ that amounts to a practical anthropology of human conflict and the environment. The book seeks to bring this anthropology and its therapeutic applications into relation with global academic anthropology by explaining it through political, economic, interpretive, and environmental lenses

- Aa Reduce text
- Aa Enlarge text

View selected items
Save to my bookmarks
Export citations
Download PDF (zip)
Save to Kindle
Save to Dropbox
Save to Google Drive
Save content to
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to .

To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Please be advised that item(s) you selected are not available.
You are about to save
Your Kindle email address

Please provide your Kindle email.

@free.kindle.com @kindle.com (service fees apply)

By using this service, you agree that you will only keep content for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services

Metrics

Total number of HTML views: 0

Total number of PDF views: 0 *

Loading metrics...

Total views: 0 *

Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

Usage data cannot currently be displayed.

Healing the Exposed Being

The Ngoma healing tradition in South Africa

Book description

Refine List

Actions for selected content:

Contents

Frontmatter
pp i-iv

Contents
pp v-vi

List of figures
pp vii-x

Acknowledgements and dedication
pp xi-xvi

CHAPTER 1 - Bungoma or ‘philosophy of the drum’ in the South African Lowveld
pp 1-43

CHAPTER 2 - The material logic of evil and the augmented self
pp 44-73

CHAPTER 3 - ‘Cleaves Water’, eats intwaso: Becoming a healer in the bungoma tradition
pp 74-111

CHAPTER 4 - The transmission of knowledge in bungoma
pp 112-129

CHAPTER 5 - Healing conflict: The politics of interpersonal distress
pp 130-147

CHAPTER 6 - Marginal utilities and the ‘hidden hand’ of zombies
pp 148-173

CHAPTER 7 - The market for healing and the elasticity of belief
pp 174-200

CHAPTER 8 - Apotropaic magic and the sangoma's patient
pp 201-223

CHAPTER 9 - Magical weevils and amaryllis in southern African ritual landscapes
pp 224-262

CHAPTER 10 - Magical empiricism and the ‘exposed being’ in public health and traditional healing
pp 263-280

Conclusion
pp 281-291

References
pp 292-308

Index
pp 309-336

Metrics

Full text views

Book summary page views

Healing the Exposed Being

The Ngoma healing tradition in South Africa

Book description

Refine List

Actions for selected content:

Save Search

Contents

Metrics

Full text views

Book summary page views