Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T18:26:15.988Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

CHAPTER 5 - Healing conflict: The politics of interpersonal distress

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 March 2018

Get access

Summary

The politics of exposure

The arts of healing in the practice of bungoma are applied above all to relationships between persons, whether tangible flesh-and- blood or of other intangible kinds such as witches, emadloti (ancestors), zombies, emandzawe, or other ‘forces’ with apparent person-like agency, such as actual persons acting under the influence, or with the protection, of muti. Persons, in this sense, have intentionality and are believed to possess effective causal agency and, therefore, have ‘power’, emandla and presence, isithunzi.

If we may take a ‘market approach’ to healing, as I suggest in chapters 6 and 7, we may also take a ‘political approach’ to the influence of people in a social context that also includes other person-like agents. In this context people understand themselves to be exposed to other persons as active agents or as patients and victims. Since the patient is also a victim, and because the patient of the sangoma can also learn to be an active agent in control of others through the knowledge of bungoma, there is necessarily an implicit politics (in the broad anthropological sense) that underlies these roles and their relationships. By examining the problems that emerge from the micro-scale of social order we can, perhaps, create a picture of the environment in which the healer acts.

I have emphasised the importance of the ‘small-town’ environment in understanding how bungoma works in an otherwise ‘modern’ society such as South Africa. Here I explore the political culture of this small-town environment in order to provide the basis for understanding how persons interact in daily life and therefore to show how the ordinary politics of daily life sets up the categories of conflict in terms of which divination and healing therapies comprehend the kinds of conflicts and injuries that the ‘exposed being’ experiences.

Towards an analysis of local-level

political culture Anthropology and African Studies scholars (as well as political activists) have long resisted the idea that there may be different cultural bases to African political and social systems, preferring, instead, to rely on political concepts derived from European theory and experience. This chapter takes the risk of suggesting that there are indeed definable differences – specifically cultural differences – for political thought and action in local-level ‘African’ politics.

Type
Chapter
Information
Healing the Exposed Being
A South African Ngoma Tradition
, pp. 130 - 147
Publisher: Wits University Press
Print publication year: 2017

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book 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.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

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 Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

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 Google Drive.

Available formats
×