This subtle and powerful ethnography examines African healing and its relationship to medical science. Stacey A. Langwick investigates the practices of healers in Tanzania who confront the most intractable illnesses in the region, including AIDS and malaria. She reveals how healers generate new therapies and shape the bodies of their patients as they address devils and parasites, anti-witchcraft medicine, and child immunization. Transcending the dualisms between tradition and science, culture and nature, belief and knowledge, Langwick tells a new story about the materiality of healing and postcolonial politics. This important work bridges postcolonial theory, science, public health, and anthropology.
Table of Content
Acknowledgments
A Note on Translation
Prologue: AIDS, Rats, and Soldiers’ Belts
1. Orientations
Part 1. A Short Genealogy of Traditional Medicine
2. Witchcraft, Oracles, and Native Medicine
3. Making Tanzanian Traditional Medicine
Part 2. Hailing Traditional Experts
4. Healers and Their Intimate Becomings
5. Traditional Birth Attendants as Institutional Evocations
Part 3. Healing Matters
6. Alternative Materialities
7. Interferences and Inclusions
8. Shifting Existences, or Being and Not-Being
Conclusion: Postcolonial Ontological Politics
Epilogue
Glossary
Notes
References
Index
About the author
Stacey A. Langwick is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Cornell University. She is a contributor to Borders and Healers (IUP, 2006).
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