Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- Acknowledgements and dedication
- CHAPTER 1 Bungoma or ‘philosophy of the drum’ in the South African Lowveld
- CHAPTER 2 The material logic of evil and the augmented self
- CHAPTER 3 ‘Cleaves Water’, eats intwaso: Becoming a healer in the bungoma tradition
- CHAPTER 4 The transmission of knowledge in bungoma
- CHAPTER 5 Healing conflict: The politics of interpersonal distress
- CHAPTER 6 Marginal utilities and the ‘hidden hand’ of zombies
- CHAPTER 7 The market for healing and the elasticity of belief
- CHAPTER 8 Apotropaic magic and the sangoma's patient
- CHAPTER 9 Magical weevils and amaryllis in southern African ritual landscapes
- CHAPTER 10 Magical empiricism and the ‘exposed being’ in public health and traditional healing
- Conclusion
- References
- Index
CHAPTER 5 - Healing conflict: The politics of interpersonal distress
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 March 2018
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- Acknowledgements and dedication
- CHAPTER 1 Bungoma or ‘philosophy of the drum’ in the South African Lowveld
- CHAPTER 2 The material logic of evil and the augmented self
- CHAPTER 3 ‘Cleaves Water’, eats intwaso: Becoming a healer in the bungoma tradition
- CHAPTER 4 The transmission of knowledge in bungoma
- CHAPTER 5 Healing conflict: The politics of interpersonal distress
- CHAPTER 6 Marginal utilities and the ‘hidden hand’ of zombies
- CHAPTER 7 The market for healing and the elasticity of belief
- CHAPTER 8 Apotropaic magic and the sangoma's patient
- CHAPTER 9 Magical weevils and amaryllis in southern African ritual landscapes
- CHAPTER 10 Magical empiricism and the ‘exposed being’ in public health and traditional healing
- Conclusion
- References
- Index
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.
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- Healing the Exposed BeingA South African Ngoma Tradition, pp. 130 - 147Publisher: Wits University PressPrint publication year: 2017