Main description:

In the current model of health dispensation in South Africa there are two major paradigms, the spirit-inspired tradition of izangoma sinyanga and biomedicine. These operate at best in parallel, but more often than not are at odds with one another. This book, based on the author's personal experience as a practitioner of traditional African medicine, considers the effects of the absence of spirit in biomedicine on collaborative relationships. Given the unprecedented challenge of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the country, the author suggests that more cooperation is vital. Taking a critical look at the role of anthropology in this endeavor, she proposes the development of a "language of spirit" by means of which the spirit-inspired aetiology of izangoma sinyanga may be made comprehensible to academic scientists and applicable to medical interventions. The author discusses white izangoma in the context of current debates on healing and hybridity and insists that there exists a powerful role for izangoma in the realm of societal healing. Above all, the book constitutes a start in what the author hopes will develop into an ongoing intellectual conversation between traditional African healing, academe, and biomedicine in South Africa.

Contents:

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Going about it - Fields, sources and contributors

Structuring the book

Chapter 1. Conversations in anthropological theory and method

Acts of collaboration - Izangoma and HIV/AIDS interventions in East and Southern Africa

Experiential practice, reflexivity and a language for spirit

Methodological issues and the notion of mimetic ethnography

Chapter 2. On the Question of Ancestors

Conceiving ancestors

The sacred pragmatism of Izangoma Sinyanga

Chapter 3. Biomedicine and Izangoma sinyanga: Fundamental misunderstandings and avoidable mistakes

Medical disjuncts in the time of AIDS

Professionalizing Izangoma - Government, HIV/AIDS, and the 'traditional' in South African medicine

Indigenous discovery, pharmaceutical profit

Further contestations and uncomfortable predicaments

Chapter 4. On 'Being Called' (Ukubiswa)

Sickness and diagnosis

Answering 'the call'

Ways of seeing

Dreams and stuff

Chapter 5. Graduation (Goduswa) and ancestral evidences

Chapter 6. What got into you? Ancestral en-trancement

What got into you?

Not always bad: the literature of trance

Handling Spirit

Chapter 7. "Long-nosed Izangoma" and relationship issues in the Izangoma community

Working with the white

Long-nosed Izangoma?

A place for the white?

Chapter 8. Witchcraft and Izangoma Sinyanga in the time of AIDS

Virtually modern, actually real

Umbilical relationships and questions of motive

Treating AIDS, treating witchcraft

Postscript and Final thoughts

Glossary of terms and acronyms

References

Index