Bodies, Politics, and African Healing

The Matter of Maladies in Tanzania

Author: Stacey A. Langwick

The therapeutic gap between traditional and modern medicine

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PRODUCT INFORMATION

Summary

The therapeutic gap between traditional and modern medicine

Description

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.

Critic Reviews

“"This is an important and convincing reframing not only of the meaning of healing in postcolonial Tanzania, but also of what healing does. Bodies, Politics, and African Healing successfully challenges us to reconsider the very way in which we think about African healing." -Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies”

"Presents in-depth ethnographic information on a timely and relevant topic of long-standing interest, informing practical responses to significant social problems." Tracy J. Luedke, Northeastern Illinois University "Compelling and radical ... stunningly intimate, deeply intellectual, and thoroughly political." Julie Livingston, Rutgers University

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).