Description
Book SynopsisThis ethnography explores the Ngoma healing tradition as practised in eastern Mpumalanga, South Africa. ‘Bungoma’ is an active philosophical system and healing practice consisting of multiple strands that is basedon the notion that humans are intrinsically exposed to each other; while this is the cause of illness, it is also the condition for the possibility of healing. This healing seeks to protect the ‘exposed being’ from harm through augmenting the self. Unlike Western medicine, it does not seek to cure physical ailments but aims to prevent suffering by allowing patients to transform their personal narratives of self. Like Western medicine, it is empirical and is presented as ‘local knowledge’ that amounts to a practical anthropology of human conflict and the environment. The book examines this anthropology through political, economic, interpretive and environmental lenses and seeks to bring its therapeutic applications into relation with global academic anthropology.
Trade Review"Healing the Exposed Being is a scholarly, rich and engaging account of the complex and individualised knowledge systems and passages of influence that shape sangoma practices in South Africa. Thornton's descriptions of and insight into the philosophies, rituals, and objects of the sangoma, and the ancestors, spirits and others beings with whom they work, change our view of these healers as custodians of the living, advisers, philosophers and guardians. The book is essential reading for anyone interested in health and illness in the region." - Lenore Manderson, Distinguished Professor of Public Health and Medical Anthropology, University of the Witwatersrand.
