Description
Book SynopsisExamines the female-dominated practice of herbalism in the seminomadic Muslim communities of Tuareg. This book takes the reader into this world of medicine women through interviews, guided conversations, life histories, illustrative case studies, and the words of the healers and their patients.
Trade ReviewHighly recommended... sure to become the authoritative ethnography of a unique and impressive healing tradition.
* AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW *
Packed with rich and valuable ethnographic material. This is a valuable and provocative ethnography that merits the attention of medical and psychological anthropologists, as well as anthropologists of religion and gender.
* Ethos *
The author has intimate knowledge of two generations of [medicine] women, the kind of knowledge unavailable to most anthropologists. The book's strength rests in the quality and quantity of its data.
* Choice *
Table of ContentsTable of Contents
Deconstructing and Recasting Female Healing: Preliminary Remarks
PART ONE: Departures—Herbal Medicine and Local and Authoritative Systems of Thought
1. The Vexing Problem of Difference and Classifications in Anthropology and the Local Ethnographic Setting
2. Herbalism, Medicine, and Curing—Medicine Women's Concepts of Wellness, Illness, and Healing
PART TWO: Touch and Word—Learning and Transmitting Medicine
3. Touch, Body, and Senses
4. Word and Deed—Oral Traditions and the Mythico-History of Herbal Medicine
5. Medicine Women, Gender, and Physical and Social Reproduction over the Life Course
6. Natural Imagery (Arboreal Tropes) in Herbalism—Plant Uses in Nature and Culture
PART THREE: Medicine Women and Wider Systems of Power
7. Medicine Women, Sacred Places, and Al Baraka Ritual Benediction
8. Medicine Women and Islam—Relations with Marabouts
9. Medicine Women and Other "Shamans"—Herbalism, the Spirits of the Wild, Divination, and Power
10. Changes in the Wind—Medicine Women's Relations with Established Biomedicine
Conclusions—Herbal Healing, Modes of Thought, and Gender
Notes
Works Cited
Index
