Search results for ""author susan rasmussen""

To what degree does culture influence our concepts of age and aging? In our own culture, chronology is crucial to perceptions of the aging process. Our expectations for a twenty-year-old, for example, are different from those we have for a sixty-year-old. So entrenched are our ideas about aging that the notion of measuring age in ways other than chronology may be startling. In this unique ethnographical study of the people of the Kel Ewey confederation of Tuareg, Rasmussen explores age and aging in an African culture. A seminomadic community in northern Niger, the Tuareg understand aging in a way that is distinctly nonlinear—a dimension of life they measure outside of a chronological time frame. Instead, rituals related to marriage, childbirth, and death mark the process of aging. In this way the life course of an individual is more important to the notion of age than the literal age. A sense of private power and transformation of self over time are thus achieved through ritual. Rasmussen draws on field experience conducted between 1974 and 1995. The longevity of her ethnological study provided the opportunity for extended interaction with local residents, who eventually took an active role in studying the researcher. She explores the mutual exchange of knowledge about aging and life course—an interaction that itself sheds light on the need to deconstruct standard age-related categories for studying other cultures.

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A twenty-five-year veteran of field research in Niger and Mali, anthropologist Susan J. Rasmussen examines the female-dominated practice of herbalism in the seminomadic Muslim communities of Tuareg. Medicine women, known as tinesmegelen, diagnose by touch and treat their patients—mostly women and children—with leaves, bark, and roots from trees associated with ancestral spirits. In addition to healing, they relate oral traditions, offer marital counseling, protect patients against potential domestic violence, and practice divination. By earning the trust of nearly twenty medicine women over the course of her fieldwork, Rasmussen is able to provide an in-depth profile of these healers and their beliefs. The women come from diverse backgrounds, many of noble origins. Whereas they must be mothers, most do not practice their profession fully until their post-childbearing years. Rasmussen traces the mythical-historical origins of female herbalism and the initiation process for entering the profession. Significantly, she investigates the powerful relationships between medicine women and various authorities: Islamic leaders, state officials, and the medical staff of nongovernment clinics. Rasmussen draws the reader into this fascinating world of medicine women through interviews, guided conversations, life histories, illustrative case studies, and, most importantly, the words of the healers and their patients. As a participant-observer, she shares her own experiences with descriptions of the treatments she herself received. Then, moving from a focused analysis to a broader contextual frame, she addresses central questions in anthropology about gender, knowledge, and the interface between religion and medicine.

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