Healing the Exposed Being: The Ngoma healing tradition in South Africa [9781776140183]

Overview

This ethnography explores the Ngoma healing tradition as practiced in eastern Mpumalanga, South Africa. ‘Bungoma’ is an active philosophical system and healing practice consisting of multiple strands, based on the notion that humans are intrinsically exposed to each other and that this is the cause of illness, but 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 a ‘local knowledge’ that amounts to a practical anthropology of human conflict and the environment. The book seeks to bring this anthropology and its therapeutic applications into relation with global academic anthropology by explaining it through political, economic, interpretive, and environmental lenses

The book, Healing the Exposed Being: The Ngoma healing tradition in South Africa [Bulk, Wholesale, Quantity] ISBN#9781776140183 in Paperback by Robert Thornton may be ordered in bulk quantities. Minimum starts at 25 copies. Availability based on publisher status and quantity being ordered.