The Land As Body
An Essay on the Interpretation of Ritual Among the Manjaks of Guinea-Bissau
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2478076 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Wim Van Binsbergen (African Studies Centre, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1988 |
| Volume | 2 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 386-401 |
| Publication date | 1988-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Medical Anthropology Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0745-5194 • E-ISSN: 1548-1387 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1525/maq.1988.2.4.02a00070 |
| OpenAlex | W2148486232 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
| References cited | 6 |
Although neo-Marxism informed the author's fieldwork on the therapeutic effectiveness of rituals among the Manjaks of northwestern Guinea-Bissau, the explanatory value of materialist models turned out to be limited. Far from collapsing under the impact of capitalism because of migrant labor to Senegal and France, Manjak society retains an intact symbolic order. Migrants continue to interpret their physical and mental disorders in local terms and to participate in expensive rituals that absorb their capitalist earnings. Thus they submit to the gerontocratic order, restoring their roots in a cosmology in which the orificeless Perfect Body is ultimately the ancestral land itself. Spatio-temporal belonging, filiation, domestic kinship power, and bodily functions merge, influencing many aspects of illness behavior and its expression in ritual and everyday life. Neo-Marxism, epistemologically linked to societies under capitalism, scarcely explains this repertoire of symbols, yet helps us to pinpoint its unexpected vitality
Aesthetics · Biology · Capitalism · Criminology · Epistemology · Indigenous · Interpretation (philosophy · Kinship · Linguistics · Materialism · Merge (version control · Political science · Sociology · Vitality · African Studies and Ethnography · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Caribbean and African Literature and Culture · Gender Studies · Law · Philosophy · Ecology
The Built Environment and Spatial Form
Rituals, ceremonies and customs related to sacred trees with a special reference to the Middle East
De Paris a Jeta, de Jeta a Paris
The Anthropological Analysis of Health
Cultivating the Body
Remitting wealth, reciprocating health? The "travel" of the land from Guinea-Bissau to Portugal
| Unique citing works | 6 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,17 |
| Citation span | 1990 - 2014 (25) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 5 |