A Gift without Shortcomings

Healers Negotiating the Intersection of the Local and Global in the Context of HIV/Aids

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3652249
AutoresPatricia C Henderson, Patricia Henderson (University of KwaZulu-Natal, autor de correspondencia)
Año2005
Volumen31
Número2
Páginas24-54
Fecha de publicación2005-12-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaSocial Dynamics (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0253-3952 • E-ISSN: 1940-7874
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/02533950508628707
OpenAlexW2086297621
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas12
Referencias citadas16

The paper will examine the idea of citizenship from the point of view of two healers, an inyanga and isangoma, one of whom is HIV positive, who live in the remote Okhahlamba region of South Africa. It will therefore provide a view of citizenship from below. The ways in which both healers explore their relationship with the world beyond Okhahlamba illustrates their personal wanderings beyond local environments and the ambivalence with which the wider world is viewed – a common perception of many rural dwellers whose lives, nevertheless, intersect with wider worlds due to migrancy: the experience of the inadequacies of local government, formal health and social welfare provision, and the arrival of international ARV programmes. Healer narratives suggest ways in which rural communities in South Africa claim an otherness in relation to wider worlds, an otherness that reiterates identities of difference in relation to wider structures of governance. Local explanations for the HIV/AIDS pandemic are outlined and are given meaning through being placed within the experience of how the divided and divisive history of South Africa continues to haunt present constructions of worlds and notions of identity in response to widespread death and the politicisation of dis-ease

Aesthetics · Citizenship · Narrative · Negotiation · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health · African Sexualities and LGBTQ+ Issues · Gender Studies · History · Law · Psychology · Sex work and related issues