New PDF release: Witches, Westerners, and HIV: AIDS and Cultures of Blame in

By Alexander Rödlach

ISBN-10: 1598740334

ISBN-13: 9781598740332

ISBN-10: 1598740342

ISBN-13: 9781598740349

A witch's curse, an imperialist conspiracy, a racist plot—HIV/AIDS is a catastrophic future health challenge with advanced cultural dimensions. From small villages to the overseas approach, causes of the place it comes from, who will get it, and who dies are tied to political agendas, spiritual ideals, and the psychology of devastating grief. often those motives clash with technology and conflict with prevention and therapy courses. In Witches, Westerners, and HIV Alexander Rödlach attracts on a decade of analysis and paintings in Zimbabwe to check ideals approximately witchcraft and conspiracy theories surrounding HIV/AIDS in Africa. He indicates how either different types of ideals are a part of a technique of blaming others for AIDS, a method that happens all over the world yet takes on neighborhood, culturally particular types. He additionally demonstrates the impression of those ideals on public health and wellbeing and advocacy courses, arguing that cultural misunderstandings give a contribution to the failure of many well-intentioned efforts. This insightful publication presents a cultural point of view crucial for everybody attracted to AIDS and cross-cultural future health concerns.

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Extra resources for Witches, Westerners, and HIV: AIDS and Cultures of Blame in Africa

Example text

Umuthi is usually translated as “medicine” in English. However, the two terms are not synonymous, for umuthi can be used in attempts to destroy health as well as attempts to restore it. There is “medicine for healing,” umuthi wokwelapha, and “medicine for killing,” umuthi wokubulala. In other words, the healer’s umuthi cures, while the sorcerer’s umuthi kills (Ashforth 2005:139). Umuthi can be used for both purposes, depending on the intention of the user. 7 Understandably, the people with whom I spoke, particularly the healers and diviners, wanted to make it clear that their umuthi is not used for malevolent purposes and that they lack knowledge of ways to prepare it for evil purposes.

The core problem of the act is that it conflates divination and some healing practices with sorcery, though divination and healing practices have a much wider application. , Anonymous 1997b). 10. Paradoxically, there is evidence that witch hunts are happening with little or no interference by the law (for instance, the witch-cleansing hunts by Mabhebha observed by me several years ago in a rural area in southern Zimbabwe). , by Yamba 1997. 11. , Niehaus and Jonssen 2005:180–81). Some variation in the evidence of such beliefs in different social settings is expected.

In other words, if you are able to identify a sorcerer by your knowledge of sorcery, you are potentially one yourself. After all, sorcerers are the ones who have expert knowledge on this issue (Niehaus 2001:12). When Ashforth (2000:50) asked a South African about the relation between sorcery and HIV/AIDS, the individual replied, laughing: “Don’t ask me, I’m not a sorcerer. ” Diviners and healers, who are the most likely to have knowledge of herbal and other potions used for sorcerous practices, were particularly defensive when asked about sorcery.

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Witches, Westerners, and HIV: AIDS and Cultures of Blame in Africa by Alexander Rödlach


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