Local Conceptualisation of Health, Illness and Body in Lusaka, Zambia
Bd.1,Nr.1(2010)
Illness/health is socially and culturally constructed category. In Zambia, conception of illness is connected to a wider framework of religion and social reality. Illness is not seen as a mere disruption of physical and psychological integrity of an individual. It is conceived in broader terms as a sort of misfortune or bad luck caused by the intervention of different invisible powers such as spirits, demons, ghosts and witches. It is believed that the invisible powers penetrate the whole of life and significantly influence health, fertility, wealth and social relations. In contrast to biomedicine based on the Cartesian distinction of body and mind, local conception of health/illness and body draws on idea that its physical, mental, spiritual, social and environmental aspects are closely interrelated. Local conceptualisation of body proved to be based on a metaphorical linkage between the physiology of men and ecology (in particular seasonal processes in nature) and in terms of both temperature and fluidity in the body. For Lusaka dwellers health/illness is considered to be a quantitative unexpandable entity which is distributed in the world on the principle of limited good. It is believed that one can not be healed or become wealthy unless at expense of someone else. As a result the processes of healing and afflicting are interconnected and influence each other.
Zambia-Lusaka; health; illness; body; social and cultural construction of health/illness; hot and cold theory; cultural aetiology; spirit possession; witchcraft; magical contagion.
Kateřina Mildnerová
Katedra antropologických a historických věd Fakulty filozofické Západočeské Univerzity v Plzni, Sedláčkova 15, 306 15 Plzeň
Mildnerová, Kateřina (30. 10. 1978, Hranice), Czech africanist, social and cultural anthropologist, recent graduate of Ph.D. studies of ethnology at the Department of Anthropology and History of the
Faculty of Arts at the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen where
she actually works as a research fellow. Domains of her long-term
professional interest are anthropology of religion and art, and medical anthropology. She pays a special attention to the phenomenon of witchcraft in contemporary Subsaharan Africa, African Independent Churches in urban settings, transformations of indigenous healing in contemporary Zambia and religion vodun and art in Benin. During her lectures about African art and religion, she employes her knowledge from the history of Subsaharan Africa, cultural and social anthropology and history of Christianity and integrates it into a comprehensive whole. The author studied and carried out several professional traineeship in France (Centre d’études des mondes africains en Aix-en-Provence; Musée Africain à Lyon, ľUniversité de Lyon II). In 2008, 2009 she effectuated an ethnographic fieldwork on spiritual healing and witchcraft in Lusaka, Zambia. She presents results of her research on international conferences and continuously publishes articles and essaies on the above mentioned topics. Currently, she prepares two monographies Witchcraft in Zambia (2011) and Religion and Art of Benin (2011). The author is a co-founder and member of the regional Cultura Africa organisation and the international organisation NYRA (Network of Young Researcher in Africa).
Since 2006 she has acted as a co-organiser of Viva Africa International Conference on African Studies which is held annually by the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen and the University of Hradec Králové. Master thesis: Traditional religion vodun in Benin (2005, in Czech); Ph.D. thesis: Spiritual Healing and Witchcraft in Lusaka (2010, in English).
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Copyright (c) 2014 Kateřina Mildnerová