First multi-year cumulation covers six years: 1965-70.

Whether it is the binding of shattered bones or the creation of herbal remedies, human agency is a central feature of the healing process. Both archaeological and anthropological research has contributed much to our understanding of the performative aspects of medicine. The papers contained in this volume, based on a session conducted at the 2010 Theoretical Archaeology Conference, take a multi-disciplinary approach to the topic, addressing such issues as the cultural conception of disease; the impact of gender roles on healing strategies; the possibilities afforded by syncretism; the relationship between material culture and the body; and the role played by the active agency of the sick.

Medicine, Faith and Politics in Agogo examines the development of health care delivery at a former mission hospital in Ghana. It reveals the configurations of interests, values, and ideologies that shaped the development and implementation of health care practices, strategies, and concepts. By providing an in-depth analysis, the book contributes a particular perspective on the history of health care delivery in rural Africa and beyond. It addresses topics that are still heavily under-researched. These include the 'decolonisation' of health care as well as the development and implementation of medical concepts for 'developing countries' such as primary health care. Dissertation. (Series: Swiss African Studies / Schweizerische Afrikastudien / Etudes africaines suisses, Vol. 13) [Subject: African Studies, History, Religious Studies, Health Care Studies, Sociology]

The volume draws from René Devisch’s encounters with groups in southsaharan Africa, primarily. The author had the privilege to immerse himself, around the clock, in the Yakaphones’ activities and thoughts in southwest DR Congo from 1972 to 1974, and intermittently in Kinshasa’s shanty towns, from 1986 to 2003. The author first examines what sparked his choice to come to Congo, and then to pursue research among the Yakaphones in the borderland with Angola. He then invites us to follow the trajectory of his plural anthropological view on today’s multicentric world. It leads us to his praise for honorary doctor Jean-Marc Ela’s work. He then examines the proletarian outbursts of violence that rocked Congo’s major cities in 1991 and 1993. These can be read as a settling of scores with the disillusioning colonial and missionary modernisation, along with president Mobutu’s millenarian Popular Movement of the Revolution. Furthermore, after considering the morose reduction of a major Yaka dancing mask into a mere museum-bound curio in Antwerp, the book unravels the Yakaphones’ perspectives on spirits and sorcery’s threat. It also analyses their commitment to classical Bantu-African healing cults, along with their parallel consulting physicians and healers. By sharing the Yakaphones’ life-world, the analysis highlights their body-group-world weave, interlaced by the principle of co-resonance. A phenomenological and perspectivist look unfolds the local actors’ views, thereby disclosing the Bantu-African genius and setting for a major reversal of perspectives. Indeed, seeing 'here' from 'there' allows the author to uncover some alienating dynamics at work in his native Belgian Flemish-speaking culture. To better grasp the realm of life beyond the speakable and factual reasoning, the approach occasionally turns to the later Lacan’s focus on the unconscious desire, the body and its affects. The book addresses students and researchers in the humanities and, more broadly, all those immersed in the heat of the encounter with the culturally different.

In the 1970s and 1980s Indiana University Press published a series of books edited by Gwendolen Carter and others on economic and political conditions in Southern Africa during the apartheid era. The Uncertain Promise of Southern Africa is a return to that successful format in the post-apartheid era. Leading scholars analyze the economic, political, social, and cultural conditions in Southern Africa and the prospects for the region. The first part of the book examines the current political and development situation in six countries--South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Angola, and Mozambique. The second part focuses on issues of enduring importance in the region--education, health, gender, the law, intra- and inter-regional power relations, international commerce, and popular culture.

This title was first published in 2001: Bringing together geographers, planners, political scientists, economists, rural development specialists, bankers, public administrators and other development experts, this volume questions the benefits of Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs). It critically assesses the impact of SAPs from a wider perspective than a purely economic one, highlighting concerns about impacts of adjustments on the more vulnerable elements of society such as social welfare, the environment, labour, gender and agriculture. Revealing both the costs and benefits of the economic restructuring programme, the book also suggests alternatives to current development models, and how SAPs can be made more sustainable. An original and comprehensive addition to the collections of both students and practitioners of development.