Khoisan wind: Hunting and healing
Item
Title
Khoisan wind: Hunting and healing
author
Low, Chris
Is Part Of
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Instutute, 13(1): 71-90
citation
Low, C., 2007. Khoisan wind: hunting and healing. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 13, pp.S71-S90.
Ethical Disclaimer
This article is copyrighted to the journal; Author has made it available via academia.
Identifier
LIT154
Description
In this paper I draw on my findings and those of historical and recent Khoisan ethnography to attempt to explain how these southern African ‘Khoi’ and San peoples relate to wind and how the environmental phenomenon has informed their epistemology and ontology. I begin by fleshing out the knowledge and experience of wind among these past and recent hunter-gatherers and, pointing to continuity in wind relationships and the ideas that stem from them, I go on to demonstrate how wind weaves into Khoisan understandings of the body and illness. Despite extensive interest in Bushman healing, anthropologists have overwhelmingly concentrated on the ‘trance’ healing dance. My findings suggest this partiality has obscured the wider healing context in which the dance operates. Exploring the wider context, including massage, ‘medicinal cuts’, and witchcraft, reveals that the ‘potency’ conceived as central to the healing dance is, in certain contexts, equivalent to overlapping ideas of wind, arrows, and smell. Examination of the ethnography reveals that a number of the associations I make between wind and potency have been partially recognized in specific Khoisan contexts but, because comparative studies of Khoisan are difficult and unpopular, these similarities have gone largely unnoticed.
Date Issued
2007
Subject
Khoisan (African people)-Customs and beliefs
Winds-Religious aspects
Nature, healing power of
Healing-Religious aspects
Type
Article
Language
English
topic
Relations with the Natural World
