The Land is Dying; Table of Contents; List of Figures; Acknowledgements; Chapter 1: Introduction; Chapter 2: Landscapes and histories; Chapter 3: Salvation and tradition; Chapter 4: 'Opening the way'; Chapter 5: Growing children; Chapter 6: Order and decomposition; Chapter 7: Life seen; Chapter 8: 'Our Luo culture is sick'; Chapter 9: 'How can we drink his tea without killing a bull?'; Chapter 10: 'The land is dying'; Chapter 11: Contingency, creativity and difference in western Kenya; Bibliography; Index
Summary
Based on several years of ethnographic fieldwork, the book explores life in and around a Luo-speaking village in western Kenya during a time of death. The epidemic of HIV/AIDS affects every aspect of sociality and pervades villagers' debates about the past, the future and the ethics of everyday life. Central to such debates is a discussion of touch in the broad sense of concrete, material contact between persons. In mundane practices and in ritual acts, touch is considered to be key to the creation of bodily life as well as social continuity. Underlying the significance of material contact is
