Title The land is dying : contingency, creativity and conflict in western Kenya / Paul Wenzel Geissler and Ruth Jane Prince

Published New York : Berghahn Books, 2010

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Description 1 online resource (xix, 423 pages) : illustrations, maps Series Epistemologies of healing ; v. 5 Epistemologies of healing ; v. 5. Contents 1. Introduction: ̀Are we still together here?' -- community at the end of the world -- death of today -- Growing relations -- Being together -- Growth -- Touch -- Searching for another social practice: contingency, creativity and difference -- Engaging boundaries -- Hygiene -- Knowing boundaries -- Changing perspectives? -- Coming together -- Visiting -- 2. Landscapes and histories -- Returns -- road in time -- Kisumu -- Driving out -- Bondo district -- lake -- Piny Luo -- ̀Luoland' -- ̀tribe' -- Luo sociality -- reserve -- Return to Uhero -- Yimbo -- Muthurwa -- Making Uhero village -- (Re)Settlement -- Belonging and ownership -- modern Luo village -- ̀Down' into the village -- ̀Up' and ̀down' -- KaOkoth -- Alternative ̀modernities': the beach and ̀Jerusalem' -- KaOgumba -- 3. Salvation and tradition: heaven and earth? -- Dichotomies in everyday life -- Salvation -- Strong Christians -- Saved life -- Saved and others -- Faith in purity -- Tradition -- Luo rules -- ̀Born-again' Traditionalism -- Traditionalism, Christianity and the West -- Customary everyday life -- Searching ways -- Tradition in everyday life -- Everyday ritual -- absence of ritual -- omnipresence of ritual -- PART I -- 4. ̀Opening the way': being at home in Uhero -- Introduction -- ̀Our culture says that one must make a home' -- Embeding growth in the home -- Tom's new home -- Moving forward -- directions -- Openings and closures -- Order and sequence -- Coming together in the house -- Making a house -- Sharing the gendered house -- living house -- Gender, generation and growth -- Struggling against implication -- home in heaven -- ̀The rules of the home' -- Powers of explication -- Practising rules -- Cementing relations -- Traditionalism and other kinds of ethnography -- 5. Growing children: shared persons and permeable bodies -- Introduction -- Sharing -- Sharing or exchange? -- Sharing food -- Food, blood and kinship -- ̀The child is of the mother' -- Changed foods and relations -- Sharing and dividing nurture -- Shared bodies -- Illnesses of infancy and their treatment -- Evil eye and spirits -- Medical pluralism? -- Herbal medicines -- Cleanness and dirt -- Sharing names -- Being named after -- Being called -- Sharing names and naming shares -- Conclusion -- PART II -- 6. Order and decomposition: touch around sickness and death -- Introduction -- Otoyo's home -- sickness of a daughter -- Return of a daughter -- Kwer and chira -- Continuity and contingency -- Avoiding the rules -- Treating chira -- Caring -- death of a husband -- Expected death -- ̀She should remember her love!' -- Death -- funeral -- dead body -- Loving people -- Conclusion -- 7. Life seen: touch, vision and speech in the making of sex in Uhero -- Introduction -- Earthly ethics and Christian morality -- Riwrouk -- Riwruok: outside intentionality -- Chira: growth and directionality -- Chodo and luor: continuity and change -- Cleanness: sex and separation -- proliferation of ̀sex' -- AIDS and chira -- fight against AIDS -- Pornography -- ̀bad things' -- Conclusion -- 8. ̀Our Luo culture is sick': identity and infection in the debate about widow inheritance -- Introduction -- Testing positive -- Becoming a widow -- Contentious practices -- tough head -- Tero -- Independence -- Alone -- Inheritance and infection -- Past and present tero -- Fighting tero -- Deprivation and property -- Inheriting HIV -- fears about women's sexuality and social reproduction -- Turning tero into a business -- Ambiguous heritage: tero as source of identity and infection -- ̀Our Luo culture is sick' -- ̀The most elaborate and solemn ritual': tero is our culture -- Sanitising Luo culture? -- Conclusion -- PART III -- 9. ̀How can we drink his tea without killing a bull?'-Funerary ceremony and matters of remembrance -- Introduction -- Funerary ceremonies -- Funerals in Uhero -- Funeral commensality -- Returning to the funeral -- Osure's sawo -- Earthly feast -- Rebekka -- Eating the sawo -- Traces of the past -- ̀Sides' -- Baba Winstons memorial -- Christian funerary celebration -- Debates -- service -- Remembrance -- Conclusion -- 10. ̀The land is dying' -- traces and monuments in the village landscape -- Introduction -- Cutting the land -- Ownership -- Land, paper and power -- Living on the land -- Gardens and farms -- bush -- Fences -- At home -- Traces and inscriptions -- Getting ones land -- finding one's place -- Conclusion -- 11. Contingency, creativity and difference in western Kenya -- Creative difference -- Old and new dealings with hybridity -- ̀Are we still together here?' -- Postscript -- KaOgumba and KaOkoth 2008 -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- Books and articles -- Newspaper articles and electronic media -- Websites -- Music 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 its connection with growth-of persons and groups, animals, plants and the land - and the forward movement of life more generally. Under the pressure of illness and death, economic hardship and land scarcity, as well as bitter struggles about the relevance and application of Christianity and ̀Luo tradition' in daily life, people find it difficult to agree about the role of touch in engendering growth, or indeed about the aims of growth itself. --Book Jacket Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 369-396) and index Notes Print version record Subject Luo (Kenyan and Tanzanian people) -- Medicine -- Kenya -- Bondo District Luo (Kenyan and Tanzanian people) -- Diseases -- Kenya -- Bondo District Luo (Kenyan and Tanzanian people) -- Health and hygiene -- Kenya -- Bondo District Medical anthropology -- Kenya -- Bondo District Traditional medicine -- Kenya -- Bondo District AIDS (Disease) -- Social aspects -- Kenya -- Bondo District HIV infections -- Social aspects -- Kenya -- Bondo District HIV Infections -- ethnology Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome -- ethnology Socioeconomic Factors SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Black Studies (Global) SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Ethnic Studies -- African American Studies. SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Death & Dying. AIDS (Disease) -- Social aspects HIV infections -- Social aspects Manners and customs Medical anthropology Traditional medicine SUBJECT Bondo District (Kenya) -- Social life and customs Kenya https://id.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/D007630 Subject Kenya -- Bondo District Form Electronic book Author Prince, Ruth Jane ISBN 9781845458027 1845458028

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