Archive
Vol. 32 Issue 1/2 - 2009
Anthropology Southern Africa Volume 32 (I & 2) 2009.
Anthropology Southern Africa, 2009, Vol. 32 Issue 1/2, p1-1, 1p
The article provides information on the March 2009 issue of the journal "Anthropology Southern Africa," Volume 32. It features a series of papers collectively titled "Knowledge Contests, South Africa 2009," edited by Lesley Green of the University of Cape Town. In addition, the journal has a new section dedicated to current debates in South African anthropology.
Subjects: PERIODICALS; ANTHROPOLOGY; PUBLICATIONS; DEBATES & debating; SOUTH Africa
Knowledge Contests, South Africa, 2009.
By: Green, Lesley. Anthropology Southern Africa, 2009, Vol. 32 Issue 1/2, p2-7, 6p
The article discusses various reports published within the issue including one by Julie Laplante on clinical trials of traditional medicine, one by Joshua B. Cohen on biomedicine, and one by Diana Gibson and Estelle Oosthuysen on a case study about tuberculosis.
Subjects: MEDICAL anthropology; TRADITIONAL medicine; SOUTH Africa
South African roots towards global knowledge: music or molecules?
By: Laplante, Julie. Anthropology Southern Africa, 2009, Vol. 32 Issue 1/2, p8-17, 10p
This study highlights current global health biopolitics in conjunction with politics of indigeneity. The illustration is achieved by looking at the politics of knowledge at play in the pre-clinical trial of a traditional medicine in Cape Town, South Africa. The instance reunites healers and scientists in a common project to test the efficacy of a local wild shrub through the process of a randomised controlled trial, the current golden scientific standard to determine truth about the efficacy of medicines. How traditional forms of knowledge translate, or not, into this process is the first point I develop with relation to the trial. Inevitable reassessments of efficacy awakened in this process open a debate between representational learning of standardized scientific knowledge, and learning through embodied forms of knowledge in negotiations of how best to heal with medicines. I argue that the dynamics of these politics of knowledge within the trial lead on the one hand towards an optimal management of life at the molecular level, and on the other hand towards broader relational politics of life anchored in sounds and embodied forms of knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Subjects: CLINICAL trials; ALTERNATIVE medicine; TRADITIONAL medicine; MEDICAL anthropology; BIOPOLITICS; CAPE Town (South Africa); SOUTH Africa
Medicine from the Father: Bossiesmedisyne, people, and landscape in Kannaland.
By: Cohen, Joshua B.. Anthropology Southern Africa, 2009, Vol. 32 Issue 1/2, p18-26, 9p
In the rural Western Cape local municipality of Kannaland, the word 'bossiesmedisyne' (lit, bushes medicine), refers to plant and sometimes animal material used to treat and alleviate a wide range of health problems, ranging from colds to cancer. Based on three months of ethnographic fieldwork, the paper advances the argument that the different kinds of healing these medicines provide are inseparable from the sociocultural and environmental contexts in which they are enveloped. It goes on to argue for a balanced interpretation of the meanings ascribed to bossies, based on a dialectical relation between claims to power, and phenomenological experiences of medicines and the landscapes in which they grow.[ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Subjects: MEDICAL anthropology; ALTERNATIVE medicine; TRADITIONAL medicine; HERBS -- Therapeutic use; LITTLE Karoo (South Africa); SOUTH Africa
Title: between N!a†xam and tibi. A case study of tuberculosis and the ju/'hoansi in the Tsumkwe region, Namibia.
By: Gibson, Diana; Oosthuysen, Estelle. Anthropology Southern Africa, 2009, Vol. 32 Issue 1/2, p27-36, 10p
In academic literature and the media, knowledge of the Ju/'hoansi San of Namibia is often either valorised or problematised. In this case study of tuberculosis in a small village in Tsumkwe district, which we call Dune and Low Dune, all the people identify themselves as Ju/'hoansi. It is shown how, why and when they utilise various knowledge traditions to address ill health in the face of scarcity and lack of power. This study traces how broad, yet intersecting 'categories' of tibi and related treatments were distinguished in relation to symptomology and embodied experiences of illness. but were also linked to medical diagnostics and treatment. Some local knowledge of local medicinal plants has been published, identified as Ju/'hoan, or San, and utilised for a growing interest in 'natural' remedies. Yet, while there is a veritable industry in studies and interventions related to the San, they have largely remained poor and marginalised. The paper concludes with an examination of the ways in which the Namibian state approaches the protection of knowledge it identifies as indigenous, arguing that in contrast to South Africa, biopiracy is not a predominant concern, and that existing state regulations focus more on the conservation of particular plants as an economic resource for the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Subjects: CASE studies; MEDICINAL plants; PLANTS, Useful; TUBERCULOSIS; MEDICAL anthropology; NAMIBIA; Medicinal and Botanical Manufacturing; TREATMENT; NAMIBIA -- Social conditions
The pragmatics of knowledge transfer: an HIV/AIDS intervention with traditional health practitioners in South Africa.
By: Wreford, J.. Anthropology Southern Africa, 2009, Vol. 32 Issue 1/2, p37-47, 11p
The persistence of the binary of scientific and indigenous or traditional medicine in contemporary South Africa is particularly unhelpful in the context of HIV/AIDS and encourages biomedical disengagement from a potentially helpful cohort of health professionals recognised within their communities.This article offers and discusses ethnographic evidence from Project HOPE, an HIV/AIDS intervention involving African traditional health practitioners (isiXhosa: amagqirha) in the Western Cape province of South Africa. The article suggests several possibilities of advantage to the efficacy of western medical interventions in this sort of collaborative approach. Testimony from participants from both paradigms is offered to support this assertion. The article includes a contextual examination of the debate about HIV/AIDS treatment in South Africa which explores the effects of confused interpretations of 'traditional' and scientific medicine in this regard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Subjects: TRADITIONAL medicine; HIV (Viruses); AIDS (Disease); MEDICAL anthropology; WESTERN Cape (South Africa); SOUTH Africa
Ocean, time and value: speaking about the sea in Kassiesbaai.
By: van Zyl, Marieke. Anthropology Southern Africa, 2009, Vol. 32 Issue 1/2, p48-58, 11p
This article looks at the manner in which different parties engage with the issue of fishing rights on the inter-personal and public levels over the issue of fishing rights allocation in South Africa. Taking the historic fishing village of Kassiesbaai on the Cape's south coast as the case-site, this article outlines the profound effect that implementation of the Marine Living Resources Act of 1998 (MLRA) has had on the residents and how the debate over who has the right to fish is structured around different understandings of the core concepts of 'ocean', time', and 'value'. A general lack of trust between involved parties is both exacerbated by and serves to perpetuate the miscommunication that hampers the conversation between the residents of Kassiesbaai and role-players in government and the marine fisheries research community. This paper identifies particular nodes of discrepancy and argues that they constitute significant obstacles to communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Subjects: MARITIME anthropology; FISHING villages; FISHING; FISHERY law & legislation; CAPE Town (South Africa); SOUTH Africa; All Other Amusement and Recreation Industries
A conversation: subaltern studies in South Asia and post-colonial anthropology in Africa.
By: Macdonald, Helen. Anthropology Southern Africa, 2009, Vol. 32 Issue 1/2, p59-68, 10p
Subaltern Studies emerged at the end of the 1970s among a collective of English and Indian historians of South Asia, and developed into a creative and malleable reworking of knowledge(s). Importantly, the subalternists contributed to an interdisciplinarity that displayed a commitment to the recovery of subaltern or 'indigenous' histories and knowledges. The idea of identity-based knowledge is necessarily decentred in a transnational enterprise such as Subaltern Studies, and concomitantly, geographical spaces, although relevant, are no longer central in determining power relations. However, changes of practice, globalisation and shifting localities, and critical awareness do not make the marginalities at the heart of the apparatus of knowledge production and its global division of labour disappear altogether. As a corpus of knowledge intellectual cohesiveness has never been a main concern for Subaltern Studies and here lies its main strength for South African anthropology. The project should be viewed as an evolving dialogue, one that privileges creative possibilities of a mutually constitutive 'conversation'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Subjects: ANTHROPOLOGY; SUBALTERN identities; POWER (Social sciences); GLOBALIZATION; INTERNATIONAL relations; SOUTH Asia; SOUTH Africa; International Affairs
New knowledge and the university.
By: Hall, Martin. Anthropology Southern Africa, 2009, Vol. 32 Issue 1/2, p69-76, 8p
What forms of knowledge have legitimacy in the contemporary university? By using Actor-Network Theory to unravel the strands in a recent dispute about access to skeletons from a burial ground in Cape Town. this paper shows how circulating systems of references connect institutions, historical trajectories and differing sets of interests to form competing knowledge systems. Rather than falling back on a defence of established disciplines and academic authority, it is argued that there are considerable benefits in recognising the importance and validity of knowledge generated 'in community', and in the course of political discourse. Rather than undermining truth, such an approach will result in both better science and more in formed community action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Subjects: BURIAL; PHYSICAL anthropology; UNIVERSITIES & colleges; THEORY of knowledge; CAPE Town (South Africa); SOUTH Africa; Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools
By: Chirikure, Shadreck; Meskell, Lynne; Morris, Alan G.; Muller, Johan; Shepherd, Nick; Hall, Martin. Anthropology Southern Africa, 2009, Vol. 32 Issue 1/2, p77-86, 10p
Several letters to the editor are presented in response to the article "New Knowledge and the University," by Martin Hall, including one where the sender compared his work with Hall, another which argues savage science, public accountability and the missing debate in South African universities, and one which describes Hall as an activist in writing his research.
Subjects: LETTERS to the editor; ANTHROPOLOGY; THEORY of knowledge; UNIVERSITIES & colleges; SOUTH Africa; Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools
South African anthropologies at the crossroads: a commentary on the status of anthropologies in South Africa.
By: Petrus, Theodore S.; Bogopa, David L.. Anthropology Southern Africa, 2009, Vol. 32 Issue 1/2, p87-89, 3p
In this article the authors discuss the status of anthropologies in South Africa. They explore the relationships between the different anthropology departments. They also argue with the discrepancies concerning the teaching context of anthropology departments. They suggest to continue struggle to facilitate positive change in respective institutions, departments and organisations.
Subjects: ANTHROPOLOGY; SOCIAL change; SOCIAL development; SOCIAL sciences; SOUTH Africa; Research and Development in the Social Sciences and Humanities
The inequalities of South African anthropology.
By: Becker, Heike. Anthropology Southern Africa, 2009, Vol. 32 Issue 1/2, p89-90, 2p
The author presents a comment on the article "South African Anthropologies at the Crossroads: A Commentary on the Status of Anthropologies in South Africa," by Theodore Petrus and David Bogopa. He disagrees with the authors' notions of what exactly constitute inequalities within the diverse discipline of anthropology. He argues that the argument of Petrus and Bogopa implies that anthropology programmes at academic institutions would remain victims of the social anthropological dominant strand.
Subjects: ANTHROPOLOGY; EQUALITY; SOCIAL change; SOCIAL sciences; ETHNOLOGY -- South Africa; SOUTH Africa; Research and Development in the Social Sciences and Humanities
Commentary on Messrs Petrus and Bogopa's commentary 'South African anthropologies at the crossroads: a commentary on the status of anthropologies in South Africa'.
By: Owen, Joy. Anthropology Southern Africa, 2009, Vol. 32 Issue 1/2, p90-91, 2p
The author presents a comment on the article "South African Anthropologies at the Crossroads: A Commentary on the Status of Anthropologies in South Africa," by Theodore Petrus and David Bogopa. She argues that the authors do not conceptualise the status quo in a manner that is meaningful. She concludes that Petrus and Bogopa tried to allude that South African anthorpologies' need to create a home for all its practitioners within the diversity.
Subjects: ANTHROPOLOGY; EQUALITY; SOCIAL change; SOCIAL sciences; ETHNOLOGY -- South Africa; SOUTH Africa; Research and Development in the Social Sciences and Humanities
Dominant anthropology and its victims at the crossroads?
By: van der Waal, Kees. Anthropology Southern Africa, 2009, Vol. 32 Issue 1/2, p91-92, 2p
The author presents a comment on the article "South African Anthropologies at the Crossroads: A Commentary on the Status of Anthropologies in South Africa," by Theodore Petrus and David Bogopa. He disagrees with the assumption of Petrus and Bogopa that anthropology at the former English-speaking universities is exclusivist. He also argues with their assumption that the problem is dominance by English social anthropology.
Subjects: ANTHROPOLOGY; ETHNOLOGY -- South Africa; SOCIAL sciences; UNIVERSITIES & colleges; SOUTH Africa; Research and Development in the Social Sciences and Humanities; Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools
A reply to the responses by Becker, Owen and Van der Waal.
By: Bogopa, David L.; Petrus, Theodore S.. Anthropology Southern Africa, 2009, Vol. 32 Issue 1/2, p92-93, 2p
The authors present a response to the comments on their article "South African Anthropologies at the Crossroads: A Commentary on the Status of Anthropologies in South Africa." They reject the notion that the academic work done at universities has historically been the strongest in the subject of anthropology in South Africa. They also argue that the issue of English social anthropology versus Afrikaans volkekunde is contrary to the view of Heike Becker and Kees van der Waal.
Subjects: ANTHROPOLOGY; ETHNOLOGY -- South Africa; SOCIAL sciences; UNIVERSITIES & colleges; SOUTH Africa; Research and Development in the Social Sciences and Humanities; Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools
Comments on 'a reply to the responses by Becker, Owen and Van der Waal.
By: Herselman, Stephné. Anthropology Southern Africa, 2009, Vol. 32 Issue 1/2, p93-93, 2/3p
The author presents a comment on the article "A Reply to the Responses by Becker, Owen and Van der Waal," by David Bogopa and Theodore Petrus. She clarifies that the journal "Anthropology Southern Africa" has the precise meaning of the comment which is not clear. She emphasizes that an editor indeed has the discretion to decide whether or not a paper should be published.
Subjects: PUBLIC opinion; AUTHORS; ANTHROPOLOGY; PERIODICALS -- Publishing; SOUTH Africa; Independent Artists, Writers, and Performers; Periodical Publishers
By: Boonzaier, Emile. Anthropology Southern Africa, 2009, Vol. 32 Issue 1/2, p95-95, 1p
An obituary for anthropologist Cecil Helman is presented.
Subjects: OBITUARIES; News Syndicates; HELMAN, Cecil