Questioning misfortune: the pragmatics of uncertainty in eastern Uganda

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Book

Title:	Questioning misfortune: the pragmatics of uncertainty in eastern Uganda
Author:	Whyte, Susan Reynolds
Year:	1997
Issue:	4
Pages:	258
Language:	English
Series:	Cambridge studies in medical anthropology
City of publisher:	Cambridge
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
ISBN:	0521594022; 0521595584
Geographic term:	Uganda
Subjects:	divination Luyia witchcraft traditional medicine
Abstract:	This book considers the way in which people in Bunyole, eastern Uganda, deal with the uncertainties of life, such as sickness, suffering, marital problems, failure and death. To identify the causes or agents of their misfortune the Nyole consult diviners. The spirit and human agents of misfortune are treated in five chapters, arranged in order of increasing uncertainty: shades of the dead at home; clan spirits; 'little spirits'; curses by human agents; and sorcery. Finally, the author turns to the present time and examines changes in the medicinal means of dealing with the uncertainty of illnes. She also discusses AIDS as a new source of unpredictable peril. The book is based on research in Bunyole that has spanned 25 years since the author first moved there in 1969.