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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Amagal: Medicine, Healing and Power in Tuareg Caregiving Discourse
Author:Rasmussen, Susan J.ISNI
Year:1998
Periodical:Nomadic Peoples
Volume:2
Issue:1-2
Pages:150-174
Language:English
Geographic term:Niger
Subjects:indigenous knowledge
Tuareg
traditional medicine
Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups)
Health and Nutrition
External link:https://doi.org/10.3167/082279498782384504
Abstract:In the Aïr mountains of northern Niger, Tuareg healing practitioners and patients - in their precolonial heritage of social stratification, Islam, and semi-nomadism, and current cultural predicament of economic crisis and political conflict - cope with contradictions in knowledge and power systems in their quest for medicine ('amagal'). The author explores medicine-related discourse of Tuareg healers and patients, in terms of what this reveals about their changing relationships and their entanglements with wider mazes of power, and transformations in local experience of medical knowledge and practice. In Tuareg society, there are a number of traditional medical practitioners/specialists - namely, Islamic scholars, herbalists, bonesetters, and various types of diviners - who endure, despite considerable challenges from colonial into current postcolonial eras. On the one hand, there is resistance on the part of these healers and their patients to external hegemonic forces. On the other hand, there is also a reformulation of their powers, in re-definition of Tuareg concepts of medicine, healing, and healers' roles and relationships with patients. Tuareg concepts of medicine are today at odds with outsiders' concepts of medicine and healing. Traditionally, medical knowledge and power are ideally associated with religious blessing, reciprocity and generosity. Yet in much current practice, medical knowledge and power become connected to political domination, conflict and resistance. Bibliogr., notes, sum. in French and Spanish.
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