 Polluting and healing among the Northern Yaka of ZaireRenaat Devisch Social Science & Medicine, 1985, vol. 21, issue 6, 693-700 Abstract: The Northern Yaka of Zaire construct a meaningful world by reference to the human body. They understand the socio-cultural domain in terms of bodily exchanges such as ingestion and excretion, sexual processes or listening and speech. They perceive their bodies simultaneously as bounded entities and as meeting points between inner and outer, self and other, and so on. Pollution occurs in the ominous transition, or the closure of corporeal and/or socio-cultural boundaries. Healing rituals aim to integrate bodily and socio-cultural domains and to mediate boundaries and boundary-transition. Part 1 of this paper transforms Mary Douglas' social perspective into a subject-centred view of the symbolic dimensions of sexuality, of pollution, and of the main forms of healing among the Northern Yaka. Here 'pollution' (mbeembi) has to do with an ominous disturbance of the cultural body schema and of domestic boundaries. Part 2 focuses on the ideological relationship between gender, the 'transgression of sexual rights' (yidyaata), and reproduction. Date: 1985 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:21:y:1985:i:6:p:693-700 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier |
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