Beyond bodies: rainmaking and sense making in Tanzania

"For over a century, the Ihanzu of north-central Tanzania have conducted rainmaking rites. As with similar rites found across sub-Saharan Africa, these rites are replete with gender, sexual, and fertility motifs. Social scientists have typically explained such things as symbolizing human bodies...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Sanders, Todd 1965- (Author)
Format: Book
Language:English
Published: Toronto [u.a.] Univ. of Toronto Press 2008
Series:Anthropological horizons 32
Subjects:
Online Access:Inhaltsverzeichnis
Summary:"For over a century, the Ihanzu of north-central Tanzania have conducted rainmaking rites. As with similar rites found across sub-Saharan Africa, these rites are replete with gender, sexual, and fertility motifs. Social scientists have typically explained such things as symbolizing human bodies and the act of procreation. But what happens when our interlocutors deny such symbolic explanations, when they insist that rain rites and the gender and sexual motifs in them do not symbolize anything but rather aim simply to bring rain?" "Beyond Bodies examines Ihanzu sensibilities about gender through a fine-grained ethnography of rainmaking rites. It considers the meaning of ritual practices in a society in which gender is not as bound to the body as it is in the Euro-American imagination. Engaging with recent anthropological and gender theory, this book calls crucially into question how social scientists have explained gender symbolism in a host of ethnographic and historical studies from across Africa."--BOOK JACKET.
Item Description:Includes bibliographical references (p. [225]-247) and index
Hier auch später erschienene, unveränderte Nachdrucke
Physical Description:XVIII, 261 S. Ill., Kt. 23 cm
ISBN:9780802095824
9780802091499

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