Healing In Africa Research Articles

The therapeutic and integrative significance of faith in the African quest for healing and wholeness

The therapeutic and integrative significance of faith in the African quest for healing and wholeness has attracted a considerable level of interest amongst scholars in recent times. Despite the increasing interest in places of healing, faith communities have not paid much attention to studying the intersection of these practices for appropriate community hermeneutics. By means of qualitative methods, this research explored the therapeutic implication of the role of faith in the quest and appropriation of health and wholeness in modern Africa. Exploring perspectives from Ghana and Nigeria, the study engaged, through focus groups and individual interviews, the proper place of therapeutic significance of faith in the quest for healing and wholeness. Findings revealed that the African quest for health and wellness is anchored in the belief of a deity whose presence, love and benevolence transcend the ecclesiastical boundaries of one’s faith tradition. The study further describes the therapeutic and integrative significance of these prevailing faiths in God within the appropriation of health and wholeness in modern Africa, with the possibility of fostering a partnership amongst the three key players in the triangulation process.Contribution: The study falls within the field of practical theology and its major contribution falls within the quest of wellness and healing in Africa.

Faith-based healing and African traditional medicine in Zimbabwe: A postcolonial perspective

The missionary church in Africa had its own challenges regarding the missionary enterprise itself and the local African communities to which the Gospel was preached. Various opinions on the missionary enterprise in Africa have been advanced. The main argument raised by most scholars is primarily premised on the negative impact of colonialism, citing the vilification of African cultural practices and discouraging converts to the Christian faith from using African traditional medicine (ATM). The latter view constitutes the main problem that the present discourse intends to grapple with. The present study will engage the existing scholarly literature on the argument that the missionary churches did not familiarise themselves with cultural practices of the local indigenous African peoples prior to convincing them about switching to God who is presented in the Hebrew Bible (HB). It has been established that according to the HB and Christian teachings, the use of ATM is an abomination. In this study, faith-based healing (FBH) and other methods of healing in Africa in general and Zimbabwe in particular are also discussed. This study utilises a postcolonial approach in an attempt to explain ancient Israelite cultural practices and FBH in the modern post-biblical context. The purpose of this study is twofold: (1) to explain for the readership the critical role played by the missionary churches among African communities and (2) to present the research findings for further research on the authenticity (or myth) of FBH claims.

Stuck in the Clinic: Vernacular Healing and Medical Anthropology in Contemporary sub‐Saharan Africa

While vernacular therapeutics had long been a topic of interest to many writing about medicine and healing in Africa, with a few exceptions most recent anthropological writings on medicine in Africa are focused on biomedicine. In this article, I trace this shift back to the turn of the millennium and the convergence of three events: the emergence of global health, the accession of the occult economies paradigm, and critiques of culturalism in medical anthropology. I argue that these three shifts led to research projects and priorities that looked different from those defined and undertaken as late as the late 1990s. While seeking to avoid the errors that could come with writing about vernacular therapeutic traditions in Africa as bounded comprehensive systems, I argue that there are empirical, political, and practical reasons why medical anthropologists may want to reconsider our collective research priorities.

Pastoral care and healing in Africa: Towards an Adamic Christological practical theology imagination for pastoral healing

This article argues that the challenge and need for relevant ministry models is critical for effective Christian ministry and pastoral ministry as practical life ministry. It establishes an Adamic Christological model as a paradigm that provides a practical effective ministerial approach in Africa, particularly within the context of pastoral care and healing. This framework reveals Christ’s complete identification with African Christians in their contextual sufferings as the New Adam without compromising authentic gospel reality. In employing the Adamic Christological framework as the anchor for African pastoral and healing ministry, a model for African Christians’ daily response to their various contextual sufferings is constructed. This responsive model bridges the gap between the ascension of Christ and the interim period of Christianity by instituting God’s ongoing personal presence in believers’ suffering through the Holy Spirit (pneumatology) as an encouraging and comforting reality that should enable Christians to cope in their suffering. It is argued that this Adamic Christological framework provides a practical theological model that contributes to healing and hope in pastoral care through practical knowing that impacts and imparts meaning in life.

Life, Death, Reincarnation, and Traditional Healing in Africa

Over the years, studies of materials about Africa, especially in the fields of religion, history, anthropology, culture, and sociology, have contributed to the reconstruction of the predominant modes of thought and reason that led to the rise of the people’s belief systems, values, and religious doctrines. Though limited in many ways and still in the most rudimentary stage, the study of African religion has helped in some ways in the understanding of the basis of thought and action which determine African cognitions and total experience, in other words, African consciousness of his universe, feeling, and understanding of the state of being. It is important that interest in the study of African religion should be sustained, for one is still confronted today–often by those who should know–with derisively cynical questions such as: Is there an African religion? What in fact is it if there is one? Isn’t it really the worship of ancestors? Is not African healing merely the practice of magic and mumbo-jumbo?

A community perspective of spirit and healing in Africa

No abstract available

Special Issue on the Psychology of Indigenous Healing in Africa: Discovering Structures and Practices of Perennial Psychology?

Special Issue on the Psychology of Indigenous Healing in Africa: Discovering Structures and Practices of Perennial Psychology?

Special Issue on the Psychology of Indigenous Healing in Africa: Discovering Structures and Practices of Perennial Psychology?

Special Issue on the Psychology of Indigenous Healing in Africa: Discovering Structures and Practices of Perennial Psychology?

Special Issue on the Psychology of Indigenous Healing in Africa: Discovering Structures and Practices of Perennial Psychology?

Special Issue on the Psychology of Indigenous Healing in Africa: Discovering Structures and Practices of Perennial Psychology?

A Rhetorical Analysis of the Discourse of Advertising Herbal Medicine in Southwestern Nigeria

This paper examines the persuasive strategies of advertising herbal medicine in southwestern Nigeria. With recourse to the rhetorical model of analysis, the article identifies and discusses the propaganda techniques/rhetorical strategies in the discourse relative to the herbal medical practitioners' ideological perception of trying to project modern-day herbal healing in Africa as an alternative to that of the failing synthetic drugs of western medical practice. Although the social practice of advertising herbal medicine is culturally based, this study reveals that there are no significant culture-specific strategies of advertising in the data sampled, as the communicative strategies generally fit in with the prefabricated style of advertising discourse. In view of the fact that the advertising genre like other areas of public life is a site of struggle over meaning, the study takes a critical look at the instances of the advertisers' tendency to abuse meaning in language by making certain advertising claims which there is no objective evidence to back up.

Quests for Health and Contests for Meaning: African Church Leaders and Scottish Missionaries in the Early Twentieth Century Presbyterian Church in Northern Malawi*

This article is a micro-level case study in the cultural history of medicine and healing in Africa. It analyses issues of health, healing and medicine in the early Presbyterian Church in the Northern Malawi region during the first decades of the twentieth century. A central theme is the relationship between the emerging church and African healing theories and practices. The initial focus is on the discussions and debates in the Livingstonia Presbytery, the central meeting forum for the missionaries and African church leaders. The article then shifts to the level of individual congregations and church leaders, consulting congregation papers and oral sources, analysing the role of African clergymen, evangelists, preachers, ministers and their families in the search for health and therapy in local communities. Although missionary attitudes towards African healing were generally derisive and dismissive, and missionaries had hegemonic aspirations to create a healthy Christian society where missionary medicine would be central, the article argues that the topics of illness and health were open to contestation. In both theory and practice, the African Christian elite negotiated an acceptance of medical pluralism among the Presbyterian Christian communities of Northern Malawi. ‘Dig for your medicine and mix it with God’ (African proverb from Northern Malawi, translated by Revd A. Dewar, 1903)1 1 The National Library of Scotland (hereafter NLS), Acc. 7548, D 70, Letters to the Livingstonia Sub-Committee, Dewar, 10 August 1903, p. 114.

Health and healing in Africa

Feierman, Steven, and John M. Janzen, eds. The Social Basis of Health and Healing in Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. xxii + 487 pp. including bibliography and index. $60.00 cloth, $17.00 paper. Taylor, Christopher C. Milk, Honey, and Money: Changing Concepts in Rwandan Healing. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992. xxiv + 257 pp. including appendices, notes, bibliography, and index. $35.00 cloth.

APPLIED ANTHROPOLOGY: The Social Basis of Health and Healing in Africa. Steven Feierman and John M. Janzen

American AnthropologistVolume 96, Issue 1 p. 192-193 APPLIED ANTHROPOLOGY: The Social Basis of Health and Healing in Africa. Steven Feierman and John M. Janzen Ira E. Harrison, Ira E. Harrison University of TennesseeSearch for more papers by this author Ira E. Harrison, Ira E. Harrison University of TennesseeSearch for more papers by this author First published: March 1994 https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1994.96.1.02a00370AboutPDF ToolsExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume96, Issue1March 1994Pages 192-193 RelatedInformation

Healing and curing: issues in the social history and anthropology of medicine in Africa.

Metaphors of disease, illness and healing, though they operate in different ways in different cultures and historical periods, appear to have a remarkably common currency. This fact presents both problems and opportunities for the medical anthropologist and historian, and raises important issues of interpretation for both disciplines. The problem of defining the field of analysis in this wide-ranging world of health and sickness has led to a variety of solutions. Some have begun with a biological definition of illness; others have started with a cultural definition. No one definition will be appropriate for all purposes and a plurality of approaches is to be welcomed. However, there is a tendency evident in the literature on medicine and healing in Africa which may lead to the drawing of misleading comparisons between African healing practices and scientific medicine. Whilst the former are described in all their cultural complexity, the latter is often described by reference, not to practice, but to this system's theory of itself. Since elements of both the theory and the practices of scientific medicine now form part of many African healing practices, this tendency may obscure the dynamic reality of the world of healing and curing in contemporary Africa.

The Social Basis of Health and Healing in Africa

The Social Basis of Health and Healing in Africa

The Social basis of health and healing in Africa

MAPS FIGURES TABLES PREFACE PART I * INTRODUCTION PART II * THE DECLINE AND RISE OF AFRICAN POPULATION: THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF HEALTH AND DISEASE 1. The Demographic Reproduction of Health and Disease: Colonial Central African Republic and Contemporary Burkina Faso Dennis D. Cordell, joel W. Gregory, and Victor Pichi 2. Famine Analysis and Family Relations: Nyasaland in 1949 A/egan Vaughan 3. Socioeconomic Change and Disease: Smallpox in Colonial Kenya, 1880-1920 Afarc H. Dawson 4. Industrialization, Rural Poverty, and Tuberculosis in South Africa, 1850-1950 Randall AI. Packard 5. Industrialization, Rural Health, and the 1944 National Health Services Commission in South Africa Shula A/arks and Neil Andersson PART III* THERAPEUTIC TRADITIONS OF AFRICA: A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE PRECOLONIAL MEDICINE 6. Diffusion of Islamic Medicine into Hausaland Ismail H. Abdalla 7. Ideologies and Institutions in Precolonial Western Equatorial African Therapeutics John M. Janzen 8. Public Health in Precolonial East-Central Africa Gloria Waite COLONIAL MEDICINE 9. Medical Knowledge and Urban Planning in Colonial Tropical Africa Philip D. Curtin 10. Godly Medicine: The Ambiguities of Medical Mission in Southeastern Tanzania, 1900-1945 Terence 0. Ranger TWENTIETH-CENTURY AFRICAN MEDICINE 11. Cold or Spirits? Ambiguity and Syncretism in Moroccan Therapeutics Bernard Greenwood 12. Causality of Disease among the Senufo Nicole Sindzingre and Andras Zemplini 13. A Modern History ofLozi Therapeutics Gwyn Prins 14. Clinical Practice and Organization oflndigenous Healers in South Africa HarrietNgubane 15. Kutambuwa Ugonjuwa: Concepts of Illness and Transformation among the Tabwa of Zaire Christopher Davis-Roberts 16. The Importance of Knowing about Not Knowing: Observations from Hausaland Murray Last POSTCOLONIAL MEDICINE 17. The Social Production of Health in Kenya F. M. Mhuru 18. Health Care and the Concept of Legitimacy in Sierra Leone Carol P. MacCormack BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Social Basis of Health and Healing in Africa

The Social Basis of Health and Healing in Africa

Traditional Healing in Africa: Implications for Cross‐Cultural Counseling

Even though the change in Africa from traditional societies to modern ones is evident in many institutions throughout the continent, the transition is uneven. One institution that seems to have changed little over the years is the healing establishment. In general, traditional healers still treat their patients as their forebears did in the distant past. This article indicates who the indigenous doctors are, the role the family plays in health maintenance, the nature of the healing relationship, what diagnostic techniques are used, the specific healing methods used, how music is used as a therapeutic accompaniment, how healers are selected and prepared, and the implications of traditional healing for cross‐cultural counseling.Aunque el cambio en Africa desde sociedades tradicionales a sociedades modernas es evidente en muchas instituciones por todo el continente, la transición es desigual. Una de las instituciones que parece haber cambiado poco a través de los años es la del curandero. En general, los curanderos tradicionales todavía tratan a sus clientes de la misma manera que sus antepasados. Este artículo indica quienes son los doctores indígenas, el papel de la familia en el mantamiento de la salud, el cáracter de la relación de curación, las ténicas de diagnóstico que se usan, los métodos específicos de curación, cómo se usa la música como acompañamiento terapeútico, cómo se escogen y preparan los curanderos, y las implicaciones de la curación traditional en la consejería intercultural.

Life, Death, Reincarnation, and Traditional Healing in Africa

Over the years, studies of materials about Africa, especially in the fields of religion, history, anthropology, culture, and sociology, have contributed to the reconstruction of the predominant modes of thought and reason that led to the rise of the people’s belief systems, values, and religious doctrines. Though limited in many ways and still in the most rudimentary stage, the study of African religion has helped in some ways in the understanding of the basis of thought and action which determine African cognitions and total experience, in other words, African consciousness of his universe, feeling, and understanding of the state of being. It is important that interest in the study of African religion should be sustained, for one is still confronted today–often by those who should know–with derisively cynical questions such as: Is there an African religion? What in fact is it if there is one? Isn’t it really the worship of ancestors? Is not African healing merely the practice of magic and mumbo-jumbo?

Life, Death, Reincarnation, and Traditional Healing in Africa

Over the years, studies of materials about Africa, especially in the fields of religion, history, anthropology, culture, and sociology, have contributed to the reconstruction of the predominant modes of thought and reason that led to the rise of the people’s belief systems, values, and religious doctrines. Though limited in many ways and still in the most rudimentary stage, the study of African religion has helped in some ways in the understanding of the basis of thought and action which determine African cognitions and total experience, in other words, African consciousness of his universe, feeling, and understanding of the state of being. It is important that interest in the study of African religion should be sustained, for one is still confronted today–often by those who should know–with derisively cynical questions such as: Is there an African religion? What in fact is it if there is one? Isn’t it really the worship of ancestors? Is not African healing merely the practice of magic and mumbo-jumbo?