System & Repertoire
in Sakata Medicine
Democratic Republic of Congo

By Stefan Bekaert
December 2000
Uppsala University Press
ISBN: 91-554-4841-0
380 pages, illustrated
$55.00 paperback

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This book offers an innovative semantic analysis of the culture and medicine of the Sakata in Central Congo, drawing on 20 months of fieldwork carried out in 1995-96. Part I offers an ethnographic profile of the matrilineal Sakata. Part II, written out of a certain dissatisfaction with postmodern critiques in anthropology, provides the theoretical foundation for a well-balanced theory of meaning. Part III deals with the conception of the body; the classification of illnesses, healers and therapies; the logic of colors; the symbolic power of medicinal ingredients; the chief's sorcery and the diviner's clairvoyance.

Anthropology
Uppsa la Studies in Cultural Anthropology, No. 31

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