Embodying Immobility: Dysphoric Geographies of Labour Migration and Their Transformations in the Therapeutic Context of 'Venda' Ancestor Possession in Post-apartheid South Africa
The result's identifiers
Result code in IS VaVaI
<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00216208%3A11230%2F21%3A10415824" target="_blank" >RIV/00216208:11230/21:10415824 - isvavai.cz</a>
Result on the web
<a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4976-2_6" target="_blank" >https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4976-2_6</a>
DOI - Digital Object Identifier
<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4976-2_6" target="_blank" >10.1007/978-981-15-4976-2_6</a>
Alternative languages
Result language
angličtina
Original language name
Embodying Immobility: Dysphoric Geographies of Labour Migration and Their Transformations in the Therapeutic Context of 'Venda' Ancestor Possession in Post-apartheid South Africa
Original language description
Critiquing analyses of immobility as personally and socially pathologized condition - the 'incapacity to move' from location, psychic state and/or social position - several authors have stressed empowering dimensions of immobility at different levels of contemporary social praxis (Khan 2016). The chapter aims to contribute to our understanding of 'immobility' as meaningful (and socially viable) option, focussing on historical processes through which radical curbing of embodied movement has emerged as a therapeutic concern in the context of 'Venda' ancestor possession in South Africa. Initially registered as 'illness' incapacitating labour migrants in urban employment since 1960's, the 'gift' bestowed upon them by their ancestors has acquired an important territorial parameter since apartheid's dissolution during 1990's. The regaining of 'health' has been conditioned by migrants' return to the 'Venda homeland' in the enhanced capacity as spirit mediums, associated with the inability to venture beyond lest symptoms recur. Articulated as 'ancestral wish' inscribed in bodily experience, the therapeutically-mediated consensus as to the benefits of immobility in 'Venda' does not map easily onto earlier conceptualizations of 'home-journeys' in the context of labour migration in (post-)apartheid South Africa. Analytical debates have often appropriated emic discourses pitting 'cultured' rural areas against 'evil' cities as sufficient explanations for the motivations of 'home-comings' of migrants understood to seek moral rejuvenation at different stages of the life-cycle. The 'returns' and immobilities associated with 'Venda' ancestor possession do not lend themselves to such simple accounts essentializing 'rural locations' as repositories of cultural values. Rather than drawn to the pre-existing cultural creativity deemed to be 'located' in the rural area, 'immobilized' labour migrants have been creative agents in socio-cultural processes through which the 'homeland' has been re-invigorated as significant 'cultural entity' in present practice. The ethnographic materials introduced in this chapter draw on fieldwork of the author in South Africa during 2004-6.
Czech name
—
Czech description
—
Classification
Type
C - Chapter in a specialist book
CEP classification
—
OECD FORD branch
50404 - Anthropology, ethnology
Result continuities
Project
—
Continuities
I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace
Others
Publication year
2021
Confidentiality
S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů
Data specific for result type
Book/collection name
Immobility and Medicine : Exploring Stillness, Waiting and the In-Between
ISBN
978-981-15-4975-5
Number of pages of the result
22
Pages from-to
113-134
Number of pages of the book
278
Publisher name
Palgrave Macmillan
Place of publication
Basingstoke
UT code for WoS chapter
—