商品簡介
This book examines alleged “superhuman” powers associated with smith/artisans in five African societies. It discusses their ritual and social roles, mythico-histories, and changing relationships between specialists and patrons. Rasmussen uses primary source data from her research in Tuareg communities and compares this to secondary data on four other African societies.
作者簡介
Susan Rasmussen is professor of anthropology in the Department of Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Houston. Her interests include anthropology of religion, medico-ritual healing and healing specialists, gender, and aging and the life course. She is also interested in rural and urban artisans, verbal art performance, ethnographic analysis, culture theory, and African humanities. She has published four books and many articles based on data from her long-term field research in Tuareg communities of northern Niger and Mali, and more briefly among Tuareg and other Berber (Amazigh) expatriates, immigrants, and travelers in France and the United States.