Quests for therapy in northern Uganda: healing at Laropi revisited

Abstract

This article presents a case of diachronic ethnography. It examines quests for therapy among the Madi people of northern Uganda. It is based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in and around the small trading centre of Laropi; originally in the late 1980s and again in 2008. By revisiting the same field site at different points in time, and by drawing on related ethnographic material collected in the 1950s and 70s, we are able to examine how such quests have altered and to discuss factors influencing these changes. We also comment on shifts in conceptual approaches of medical anthropology that have influenced perceptions and analysis. Laropi lies close to the border with Sudan and its inhabitants have experienced much upheaval and political isolation. We examine how this has influenced understandings and responses to ill-health and misfortune. Particularly important in recent years has been the increasing availability and accessibility of biomedicine, which the population have embraced and indigenized as a mark of progress and political recognition. On the face of it, this has rendered recourse to more “traditional” forms of healing obsolete. However, as we describe, the situation is more ambiguous. Notions of witchcraft, spirit possession and ancestor veneration are more pervasive than they might seem.

Notes

1. Allen, “Coming Home”; Allen, “Upheaval, Affliction and Health”; Allen, “Closed Minds, Open Systems”; Allen, “A Flight from Refuge”; Allen, “The Violence of Healing.”

2. Allen, “AIDS and Evidence”; Parker, Allen and Hastings, “Resisting Control of Neglected Tropical Diseases”; Parker and Allen, “Does Mass Drug Administration … Really Work?”; Allen and Parker, “The ‘Other Diseases’ of the Millennium Development Goals.”

3. Baxter and Butt, The Azande and Related Peoples, 104.

4. “La Nigrizia”, December 1937.

5. Middleton, Lugbara Religion, 252; Middleton, “Witchcraft and Sorcery in Lugbara,” 261.

6. Middleton, Lugbara Religion; Middleton, The Lugbara, 73–86.

7. Middleton, “Witchcraft and Sorcery in Lugbara,” 261–71; Middleton, The Lugbara, 75–83, 89–92; Middleton, “The Concept of ‘Bewitching’ in Lugbara,” 57–67; Middleton, “Spirit Possession among the Lugbara,” 220–31.

8. Middleton, “Witchcraft and Sorcery in Lugbara,” 266, 274.

9. Middleton, Lugbara Religion, 248–50.

10. Middleton, “Spirit Possession among the Lugbara,” 230; Casale, “Women, Power, and Change in Lugbara (Uganda) Cosmology,” 385, 395; Barnes-Dean, “Lugbara Illness Beliefs and Social Change,” 339.

11. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft Oracles and Magic among the Azande, 194.

12. Kleinman (1980), 51, cited in Pool and Geissler, Medical Anthropology, 42.

13. Janzen, “The Need for a Taxonomy of Health in African Therapeutics”; Janzen, The Quest for Therapy.

14. Barnes-Dean, “Lugbara Illness Beliefs and Social Change.”

15. Barnes-Dean, “Lugbara Illness Beliefs and Social Change.” 344.

16. Rowley, “Notes on the Madi of Equatoria Province,” 282.

17. Harrell-Bond, Imposing Aid, 309–12.

18. Harrell-Bond, Imposing Aid.

19. Parker and Allen, “Does Mass Drug Administration for the Integrated Treatment of Neglected Tropical Diseases Really Work?” For broader discussion of treatment programmes for parasitic diseases in the region, including among the Madi populations of Moyo and Adjumani districts, see Parker and Allen, “The ‘other diseases’ of the Millennium Development Goals”; Parker et al, “Resisting Control of Neglected Tropical Diseases”; Parker el al, “Border Parasites”.

20. Ecks, “Pharmaceutical Citizenship.”

21. Parker and Allen, “Does Mass Drug Administration … Really Work?”