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 Periodical article |
 Leiden University catalogue |
 WorldCat |
| Title: | 'Kachinja are Coming!': Encounters around Medical Research Work in a Kenyan Village |
| Author: | Geissler, P. Wenzel |
| Year: | 2005 |
| Periodical: | Africa: Journal of the International African Institute |
| Volume: | 75 |
| Issue: | 2 |
| Pages: | 173-202 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Kenya |
| Subjects: | Luo medical research popular beliefs Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) Health and Nutrition Bibliography/Research |
| External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/3556818 |
| Abstract: | When conducting medical field research in a Luo village in western Kenya, the author and his colleagues were occasionally suspected of being blood-thieves, locally called 'kachinja'. The article contextualizes these blood-stealing accusations within the practices of medical research that prompted them, and within the local historical experiences to which they refer. Further, it examines two social situations, in which blood-stealing accusations were raised against the author and people who were in contact with him, in order to show how the 'kachinja' idiom is used in social practice, as part of long-term social processes as well as of momentary situations, within local patterns of relatedness. These observations show how global structures and processes are articulated and moulded in a particular locality through idioms that carry memories of individual as well as collective historical experiences, and how they are enacted by people within webs of contemporary local social relations. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in English and French. [Journal abstract] |
