Milk, Honey and Money: Changing Concepts in Rwandan Healing by: Taylor, Christopher C.
Hardcover. Washington DC, Smithsonian Institution Press , 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 257 pages, index, bibliography, notes, glossary, b&w illustrations. In precolonial Rwandan culture, the body and the organization of the universe were thought of in terms of the flow and blockage of fluids. Operating in a "gift economy," the king and ritual specialists regulated these fluids--milk, honey, rain, blood--thereby ensuring the health of the people and the fertility of their land and cattle. Today, much of same imagery suffuses popular healing, and many sicknesses are depicted as perturbations in the flow of bodily humors. However, not all healers adhere to the precolonial symbolic forms. Identifying a primary image schema in Rwandan popular concepts of the body and cosmology, Milk, Honey, and Money explains how specifically Rwandan forms have been affected by the culture's capitalist transformation. Clean copy.
