Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance: The Culture and History of a South African People

Record summary

Jean Comaroff’s study of the Tshidi of South Africa analyzes bodily experience, Christian healing, ritual practice and resistance under colonial and apartheid conditions. It is relevant to altered-states research because healing and religious transformation are treated as embodied social processes, while spirit-related experiences are connected to authority, gender and political economy. The book is not a casebook of verified mediumistic events. Its comparative value lies in showing how possession, healing and conversion can be described simultaneously in phenomenological, social and historical terms.