Healers and politics in African history

This edited volume focuses on the under-researched topic of specialist healers as political actors and agents of change in African history, privileging a multi-disciplinary perspective on the complex dynamics of healing and politics across the continent during pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial periods. -- .

Specialist healers have been highly influential figures in African history from precolonial times to the present, but their political agency remains historically understudied. In this edited collection, the authors explore and analyse healers’ relations with states and regimes, their individual and collective agency, contests over different forms of healing, and healers’ roles as gatekeepers of knowledge and resources. Healers’ roles are frequently highlighted in the context of political, health and ecological crises and major transformations, including conflicts, colonization and deadly epidemics. Covering several periods of political transition and crisis, with emphasis on nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the chapters bring to the fore recent historical and anthropological research concerning West, East and Southern Africa. -- .