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This series in medical anthropology publishes monographs and edited volumes on indigenous (so-called traditional) medical knowledge and practice, alternative and complementary medicine, and ethnobiological studies that relate to health and illness. The emphasis of the series is on the way indigenous epistemologies inform healing, against a background of comparison with other practices, and in recognition of the fluidity between them. Based on several years of ethnographic fieldwork, the book explores life in and around a Luo-speaking village in western Kenya during a time of death. The epidemic of HIV/AIDS affects every aspect of sociality and pervades villagers' debates about the past, the future and the ethics of everyday life. Central to such debates is a discussion of touch in the broad sense of concrete, material contact between persons. In mundane practices and in ritual acts, touch is considered to be key to the creation of bodily life as well as social continuity. Underlying the significance of material contact is its connection with growth-of persons and groups, animals, plants and the land - and the forward movement of life more generally. Under the pressure of illness and death, economic hardship and land scarcity, as well as bitter struggles about the relevance and application of Christianity and ̀Luo tradition' in daily life, people find it difficult to agree about the role of touch in engendering growth, or indeed about the aims of growth itself. --Book Jacket.

Luo (Kenyan and Tanzanian people) --- Medical anthropology --- Traditional medicine --- AIDS (Disease) --- HIV infections --- Luo (Peuple du Kenya et de Tanzanie) --- Anthropologie médicale --- Médecine traditionnelle --- Sida --- Infections à VIH --- Social life and customs --- Political conditions --- Social aspects --- Moeurs et coutumes --- Conditions politiques --- Aspect social --- Bondo District (Kenya) --- Social life and customs. --- Mœurs et coutumes --- Medical care --- Medicine --- Anthropology --- Dho Luo (African people) --- Jo Luo (Kenyan and Tanzanian people) --- Kavirondo (Nilotic people) --- Luo (African people) --- Luo (Nilotic tribe) --- Ethnology --- Lwoo (African people) --- HIV (Viruses) infections --- HTLV-III infections --- HTLV-III-LAV infections --- Human T-lymphotropic virus III infections --- Lentivirus infections --- Sexually transmitted diseases --- Acquired immune deficiency syndrome --- Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome --- Acquired immunological deficiency syndrome --- Immunological deficiency syndromes --- Virus-induced immunosuppression --- Ethnic medicine --- Ethnomedicine --- Folk medicine --- Home cures --- Home medicine --- Home remedies --- Indigenous medicine --- Medical folklore --- Medicine, Primitive --- Primitive medicine --- Surgery, Primitive --- Alternative medicine --- Folklore --- Ethnopharmacology --- Diseases --- Health and hygiene --- Anthropological aspects --- Siaya District (Kenya)