Swazi Indigenous Medicine: Beliefs, Practices, and Epistemes
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Graduate group
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Eswatini
Traditional Medicine
Indigenous Epistemologies
African Traditional Healing
Decolonial Anthropology
Ethnography
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Abstract
Swazi Indigenous medicine has long played a vital role in the culture and care practices of the Kingdom of Eswatini, and has evolved under the influence of processes such as colonialism, globalization, and the expansion of biomedicine. This thesis explores Swazi perspectives on the embodiment and knowledge-making practices of Swazi traditional healing. It draws from ethnographic interviews and participant observation, conducted across Eswatini and virtually. Building upon African relational research paradigms and postcolonial frameworks, the study findings reflect a vast ontological diversity in healing practices, encompassing healing that is embodied both physically and metaphysically. Similarly, Swazi medical epistemologies are diverse and encompass both human and more-than-human knowledge bases, including dreams, ancestors, and visions. The lived experiences of Swazi people illustrate the dynamic ways in which Indigenous healing practices synergize with and diverge from biomedical healthcare, and suggest possibilities for the integration and transformations of Indigenous medicine in changing contemporary contexts. Swazi Indigenous medicine is identified as experiencing colonial epistemic violence: aware of these harms, many study interlocutors work directly to combat epistemic and ontological erasure.