Abstract
Divination through spirit mediumship is one essential means by which the urban black South African* can order experience, gain some measure of control in a daily life fraught with uncertainties in a context of apartheid, and despite these external and seemingly uncontrollable forces feel fortified, renewed, and refreshed. This chapter examines the process of recruitment to the role of isangoma diviner (plural izangoma) and emphasizes the reinterpretive and reintegrative aspects of this mediumship. I suggest that the position of the African woman in the social, political, and legal system is one of structural inferiority and liminality.
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© 1978 Plenum Press, New York
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Middleton-Keirn, S. (1978). Convivial Sisterhood. In: Hoch-Smith, J., Spring, A. (eds) Women in Ritual and Symbolic Roles. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-2400-3_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-2400-3_10
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
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