Everyday Spirits and Medical Interventions: Ethnographic and historical notes on therapeutic conventions in Zanzibar Town

Abstract

Based on ethnographic fieldwork and on archive research, Nisula´s Doctoral dissertation investigates the spirit possession phenomenon in relation to biomedical practices in Zanzibar, Tanzania. This exploration of health and healing in an urban islamic context suggests that the popularity of possession healing and the work of spirit healers can only be understood in relation to the history of biomedical interventions and the present state of biomedicall institutes.