Kuru Sorcery: Disease and Danger in the New Guinea Highlands

by Shirley Lindenbaum

Perhaps the best-documented epidemic in the history of medicine, kuru has been studied for more than fifty years by international investigators from medicine and the human sciences. This significantly revised edition of the landmark anthropological classic Kuru Sorcery brings up to date the anthropological contribution to understanding disease, the medical research that resulted in two medical Nobel Prizes, and the views of the Fore people who endured the epidemic and who still believe that sorcerers, rather than cannibalism, caused kuru. The kuru epidemic serves as a prism through which to see how Fore notions of disease causation bring into single focus their views about the body, the world of social and spiritual relations, and changes in economic and political conditions-aspects of thought and behaviour that Western medicine keeps separate.

Genres: Anthropology, Nonfiction, History, Science, Sociology, Biology

240 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1978

About the author

Shirley Lindenbaum is notable for her medical anthropological work on kuru in Papua New Guinea, HIV/AIDS in the United States of America, and cholera in Bangladesh.Beginning in 1972, she taught cultural anthropology at the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research in New York, before accepting a professorship at the City University of New York. Admired by her colleagues and students, Lindenbaum was the editor of the international journal "American Ethnologist" (1984-1989), and later served as Book Review Editor for "Anthropology Now" (2010-2013). Professor Lindenbaum is currently living in NY and is emerita professor of the Graduate Division of the City University of New York.

Reviews

[Melvin Marsh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting little book about Kuru and the tribes reaction and what they felt was going on.

[Courtney · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this for Medical Anthropology in Biocultural Perspective, and for an assigned academic text, it was actually fascinating. She balances well the epidemiology of kuru with her observations of Fore political organization, social kinship structure, and beliefs about health and illness. There's a constant awareness of context, as if she's always asking, "Okay, so this practice or phenomenon happens. Why? What does it stem from?" I admire that.

[Samuel · Rating 4 out of 5]

An older, but invaluable document of the Fore society in a time of great transition. Despite the inclusion of "Kuru" in the title, this isn't a medical study but an anthropological one, discussing how a sweeping, incurable plague impacted a society, how they interpreted it, and what changes this forced. Fascinating reading.

[Brent · Rating 3 out of 5]

Real people eating dead people. And getting really sick...

[Thom Dunn]

{Velvetink RECO: for disease transmitted by cannibalsim.}

[Nick Wisniewski · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting ethnography.