Crossroads of Culture

Combining history, ethnography, and culture theory, this book
explores how residents in northwestern Malawi have responded over time
to the early missionary assertion that local religious and healing
practices were incompatible with Christianity and western medicine. It
details how local agents, in the past and today, have constructed new
cultural forms that weave facets of ancestral spiritualism and
divination with Christianity and biomedicine. Alongside a rich
historical review of the late-19th century encounter between
Tumbuka-speakers and the Scottish Presbyterians of the Livingstonia
Mission, the book explores the contemporary therapeutic dance complex
known as Vimbuza and considers two case studies, each the story of a man
confronting illness and struggling to understand the roots and meaning
of his affliction. In the process, the book considers the enduring
missiological and anthropological topics of conversion and syncretism,
and questions the assertion by some scholars that Western missionaries
in Africa have been successful agents of religious hegemony.