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Hlonipha and health: ancestors, taboos and social medicine in South Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 April 2021

Abigail H. Neely
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Abstract

This article examines the abandonment of an important food taboo – the prohibition of milk consumption by newly married women – in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa in the 1940s and 1950s. Offering a detailed exploration of this hlonipha custom in three rural communities, I start from the position that food always reflects the entanglements of its material and symbolic attributes. By tracing health and illness, shifting livelihoods, diets and an important social medicine intervention, this article reveals that in the 1950s milk was a symbolically and materially different food than it had been in the 1930s. I argue that this difference determined whether or not hlonipha would be abandoned. By centring on understandings of food, health and taboos as material and symbolic, this article draws on scholarship on livestock in Southern Africa and contributes to scholarship on food taboos and hlonipha customs, pushing for the incorporation of material aspects of those customs.

Résumé

Résumé

Cet article examine l'abandon d'un important tabou alimentaire, à savoir l'interdiction, pour les jeunes mariées, de consommer du lait dans le KwaZulu-Natal rural, en Afrique du Sud, dans les années 1940 et 1950. Dans son exploration détaillée de la coutume du hlonepho dans trois communautés rurales, l'auteur part du principe que la nourriture reflète les intrications de ses attributs matériels et symboliques. En étudiant la santé et la maladie, les moyens de subsistance changeants, les régimes alimentaires et une importante intervention en matière de médecine sociale, cet article révèle que dans les années 1950, le lait était un aliment symboliquement et matériellement différent de ce qu'il était dans les années 1930. L'auteur soutient que cette différence a déterminé si l’hlonepho serait abandonné ou non. En se focalisant sur les conceptions de la nourriture, de la santé et des tabous en tant qu’éléments matériels et symboliques, cet article s'appuie sur la recherche sur le bétail en Afrique australe et contribue à la recherche sur les tabous alimentaires et sur la coutume du hlonepho, en prônant l'incorporation d'aspects matériels de cette coutume.

Type
Toxicity and taboos
Information
Africa , Volume 91 , Issue 3 , May 2021 , pp. 473 - 492
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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