A dissertation submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the Degree of Master of Social
Sciences in the Department of Anthropology
Faculty of Humanities
University of the Witwatersrand
March 2016 / This is a study of the material culture associated with male circumcision rituals among Hlubi
people in the Matatiele region of South Africa’s Eastern Cape Province. In recent years social
scientists and public commentators have paid increasing attention to male circumcision in the
context of controversies around ‘botched’ circumcisions, on the one hand, and the growing
evidence, on the other hand, that male circumcision plays a role in restricting the spread of
HIV. Much less attention has been paid, however, to a vital issue that underpins all these
concerns: what materials give male circumcision its distinctive qualities as a cultural process,
and how do various kinds of participants and observers think about those materials in relation
to other domains of material culture, e.g. medical circumcision. This study will approach the
topic through unstructured interviews conducted with various groups of informants / MT2017
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/21807 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Zulu, John |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | Online resource (xi, 87 leaves), application/pdf |
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