Questioning Misfortune

This study of adversity and its social causes in rural Uganda considers how people deal with life's uncertainties.

This study of adversity and its social causes in rural Uganda considers how people deal with life's uncertainties - sickness, suffering, marital problems, failure, and death. It emphasises the fact that remedies often fail and that doubt and uncertainty persist.Some of the most interesting ethnographies of experience are concerned to highlight the indeterminate nature of life. Questioning Misfortune is very much within this tradition. Based on a long-term study of adversity and its social causes in Bunyole, eastern Uganda, it considers the way in which people deal with uncertainties of life, such as sickness, suffering, marital problems, failure, and death. Divination may identify causes of misfortune, ranging from ancestors and spirits to sorcerers. Sufferers and their families will then try out a variety of remedial measures, including pharmaceuticals, sorcery antidotes, and sacrifices. But remedies often fail, and doubt and uncertainty persist. Even the commercialisation of biomedicine, and the peril of AIDS can be understood in terms of a pragmatics of uncertainty.