Wind, Life, Health

Published as part of The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute Special Issue Book Series, and through a series of thought-provoking articles, Wind, Life, Health: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives examines the richness of human ideas surrounding wind in all its manifestations - breath, spirit, sentiment, life, and health.

• Examines the richness of human ideas and practices surrounding wind, life, and health
• Features articles covering a wide range of themes including landscape, weather, body, perception, emplacement, climate, seasons, song, and music
• Conveys how different peoples have grappled with winds and spirits and how their experiences have shaped their world

• Explores a range of cultures: hunters and gatherers in the polar regions, inhabitants of the Malaysian rain forest, Andaman Islands, ancient India, China, Greece, Muslim East Africa, Victorian England, and mountain-dwelling Swiss

Preface (Elisabeth Hsu and Chris Low).

Introduction (Chris Low and Elisabeth Hsu).

1. Earth, sky, wind, and weather (Tim Ingold).

2. Wafting on the wind: smell and the cycle of spirit and matter (David Parkin).

3. Blowing 'cross the crest of Mount Galeng’: winds of the voice, winds of the spirits (Marina Roseman).

4. Khoisan wind: hunting and healing (Chris Low).

5. Time to move: winds and the political economy of space in Andamanese culture (Vishvajit Pandya).

6. The bodily winds in ancient India revisited (Kenneth G. Zysk).

7. The experience of wind in early and medieval Chinese medicine (Elisabeth Hsu).

8. Pneuma between body and soul (Geoffrey Lloyd).

9. Gruff boreas, deadly calms: a medical perspective on winds and the Victorians (Vladimir Jankovic).

10. An ill wind: the Foehn in Leukerbad and beyond (Sarah Strauss).

Index.

Elisabeth Hsu is Reader in Social Anthropology, Convenor of the Masters courses in Medical Anthropology at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology of the University of Oxford, and Fellow of Green College. Her current research on Chinese medicine explores themes of touch, pain and feelings.

Chris Low, a postdoctorate at Oxford, holds an ESRC Research Fellowship and is currently involved with research on the changing relationships between animals, Bushmen, and Bushman medicine.

Since our first primordial breath, wind has been a central theme of cultural thought. Wind in its different guises – from the ‘natural phenomenon’ of air in motion, to embodied ‘life giving’ experiences and deities and spirits – has contributed to the richness of human ideas and practices from ancient cultures to this very day.

Through a series of thought-provoking articles, Wind, Life, Health: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives examines people’s intimate relationships with the wind. Seeking a balance between detailed ethnography and broad theoretical insights, the editors have gathered a diverse group of contributors whose works illustrate the similar patterns of human/wind relationships across cultures – hunters and gatherers in the polar regions, inhabitants of the Malaysian rain forest, Andaman Islands, ancient India, China, Greece, Muslim East Africa, Victorian England, and mountain-dwelling Swiss. We discover how people through history have grappled – physically and conceptually – with winds and spirits, and how it affected their practice.

Like a breath of fresh air, this pioneering work will lead to a deeper understanding of the ways in which our experience of the wind has influenced our awareness and understanding of the world, and continues to shape our culture.