a Chewa cosmology of the body

Abstract

For the Chewa peasantry of Malawi, conceptions of the body are based on agricultural metaphors, drawn from the routines of farm life and formalized as cosmology and physiology by rainmakers and midwives. In this article I describe Chewa body symbolism, focusing first on the agrarian lifestyle and then on the cross‐referencing symbolisms of body and terrain in rainmaking ritual and in domestic practice. Menstruation and pregnancy are especially susceptible to cosmological schematizations. [Chewa, Malawi, body, reproduction, rainmaking, cosmology]

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