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The Sex Thieves - The Anthropology of a Rumor (Paperback)
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The Sex Thieves - The Anthropology of a Rumor (Paperback)
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While working in Africa, anthropologist Julien Bonhomme encountered
an astonishing phenomenon: people being accused of stealing or
shrinking the genitals of strangers on the simple occasion of a
handshake on the street. As he soon discovered, these accusations
can have dramatic outcomes: the "sex thieves" are often targeted by
large crowds and publicly lynched. Moreover, such rumors are an
extremely widespread practice, having affected almost half of the
African continent since the 1970s. In this book, Bonhomme examines
the story of the "penis snatcher," asking larger questions about
how to account for such a phenomenon unique in its spatial and
temporal scale without falling prey to the cliche of Africa as an
exotic other. Bonhomme argues that the public belief in sex thieves
cannot be considered a superstition or form of mass hysteria.
Rather, he brings to light multiple factors that explain the
rumor's success and shows how the cultural dynamic can operate on a
vast scale. Analyzing the rumor on both transnational and local
levels, he demonstrates how it arises from the ambiguities and
dangers of anonymity, and thus that it reveals an occult flipside
to everyday social interaction. Altogether, this book provides both
richly ethnographic and theoretical understandings of urban
sociality and the dynamics of human communication in contemporary
Africa and beyond.
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