The Illusion of a Future? Medicine Dance Rituals for the Civil Society of Tomorrow

Abstract

The medicine dance continues to be the main ritual of the Hai||om and many other groups of southern African "Bushman, " or "San." It is, therefore, an appropriate starting point for investigating the possibilities for developing a comparative model of religion of hunter-gatherers. Hunter-gatherers typically provide exceptions to anthropological models. However, carefully designed models, in particular those focusing on ritual form, not only facilitate comparison across space, for example between Africa and Australia as in this contribution, but also an understanding of the dynamics of ritual and religion over time. A re-formulation of Bloch's model of rebounding violence exhibits three aspects of the medicine dance, namely voluntary participation, forceful engagement, and relevance to everyday life. This characterization may hold not only for the case of the Hai||om, but also for other hunter-gatherers elsewhere who no longer live in a world of "hunters among hunters" but increasingly in settings with a plurality of religious activities. Hunter-gatherer religious forms need not be considered to be close to the beginnings of human religious activity but with an emphasis on personal autonomy, rituals like the medicine dance give an insight into the religious practices of a future civil society.