Based on several years of ethnographic fieldwork, the book explores life
in and around a Luo-speaking village in western Kenya during a time of
death. The epidemic of HIV/AIDS affects every aspect of sociality and
pervades villagers' debates about the past, the future and the ethics of
everyday life. Central to such debates is a discussion of touch in the
broad sense of concrete, material contact between persons. In mundane
practices and in ritual acts, touch is considered to be key to the
creation of bodily life as well as social continuity. Underlying the
significance of material contact is its connection with growth - of
persons and groups, animals, plants and the land - and the forward
movement of life more generally. Under the pressure of illness and
death, economic hardship and land scarcity, as well as bitter struggles
about the relevance and application of Christianity and 'Luo tradition'
in daily life, people find it difficult to agree about the role of touch
in engendering growth, or indeed about the aims of growth itself.