Becoming a Spirit Medium: Initiatory Learning and the Self in the Vale do Amanhecer

Drawing on ethnographic data from the Brazilian mediumistic religion known as Vale do Amanhecer (Valley of the Dawn), this article addresses the learning process at the core of mediumistic development. The process of learning is here approached as a multi-layered experience, which is embodied, intuitive, performative, conceptual and inter-subjective. I will illustrate how the relationship between mediums and spirits is established in trance states through what Thomas Csordas calls a ‘multi-sensory imagery’. The discussion examines the concurrence of emotions, feelings, somatosensory experience and doctrinal discourses in developing mediumistic skills, which simultaneously engenders the attributes of extendability and multi-dimensionality that ground the notion of the self, informing the conceptualisation of trance.     

The anxiety of romantic love in Ho Chi Minh City,Vietnam

This article examines the role of anxieties about romantic love in the modernist self‐making projects of Vietnam's growing middle class. Romantic ideals and discourses that emerged from Vietnam's neoliberal reforms emphasize personal compatibility through emotional intimacy and communication. Middle‐class residents of Ho Chi Minh City increasingly privilege the emotions in daily life and define themselves and their relationships in an affective register. This cultivation of emotional self‐reflexivity has, however, become a source of anxiety about the self. An analysis of two case studies traces how individuals draw on their class, gender, and age to negotiate conflicts between various models of love and selfhood and reinvent romantic discourses to claim their own versions of a modern identity. A critical component of both the experience of romantic love and the construction of middle‐class Vietnamese selfhood, love anxiety stems not just from people's changed relations to others but also from a changed perception of the self, which has been rendered unrecognizable to them.     

'It's All To Do With Words': An Analysis of Spirit Possession in the Venezuelan Cult of María Lionza

Humans possessed by spirits are often described as ill or distressed, lacking power, control, and agency, and spirit possession has been described as a kind of ventriloquism in which mediums acquire a voice more powerful than their own as humans. What remains unsaid and unheard is what the spirits and humans talk about during possession episodes. This article suggests that the tendency to focus on the form and not the content of possession episodes has allowed for another form of ventriloquism, in which anthropologists themselves use the mediums to speak to their own agendas. Against this tendency, participants in the cult of María Lionza see words as central to the cult, to be listened to carefully. An analysis of the content of their possession episodes reveals how, far from being passive, deprived of agency, and 'muted', the possessed in the cult are actively engaged in an ongoing conversation with anthropologists, historians, the media, and the state.     

Spirits out of place: relational landscapes and environmental change in East Kalimantan,Indonesia

This article examines interaction with spirits among the Luangan, a group of shifting cultivators in Indonesian Borneo. Through examples of different forms of Luangan spirit interaction, it interrogates the relationship between the spirit world and the natural environment, with special reference to what happens when the latter undergoes dramatic change. Inspired by Eduardo Kohn's understanding of how the spirit world is semiotically embedded within the rainforest environment, I explore how relations with nonhumans reflect historical and ongoing experiences of life and sociality in the forest and human domain, while superimposing a virtual relational landscape upon the natural landscape. It is proposed that spirit communication offers a means of refiguring human lives and alleviating debilitation, and that recurrent rituals enable Luangans to virtually maintain relations with unseen beings of the local environment, even where it has been thoroughly transformed through oil palm cultivation.     

Not You: Addiction,Relapse, and Release in Uganda

In recent years, alcohol abuse and dependence have become topics of increasing concern in Uganda, but the chronic relapsing brain disease model of addiction remains only one of many ways of understanding and addressing alcohol-related problems there. For many Ugandan Pentecostals and spirit mediums to be addicted is to be under the control of a being that comes from outside the self. Where these two groups differ, and here they differ strongly, is in regard to the moral valence of these external spirits and what ought to be done about them. This article draws on four years of collaborative ethnographic fieldwork to explore the affordances of these ways of viewing and experiencing addiction and recovery for Ugandans attempting to leave alcohol behind. While the idioms of bondage, dedication, and possession are at times severe, this article argues that they contain within them concepts and practices that point away from models of addiction as a chronic relapsing brain disease and towards the possibility of release.

     

Cargo Cults and the Politics of Alterity: A Review Article

This review article is a critical evaluation of recent ethnographic contributions and theoretical debates concerning cargo cults. It examines how Foucault's genealogical and discursive methodologies can be used in a way that undercuts their valuable insights. The recent self‐reflexive turn, where anthropology focuses on the moral politics of its own discourses, can lead to a silencing of the moral political discourses of others. Moreover self‐reflexivity can become an authorising strategy for academics keen to downplay race and resistance in millenarian movements where these are important features.     

Matrilineal Spirits,Descent and Territorial Power in Northern Thailand

This paper examines matrilineal spirits (phii puu nyaa) in northern Thailand based on field research recently undertaken in a village in Chiang Mai province. The paper suggests that the puu nyaa spirits remain locally significant—despite previous statements about their demise—and that matrilineal linkages are ideologically and practically important in the constitution of the groups. Nevertheless, there are alternative points of reference—to fathers, spouses and localities—that can attenuate attachments to matrilineal kin and introduce alternative sources of spiritual power. It becomes clear that phii puu nyaa spirit beliefs and practices are malleable and provide a basis for various orientations to spiritual power. The intermingling of different types of spiritual power is well illustrated by the presence of protective spirits locally referred to as aahak. In local perception, there is a very close relationship between phii puu nyaa and aahak, but the two entities appear to reflect quite different orientations: in simple terms the aahak represent a masculine, territorial and outward looking form of power which is contrasted with the female‐focused and lineage‐derived potency of the puu nyaa spirits. The paper argues that the outward orientation of the aahak provides some valuable insights into local perceptions of power, demonstrating how the supposedly peripheral and parochial draws regional power into more intimate domains.     

Shifting Transversals: Trans Women's Move from Spirit Mediumship to Beauty Work in Mandalay

Long active as spirit mediums, trans women have become increasingly important players in the beauty business in Mandalay, Burma, as elsewhere in Southeast Asia. I ask what affinities we might discern in these two roles of spirit medium and beautician such that trans women should be thought especially suited to take them on. The boundary-crossing implicit in both turns on self-fashioning, a process which connects humans to spirits and/or ordinary individuals to the prestigiously modern.     

Converting the Spirit Spouse: The Violent Transformation of the Pentecostal Female Body in Maputo,Mozambique

This article discusses the forceful transformation of the female body in Brazilian Pentecostalism in urban Mozambique and argues for an understanding of Pentecostal conversion as embodying spiritual warfare. Presenting the case of avenging spirits, such as the spirit spouse, it explores how spirits interfere in women's new socio-economic positions and intimate relationships. Pentecostal women learn to stay in control of their body under guidance of the Holy Spirit and a ‘violent’ war against the spirit spouse unfolds. The prevalence of ‘violence’ implies that we should critically question a perception of conversion as bringing healing and harmony.     

A Psychology of Ghosts: The Regime of the Self and the Reinvention of Spirits in Indonesia and Beyond

The afterlife is currently being psychologised on a global scale. Based on a comparison of recent transformations in the reality of ghosts in eastern Indonesia and in contemporary Hollywood ghost series, this paper explores the links between spirits and changing conceptions of self in a global world. In Indonesia, ghosts are becoming traumatised, while in the West spirits increasingly struggle with emotional problems. In different ways, the paper suggests, spirits are becoming implicated in the globalisation of an interiorised and psychologised understanding of what it means to be human. As humans are encouraged to think of themselves as psychological beings, human spirits and ghosts are reinvented in a variety of ways—East and West. I argue that, ironically, it is the very hegemony of the powerful discourses and institutions that drive the globalisation of a psychological understanding of the self into ever more contexts and locations that is leading to these new forms of re-enchantment. The new kinds of ghosts that are currently emerging in the folds of global governmentality do so, it would seem, not in spite of the power of governmental reason, but by virtue of it.     

Monuments, power and personhood in the British Neolithic

Recent research on British Neolithic monuments describes how the ordering of space within these sites contributed to the production and maintenance of dominant discourses. This article argues that aspects of this work are implicitly built on conceptions of personhood specific to post-Enlightenment thought, resulting in a somewhat static and one-dimensional conception of power relations during the period. One way out of this problem is provided by anthropological and feminist literature in which an alternative characterization of the self as inherently fluid and relational has been outlined. This facilitates a shifting and contextual conception of power relations which can be reconciled more easily with the evidence from Neolithic monuments for the continuous creation and reinterpretation of spatial meanings.     

Third‐way neoliberalism and conditional cash transfers: The paradoxes of empowerment,participation and self‐help among poor Uruguayan women

The Latin American literature on Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) welfare programs has typically involved the quantitative evaluation of social and economic impact, with fewer studies addressing the qualitative and gendered impacts of CCTs. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork in poor squatter settlement communities in Uruguay, this article explores the everyday social realities of poor single mothers who have been disconnected from their kinship networks and must rely on CCT payments for survival. I locate these women's experiences within the third‐way neoliberal discourses of ‘empowerment’, ‘participation’ and ‘self‐help’ espoused by the state, and the various structural conditions, including crime, violence and unequal gender relations, that impact negatively on women's abilities to comply with their social and civic duties. I argue that rather than producing responsible and empowered subjects, Uruguay's recent CCT welfare program has paradoxically limited some women's participation in civic and public life and reproduced their dependent relations with men.     

Houses and the ritual construction of gendered homes in South Africa

This article examines Griqua women's association with houses in historic, economic, and ritual contexts during the twentieth century. Using archival data, I argue that the connection between women and houses in South Africa stems from a complex interaction between their pre-colonial Khoi origins, Christian missionary activity, and apartheid government housing policy. Ethnographic research demonstrates how, during the second half of the twentieth century, women ritually stressed their association with houses, but were unable to sustain this dominance in everyday life. An examination of ritual, gender, and housing, in relation to material objects and space, provides insights into how a series of rituals performed in Griquatown facilitates both the expression of an unambiguous Griqua identity and daily multi-ethnic interactions.     

Transformation in <Emphasis Type="Italic">Dang</Emphasis>-<Emphasis Type="Italic">ki</Emphasis> Healing: The Embodied Self and Perceived Legitimacy

Since spirit possession in mediumship and shamanism resembles psychotic symptoms, early researchers perceived spirit mediums and shamans as psychiatric patients whose psychopathology was culturally sanctioned. However, other researchers have not only challenged this assumption, but also proposed that spirit possession has transformative benefits. The idiom of spirit possession provides cultural meanings for spirit mediums and shamans to express and transform their personal experiences. The present case study focuses on dang-ki healing, a form of Chinese mediumship practiced in Singapore, in which a deity possesses a human (i.e., dang-ki) to offer aid to supplicants. This study seeks to explore whether involvement in dang-ki healing is transformative; and if so, how the dang-ki’s transformation is related to his self and the perceived legitimacy of his mediumship. At a shrine, I interviewed 20 participants, including a male dang-ki, 10 temple assistants, and nine clients. The results obtained were supportive of the therapeutic nature of spirit possession. First, there is a relationship between his self-transformation and the perceived legitimacy of his mediumship. As his clients and community have recognized his spirit possession as genuine, and the healing power of his possessing god, he is able to make use of mediumship as a means for spiritual development. Second, he has developed his spirituality by internalizing his god’s positive traits (e.g., compassion). Deities worshipped in dang-ki healing can be conceptualized as ideal selves who represent a wide range of positive traits and moral values of Chinese culture. Thus, the possession of a deity is the embodiment of an ideal self. Finally, the dang-ki’s transformation may run parallel to his god’s transformation. In Chinese religions, gods have to constantly develop their spirituality even though they are already gods. An understanding of the god’s spiritual development further sheds light on the dang-ki’s self-transformation.     

The Veil of Objectivity: Prophecy, Divination, and Social Inquiry

It is possible for folk inquiry to become a source for the modification of anthropological thought. This paper discusses two alternative knowledge systems: traditional divination and syncretic prophecy in Central Africa. The processes of scientific discovery, causal reasoning, and the evaluation of evidence are compared with oracular reasoning and prophetic prediction. The oracular aspects of scientific reasoning are delineated along with the problems of reformulating and presenting basic data. Part of this presentational process is the "translation" of events from the context of their occurrence into a theoretical framework. The modifications generated by data analysis affect the explanatory adequacy of the method of inquiry. A rapprochement between folk inquiry and Western scientific assumptions diminishes the forms of theoretical reductionism that inhibit the possibility for describing and analyzing contrasting belief systems within an anthropological framework . [folk inquiry, prophecy, divination, scientific reasoning, Africa]     

Sabar: body politics among middle‐aged migrant Pakistani women

This article explores the relationship among suffering, Islamic moral concepts, subjectivity, and agency within a cohort of middle‐aged women who migrated from Pakistan to Britain in the 1960s and 1970s as the wives or daughters of industrial workers. These women were preoccupied with their ageing bodies and complained about the cumulative assaults on their health they had experienced, and which they felt had been neglected by health professionals and family alike. By examining how these women bear chronic illness through a discourse of sabar (patience or silent forbearance), I show how women were able to transform their illness into a selfless and virtuous consequence of shouldering the burdens of kinship. Sabar suggests passive acceptance or fatalism to some observers, but attending to how women situate their illness in a religious and eschatological frame, we see that they actively appropriate rather than passively imbibe the norm of sabar. Moreover, turning from narratives to everyday contexts of friendship, family, and inter‐generational relations, we see that there are tensions between self‐sublimation and self‐assertion in the practice of sabar. It is argued that ethnographic attention to subjectivity and reflexivity are crucial to understanding sabar as an agential capacity.     

The discursive detachment of race from gentrification in Cartagena de Indias,Colombia

In this article, I provide an ethnographic account of the gentrification process and its relationship to race and racism in the community of Getsemaní in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia. I introduce Racial Attachment Processes as a conceptual framework for understanding how individuals reconcile Latin American discourses that suggest that race is not a primary stratifying principle with the material spatial realities of racial hierarchies that counter such discourses. Drawing on ethnographic participant observation and semi-structured interviews, including those employing photo-elicitation, I demonstrate how people discursively mobilize race in everyday life, yet selectively detach race in ways that allow them to interpret processes of gentrification as untethered to their racial underpinnings. This paper ultimately demonstrates how the discursive detachment of race from understandings of Colombian socio-spatial, political and economic relations obscures the relationship between racial domination and social inequality.     

Community Life and Discourses among Fiji Islanders in Kantō, Japan

This article examines how Fiji Islanders of diverse ethnic backgrounds living in Japan's Kantō area reflect on and constitute community life in the diaspora. While they occasionally refer to the ‘community’ and speak about its social value, get-togethers of significant numbers occur infrequently. Ultimately, a Fijian-centred community is virtually absent in the everyday lives of Japan-based Fiji Islanders. Based on twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork in the Tokyo Metropolis and its neighbouring prefectures, this contribution suggests that for Fiji Islanders in Kantō, talking about ‘community’ serves two particular purposes: on the one hand community discourses create an emotional bond, both among the migrants and between the migrants and their place of origin. At the same time, discourses on the relevance of the community without undergoing efforts to maintain it, serve as strategies of navigating self and belonging in a critical and reflexive way. As migrants’ social lives are complex and shaped by numerous economic, spatial, and individual disjunctures, Kantō Fiji Islanders contextually configure and extend their social relations with regard to their socio-cultural heritage, their place of residence in Japan, their gaikokujin (foreigner) status, and their life-work cycles.     

Free speech and civil discourse: producing expats,locals, and migrants in the UAE English‐language blogosphere

This article examines the production of belonging and exclusion on a popular English‐language blog in the United Arab Emirates. The UAE, and particularly the emirate of Dubai, has a large majority foreign resident population, which has little to no access to official citizenship. However, I argue that foreign residents narrate and perform belonging on various scales, including through the production of on‐line ‘publics’. As I explore in this article, the differences between citizens and non‐citizens are not simply imported into on‐line spaces, but on‐line spaces and the interactions within them are constitutive of differentiated resident identities. In particular, I explore how the UAE English‐language blogosphere is a space for state criticism, assertions of belonging, and interactions by and between groups of people that are not readily available in the rigidly divided social and geographical spaces of Dubai. The ability for citizens and non‐citizens to interact in these on‐line forums makes the UAE blogosphere a space where assumptions about differences between citizens, expatriates, and migrants that circulate in off‐line discourses and technologies of governance are both negotiated and rehearsed by group members and administrators.