Do ‘we’ ‘do’ God? Linda Woodhead & Rebecca Catto (eds), Religion and change in modern Britain. London: Routledge.

What does it mean to talk of the religion ‘of’ a given country? I reflect on an edited volume dealing with religion in Britain and consider two related themes: the secular considered as ‘absence’ or ‘presence’, and the siting of religion not in conventional denominations or ritual practices but in spaces of encounter between religions, and between the so‐called ‘religious’ and ‘secular’.     

Syncretic Persons: Sociality,Agency and Personhood in Recent Charismatic Ritual Practices among North Mekeo (PNG)

This paper explores the syncretic accommodations made by North Mekeo (PNG) villagers arising from recent historical encounters with Catholic (Sacred Heart) missionaries over issues of ritual authenticity and effectiveness, personhood, and agency in a wider field of Christian evangelism and globalisation. Through a careful examination and comparison of pre‐existing ritual notions and practices (e.g., sorcery techniques, mortuary ritual performance, gender rituals) and the recent trends of commodification and enthusiastic Catholic charismatic performance, what might appear to be incongruous religious beliefs and practices are shown to possess numerous remarkably compatible similarities at the level of explicit cultural categorisation and ritual enactment. In accord with long‐standing anthropological arguments, recent North Mekeo syncretism thus consists of an integrated, albeit transformed rather than ‘confused’, mixing of indigenous and exogenous religious elements. Further, in this analysis of recent Melanesian religious change syncretism implies a novel conceptual convergence between syncretic processes and the dynamics of personhood, sociality and agency as construed in the framework of the ‘new Melanesian ethnography’.     

Informal Trade,Contrabando and Prosperous Socialities in Arequipa,Peru

The article explores trading activities at an outdoor market in the city of Arequipa, Peru, with the intention of discussing how notions of ‘the market’ are negotiated in terms of moralities. More specifically, it seeks to address the way in which the moralities of ‘the market’ are made the object of negotiation in a context where trade is of a more or less informal kind. In particular, the article describes the practices of smuggling (contrabando) across the border with Bolivia, an issue that has been only briefly discussed in the literature on the Andes. The argument is that the practices of petty trade and ‘informality’, ritual payments and brujería (harmful acts, or witchcraft) in the market context should not necessarily or exclusively be seen in terms of resistance as is often suggested. Instead, these practices should be seen in terms of Andean notions of reciprocity and circulation as significant for the establishment and maintenance of prosperity, that is, prosperity understood as relationally created.     

The spiritual commons: Some immaterial aspects of community economies in eastern Indonesia

Informed by anthropologist Stephen Gudeman’s dialect between the interacting realms of community and market economies, I seek in this article to focus on aspects of the commons and the shared values of a community that might be referred to as the ‘spiritual commons’. The phrase speaks specifically to the ideas and practices that guide the ritual and spiritual elements of social life. I argue that the spiritual commons is not a realm set apart from economic life but integral to its reproduction. Gift exchange, sacrifice and commensality enacted as expressions of religious sociality represent economies of symbolic goods that serve both material and ideational ends. The article draws upon ethnographies of eastern Indonesia and the comparative possibilities expressed in case studies from Islamic southeast Sulawesi and Catholic Flores.     

Potlatch and the articulation of modes of production: revisiting French Marxist Anthropology and the history of central Africa

This essay seeks to understand the potlatch as indicative of a wider category of exchange. Looking at the similarity in wild exchange rituals between northwestern America and central Africa the article argues that potlatch ritual is not as an archaic remnant but a product of the interaction between capitalist and ‘human’ modes of production. In this dynamic ‘human modes of production’ (see anon) did not become capitalist, but rather there was a ritual escalation related to a series of non-capitalist imperatives based in rights in people and theatrical displays of authority. In constructing the theoretical structure used to make this case I draw on and seek to rehabilitate the work of French Marxist Anthropologists working in central Africa, above all Georges Dupré and Pierre-Philippe Rey.     

From Racing to Rugby: All Work and No Play for Gogodala Men of Western Province,Papua New Guinea

In this article, I analyse how Gogodala men in Western Province approach the sport of rugby league football as an extension of the practice of canoe racing. Despite colonial changes and mission attempts to redeem canoe racing by labelling them ‘cultural games’, canoe races continue to embody clan relations and demonstrate inner masculine strength, collective clan power and a local work ethic. Although there has been a general lack of attention given to studies of sport in Papua New Guinea, a discourse has emerged that analyses sports competitions as either a modern form of play and a replacement for past ritual activities or as a contemporary exemplar of warfare and other eradicated practices. As the Gogodala have not practised headhunting or warfare for over one hundred years, I want to contribute to this discussion by exploring how contemporary canoe racing and rugby league form an integral part of conceptualisations of work and dala ela gi, or ‘the male way of life’.     

Is Rukun Dead? Ethnographic Interpretations of Social Change and Javanese Culture

Within the ethnography of Indonesia in general and Java in particular, the Javanese notion of rukun, the appearance of harmony and helpfulness, has frequently been interpreted as referring not only to social harmony, but also to economic egalitarianism. Hence ‘traditional’ Javanese economic practices such as open harvests, the distribution of harvest shares and the use of the finger-knife in rice harvesting have been seen as explicable by reference to rukun. Changes in harvesting practices with the introduction of ‘modern’ techniques, such as the use of contract labourers, have been depicted as signalling the death of rukun, both as an economic practice and as a cultural value. This article argues that such a view of social change in Java is theoretically and empirically flawed. Rukun is not a practice but rather a central ideological concept through which Javanese contextualise and apprehend their lives, their aspirations, their motivations and their social relations. In this sense, the ‘traditional’ notion of rukun is equally applicable to contemporary Java, and contemporary Javanese are just as likely to interpret the ‘modern’ world in terms of rukun.     

‘A Culture of Immediatism’: Co-optation and Complicity in Post-war Angola

This article explores the notion of a ‘culture of immediatism’ that characterises the current political and socio-economic environment of Angola, according to residents of its capital, Luanda. Analysing the material and symbolic affects of the post-war economic boom in the lives of ‘ordinary’ citizens, the article proposes to read the discourses and practices deployed on the ideological terrain of ‘immediatism’ as renegotiations of hegemony. By ethnographically unpacking the ‘aesthetics of power', I sketch out the contours of hegemony to see how power relations change in practice over time. This then sheds new light on the social processes involved in rapid economic change and contemporary, ‘neo-authoritarian’ statecraft, balancing the standard ‘clientelist’ account of power in post-war Angola.     

Negotiating the Ritual and Social Order through Spectacle: The (Re)Production of Macassan/Yol▒u Histories1

Broadly framed in terms of performance theories by Turner and Beeman, this paper weaves together the historical, mythical, ritual and performative aspects of a 1997 encounter in Sulawesi between Yol?u (an Aboriginal people of northern Australia) and Macassans (people from southern Sulawesi, Indonesia). The focus of the paper is an indigenous opera called Trepang, which is based on the centuries‐long history of trading relations and family connections between the two groups, and the way its performance was used by the Yol?u and Macassan cast members to renegotiate their often turbulent shared history, along with the contemporary social and ritual order. In this light, Trepang can be understood as a restorative social process, a means of pursuing a common path and a way of ameliorating the discrepancies of the past—bringing the parties finally together as one. Analysing the social context in which the performance of historical ‘truths’ was negotiated, I unpack key events in the staging of this ‘play within a play’ and demonstrate the need to transgress the dualism of ritual and spectacle.     

A relational approach to a Papua New Guinea male ritual cycle

The article analyses the male ritual cycle of the Ankave‐Anga in Papua New Guinea. In the 1980s, male initiations in this region were interpreted as institutions for the reproduction of male domination. And yet, looking at the ritual gestures performed at the same time by the men in the forest and by the women in the village, it becomes possible to offer another interpretation, one that, following Marilyn Strathern, underscores a relational dimension. But, whereas Strathern saw these rituals as times when boys went from a ‘cross‐sex’ state to a ‘single‐sex’ state capable of reproduction, following a process of extraction, the article argues that the Ankave ritual cycle can be read as an ordered series of transformations of the relations between the boys and their mothers and sisters, in the presence of these female relatives. At the heart of these initiations lies the boys' accession to the capacity to act for others. Such an analysis of specific ethnographic Melanesian material makes possible a critical appraisal of the Strathernian notions of partibility and detachability, which have often been taken as given by researchers outside the region.     

Leaving the Magic Out: Knowledge and Effect in Different Places

In 2010, Porer Nombo and I launched a book about indigenous Papua New Guinean plant knowledge to a large audience at a university near to his village on the north coast of that country. Members of the audience commented that the book made a record of important practices. But they asked if those practices were dependent on secret magic to be effective? What gave us the right to include such secrets? Or, if there was in fact something fundamental missing from the book (magical formulae to activate the processes described), then what was the use of publishing the book? Thinking through their questions suggested the need to analyse what ‘knowledge’ is in different places, and why plants might be effective in some, but not others. In this paper I attempt an explanation that does not rely on a ‘social’ explanation of magic but instead suggest that what we call ‘magic’ are mechanisms whereby a gardener (or healer, or hunter) positions an action, or a thing in relation to other things. I liken the way myth works in these systems to the way intellectual property law provides a comparable ‘mythic’ structure that locates effect in the places that have developed ‘knowledge economies’ and I conclude by asking; if places embody their history and politics, and generate different understandings of effect, then what are the implications of calling Porer's practices with regard to plants, ‘knowledge’?     

Scripting development through formalization: accounting for the diffusion of village savings and loans associations in Tanzania

Village savings and loan associations (VSLAs) are a form of self-organized savings association which has been successfully promoted by development agencies across the Global South. This article examines the increase in VSLAs in Tanzania through an investigation of the practices through which they are organized. Self-organized savings associations use extreme formalization to enact the social and financial discipline which enables members to count on one another. Anthropological theories of ritual as disciplinary practice shed light on the organizational practices of savings associations and their expansion. Such associations adopt the organizational properties of ritual to generate and sustain autonomous local institutions. Ritualization has added value for systems of financial ordering as a ‘framing’ device through which the financial order of saving can be delineated. Whereas sociological theorizations of institutional diffusion perceive ritualization as empty copying, ethnographically informed anthropological analysis demonstrates the productivity of formalization where detachment from ordinary relations is a sought attribute of organization     

Troubled landscapes,troubling anthropology: co‐presence,necessity, and the making of ethnographic knowledge

If ‘co‐presence is a condition of [anthropological] inquiry’ (Fabian), what sort of knowledge does it produce? I explore this question through an ethnography of a ‘troubled landscape’ in Malaysian Borneo: a lush, hilly region that has been the site of a dam construction and resettlement project since the late 2000s. My article uses the notion of co‐presence as both a lens through which to explore the predicaments of the four small communities affected by the scheme and a reflexive device that underscores the embeddedness of the ethnographic encounter in a larger relational field – one characterized as much by chance and necessity as it is by anthropologists’ intellectual agendas. In the process, I seek to trouble some of the methodological and ethical issues posed by anthropology's recent ‘ontological turn’, notably the long‐standing questions of what it means to ‘take seriously’ and how ethnography and the ethnographer are implicated in this project.     

To see that which cannot be seen: ontological differences and public health policies in Southern Chile

In this article, I explore different visual practices performed by Pehuenche Indigenous healers and state public health professionals in Southern Chile. While non‐Indigenous health workers seek to make ‘traditional’ Pehuenche healing visible within or alongside their own ‘modern’ practices, Pehuenche people are concerned with making visible the evil spirits whose ‘eating’ of persons produces illness. Focusing in particular on different healing practices triggered by the existence of Pehuenche spiritual illnesses that are ‘seen’ by both Indigenous healers and state professionals, this article discusses how different ontologies ground differences between the Indigenous healers and what they ‘see’; as well as how a broader and substantive binary between Pehuenche and non‐Pehuenche realities goes above and beyond these multiplicities. By exploring and discussing the endurance of Pehuenche cosmo‐political relations in a world inhabited by visible and invisible eaters, I hope to create awareness about how a failure to recognize these different realities limits current multicultural policies in Southern Chile, and Indigenous health policies more broadly. At a more theoretical level, the following ethnographic account sheds light on unresolved tensions between the ways ontological difference has been conceptualized within the so‐called ‘ontological turn’ in anthropology and within the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS).     

Syncretism and the Politics of the Tingkeban in West Java

For the rural Sundanese of West Java who identify with Nahdatul Ulama Islam, the tingkeban is considered a mandatory ritual to be conducted for a woman who is seven months pregnant. However, like other local practices around birth, the tingkeban has come under state and urban modernising influences that have attempted to displace some of its elements as ‘culture’ rather than ‘religion’ and to discredit many of these as superstitious and backward. This paper examines the ritual elements of the tingkeban that produce and reinforce local cosmological and ontological ideas about the nature of personhood and society, and, in particular, how the ritual highlights the ambivalent status of the villagers within broader relations of power such as the Indonesian State and other forms of Islam existing in Indonesia. The paper also explores how the assumptions within the ideology of modernisation propagated under the last years of the Suharto regime coincide with assumptions in scholarly work such as those underlying Geertz's depiction of the syncretic nature of Javanese religion.     

‘Rules that apply in times of crisis’: time,agency, and norm‐remaking during Nepal's People's War

This article explores how people in the former Maoist heartland of Nepal adopted previously transgressive norms and practices during the decade of the People's War (1996‐2006). By examining the rise in practices of beef‐eating and inter‐caste commensality, this article suggests that the temporal dimension of wartime ‘when different rules apply’ was crucial in making people accept new ideas and break established norms on a scale atypical for the ‘normal’ times of peace. Analysing the agency of Maoist activists, who self‐consciously tried to implement a project of radical social transformation, and those people who were caught in the midst of the Maoist transformative endeavour, this article argues that the contours of the ‘new society’ emerged not only due to revolutionaries’ intentional actions but also because of the ‘exceptional’ nature of wartime, which forced people to radically re‐create their daily lives. By transgressing social norms, ‘ordinary’ people did not deliberately undermine the normative order, but rather responded to the constraints of wartime, when people's agency and ethical choices were mostly driven by the need to secure the survival of their families and ensure the continuity of life itself.