Human Spirits A Cultural Account Of Trance In Mayotte

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Human Spirits: A Cultural Account of Trance in Mayotte

Michael Lambek
Human Spirits A Cultural Account of Trance in Mayotte Book PDF

Author : Michael Lambek
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 244 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 1981-11-30
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0521238447

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Human Spirits: A Cultural Account of Trance in Mayotte by Michael Lambek Pdf

Based on intensive ethnographic fieldwork, this book describes and interprets trance behaviour among the Malagasy speakers of Mayotte, a small island in the Comoro Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of East Africa. Professor Lambek describes how the people of Mayotte (most often women) enter into trances, during which they believe their bodies are inhabited by spirits. He then analyses the conventions for behaviour in trance and the process by which the individuals come to terms with the spirits in their midst. The book presents thorough case studies of spirit possession over time, providing one of the most detailed accounts of possession phenomena available for a single society. The author argues that trance can best be understood as a social activity within a defined system of cultural meaning rather than as a psychological problem, a simple deception or a means of manipulating others. This book should be of particular interest to those concerned with the study of ritual, symbols and non-Western religious systems.

Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology

Alan Barnard,Jonathan Spencer
Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology Book PDF

Author : Alan Barnard,Jonathan Spencer
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 696 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 1996
Category : Reference
ISBN : 041509996X

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Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology by Alan Barnard,Jonathan Spencer Pdf

Providing a guide to the ideas, arguments and history of the discipline, this volume discusses human social and cultural life in all its diversity and difference. Theory, ethnography and history are combined in over 230 entries on topics

Spirits in Culture, History and Mind

Jeannette Mageo,Alan Howard
Spirits in Culture History and Mind Book PDF

Author : Jeannette Mageo,Alan Howard
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 281 pages
File Size : 53,8 Mb
Release : 2012-12-06
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN : 9781136758539

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Spirits in Culture, History and Mind by Jeannette Mageo,Alan Howard Pdf

Spirits in Culture, History and Mind reintegrates spirits into comparative theories of religion, which have tended to focus on institutionalized forms of belief associated with gods. It brings an historical perspective to culturally patterned experiences with spirits, and examines spirits as a locus of tension between traditional and foreign values. Taking as a point of departure shifting local views of self, nine case studies drawn from Pacific societies analyze religious phenomena at the intersection of social, psychological and historical processes. The varied approaches taken in these case studies provide a richness of perspective, with each lens illuminating different aspects of spirit-related experience. All, however, bring a sense of historical process to bear on psychological and symbolic approaches to religion, shedding new light on the ways spirits relate to other cultural phenomena.

Spirit Possession

Éva Pócs,András Zempléni
Spirit Possession Book PDF

Author : Éva Pócs,András Zempléni
Publisher : Central European University Press
Page : 556 pages
File Size : 55,9 Mb
Release : 2022-05-31
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9789633864142

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Spirit Possession by Éva Pócs,András Zempléni Pdf

Possession, a seemingly irrational phenomenon, has posed challenges to generations of scholars rooted in Western notions of body-soul dualism, self and personhood, and a whole set of presuppositions inherited from Christian models of possession that was “good” or “bad.” The authors of the essays in this book present a new and more promising approach. They conceive spirit possession as a form of communication, of expressivity, of culturally defined behavior that should be understood in the context of local, vernacular theories and empiric reflections. With the aim of reformulating the comparative anthropology of spirit possession, the editors have opened corridors between previously separate areas of research. Together, anthropologists and historians working on several historical periods and in different European, African, South American, and Asian cultural areas attempt to redefine the very concept of possession, freeing it from the Western notion of the self and more clearly delineating it from related matters such as witchcraft, devotion, or mysticism. The book also provides an overview of new research directions, including novel methods of participant observation and approaches to spirit possession as indigenous historiography

The Ethical Condition

Michael Lambek
The Ethical Condition Book PDF

Author : Michael Lambek
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 388 pages
File Size : 43,9 Mb
Release : 2015-10-23
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780226292380

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The Ethical Condition by Michael Lambek Pdf

Written over a thirty-year span, Michael Lambek’s essays in this collection point with definitive force toward a single central truth: ethics is intrinsic to social life. As he shows through rich ethnographic accounts and multiple theoretical traditions, our human condition is at heart an ethical one—we may not always be good or just, but we are always subject to their criteria. Detailing Lambek’s trajectory as one anthropologist thinking deeply throughout a career on the nature of ethical life, the essays accumulate into a vibrant demonstration of the relevance of ethics as a practice and its crucial importance to ethnography, social theory, and philosophy. Organized chronologically, the essays begin among Malagasy speakers on the island of Mayotte and in northwest Madagascar. Building from ethnographic accounts there, they synthesize Aristotelian notions of practical judgment and virtuous action with Wittgensteinian notions of the ordinariness of ethical life and the importance of language, everyday speech, and ritual in order to understand how ethics are lived. They illustrate the multiple ways in which ethics informs personhood, character, and practice; explore the centrality of judgment, action, and irony to ethical life; and consider the relation of virtue to value. The result is a fully fleshed-out picture of ethics as a deeply rooted aspect of the human experience.

Where Humans and Spirits Meet

Kjersti Larsen
Where Humans and Spirits Meet Book PDF

Author : Kjersti Larsen
Publisher : Berghahn Books
Page : 190 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2008
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN : 1845450558

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Where Humans and Spirits Meet by Kjersti Larsen Pdf

Zanzibar, an island off the East African coast, with its Muslim and Swahili population, offers rich material for this study of identity, religion, and multiculturalism. This book focuses on the phenomenon of spirit possession in Zanzibar Town and the relationships created between humans and spirits; it provides a way to apprehend how society is constituted and conceived and, thus, discusses Zanzibari understandings of what it means to be human.

Illness and Irony

Michael Lambek,Paul Antze
Illness and Irony Book PDF

Author : Michael Lambek,Paul Antze
Publisher : Berghahn Books
Page : 160 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 2003-11-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781800733633

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Illness and Irony by Michael Lambek,Paul Antze Pdf

Theories of illness and therapy since Freud have included the possibility that sufferers are complicit in their conditions. The studies in this volume explore the ways in which illness and therapy may be characterized as sites at which ironies of the human condition are produced, encountered, acknowledged – or discounted in favor of more literal readings. They ask what these sites can teach us about questions of human agency and about the broader importance of irony for theory. Encompassing a variety of perspectives, the contributors included in Illness and Irony apply theories of irony to a myriad of cultural contexts, ranging from Freud’s consulting room and the Lacanian clinics of Buenos Aires to fright illness in a Yemeni village and spirit possession on the island of Mayotte. An introductory chapter by Michael Lambek establishes a contextual viewpoint on irony, arising from the writings of Thomas Mann, Alexander Nehamas and others. Vincent Crapanzano concludes the volume by linking the contributions to current debates about irony in rhetoric, linguistics and comparative literature.

Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology

Dr Alan Barnard,Jonathan Spencer
Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology Book PDF

Author : Dr Alan Barnard,Jonathan Spencer
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 696 pages
File Size : 49,9 Mb
Release : 2002-09-11
Category : Reference
ISBN : 9781134450909

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Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology by Dr Alan Barnard,Jonathan Spencer Pdf

This is the only encyclopedia of social and cultural anthropology to cover fully the many important areas of overlap between anthropology and related disciplines. This work also covers key terms, ideas and people, thus eliminating the need to refer to other books for specific definitions or biographies. Special features include: * over 230 substantial entries on every major idea, individual and sub-discipline of social and cultural anthropology * over 100 international contributors * a glossary of more than 600 key terms and ideas.

Wombs and Alien Spirits

Janice Boddy
Wombs and Alien Spirits Book PDF

Author : Janice Boddy
Publisher : Univ of Wisconsin Press
Page : 425 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 1989-12-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780299123130

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Wombs and Alien Spirits by Janice Boddy Pdf

Based on nearly two years of ethnographic fieldwork in a Muslim village in northern Sudan, Wombs and Alien Spirits explores the zâr cult, the most widely practiced traditional healing cult in Africa. Adherents of the cult are usually women with marital or fertility problems, who are possessed by spirits very different from their own proscribed roles as mothers. Through the woman, the spirit makes demands upon her husband and family and makes provocative comments on village issues, such as the increasing influence of formal Islam or encroaching Western economic domination. In accommodating the spirits, the women are able metaphorically to reformulate everyday discourse to portray consciousness of their own subordination. Janice Boddy examines the moral universe of the village, discussing female circumcision, personhood, kinship, and bodily integrity, then describes the workings of the cult and the effect of possession on the lives of men as well as women. She suggests that spirit possession is a feminist discourse, though a veiled and allegorical one, on women's objectification and subordination. Additionally, the spirit world acts as a foil for village life in the context of rapid historical change and as such provides a focus for cultural resistance that is particularly, though not exclusively, relevant to women.

Having the Spirit of Christ

Giovanni B. Bazzana
Having the Spirit of Christ Book PDF

Author : Giovanni B. Bazzana
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 333 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2020-01-07
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780300249514

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Having the Spirit of Christ by Giovanni B. Bazzana Pdf

A provocative reinterpretation of accounts of spirit possession and exorcism in early Christianity The earliest Christian writings are filled with stories of possession and exorcism, which were crucial for the activity of the historical Jesus and for the practice of the earliest groups of his followers. Most critical scholarship, however, regularly marginalizes these topics or discards them altogether in reconstructing early Christian history. This innovative book approaches the study of possession from a different methodological angle by using a comparative lens that includes contemporary ethnographies of possession cross-culturally. Possession, besides being a harmful event that should be exorcized, can also have a positive role in many cultures. Often it helps individuals and groups to reflect on and reshape their identity, to plan their moral actions, and to remember in a most vivid way their past. When read in light of these materials, these ancient documents reveal the religious, cultural, and social meaning that the experience of possession had for the early Christ groups.

The Social Life of Spirits

Ruy Blanes,Diana Espírito Santo
The Social Life of Spirits Book PDF

Author : Ruy Blanes,Diana Espírito Santo
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 312 pages
File Size : 41,6 Mb
Release : 2013-11-22
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780226081809

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The Social Life of Spirits by Ruy Blanes,Diana Espírito Santo Pdf

Spirits can be haunters, informants, possessors, and transformers of the living, but more than anything anthropologists have understood them as representations of something else—symbols that articulate facets of human experience in much the same way works of art do. The Social Life of Spirits challenges this notion. By stripping symbolism from the way we think about the spirit world, the contributors of this book uncover a livelier, more diverse environment of entities—with their own histories, motivations, and social interactions—providing a new understanding of spirits not as symbols, but as agents. The contributors tour the spiritual globe—the globe of nonthings—in essays on topics ranging from the Holy Ghost in southern Africa to spirits of the “people of the streets” in Rio de Janeiro to dragons and magic in Britain. Avoiding a reliance on religion and belief systems to explain the significance of spirits, they reimagine spirits in a rich network of social trajectories, ultimately arguing for a new ontological ground upon which to examine the intangible world and its interactions with the tangible one.

Adieu to God

Mick Power
Adieu to God Book PDF

Author : Mick Power
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 215 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 2012-01-30
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780470669938

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Adieu to God by Mick Power Pdf

Adieu to God examines atheism from a psychological perspective and reveals how religious phenomena and beliefs are psychological rather than supernatural in origin. Answers the psychological question of why, in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary, do religions continue to prosper? Looks at atheism and religion using a fair and balanced approach based on the latest work in psychology, sociology, anthropology, psychiatry and medicine Acknowledges the many psychological benefits of religion while still questioning the validity of its supernatural belief systems and providing atheist alternatives to a fulfilling life

Shamanism [2 volumes]

Mariko Namba Walter,Eva Jane Neumann Fridman
Shamanism 2 volumes Book PDF

Author : Mariko Namba Walter,Eva Jane Neumann Fridman
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 1088 pages
File Size : 42,6 Mb
Release : 2004-12-15
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781576076460

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Shamanism [2 volumes] by Mariko Namba Walter,Eva Jane Neumann Fridman Pdf

A guide to worldwide shamanism and shamanistic practices, emphasizing historical and current cultural adaptations. This two-volume reference is the first international survey of shamanistic beliefs from prehistory to the present day. In nearly 200 detailed, readable entries, leading ethnographers, psychologists, archaeologists, historians, and scholars of religion and folk literature explain the general principles of shamanism as well as the details of widely varied practices. What is it like to be a shaman? Entries describe, region by region, the traits, such as sicknesses and dreams, that mark a person as a shaman, as well as the training undertaken by initiates. They detail the costumes, music, rituals, artifacts, and drugs that shamans use to achieve altered states of consciousness, communicate with spirits, travel in the spirit world, and retrieve souls. Unlike most Western books on shamanism, which focus narrowly on the individual's experience of healing and trance, Shamanism also examines the function of shamanism in society from social, political, and historical perspectives and identifies the ancient, continuous thread that connects shamanistic beliefs and rituals across cultures and millennia.

In Her Prime

Virginia Kerns,Judith K. Brown
In Her Prime Book PDF

Author : Virginia Kerns,Judith K. Brown
Publisher : University of Illinois Press
Page : 270 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 1992
Category : Cross-cultural studies
ISBN : 0252062043

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In Her Prime by Virginia Kerns,Judith K. Brown Pdf

What does it mean to be a middle-aged woman, whether in tribal and peasant societies or in the industrialized world? Typically, according to contributors to this book, it means greater freedom, sometimes including greater sexual freedom, more authority, and opportunities for social recognition. A unique collection of articles about middle-aged women in different cultures around the world, this expanded and updated volume contains two new chapters. From reviews of the first edition "Punctures a myth which has become as pervasive as it is pernicious." -- Newsweek "In traditional cultures, some women benefit from aging." -- New York Times Magazine "The range and quality of data on middle-aged women presented in one volume make this book a treasure." -- Contemporary Sociology

Historical Dictionary of the Comoro Islands

Martin Ottenheimer,Harriet Ottenheimer
Historical Dictionary of the Comoro Islands Book PDF

Author : Martin Ottenheimer,Harriet Ottenheimer
Publisher : Scarecrow Press
Page : 170 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 1994
Category : History
ISBN : 0810828197

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Historical Dictionary of the Comoro Islands by Martin Ottenheimer,Harriet Ottenheimer Pdf

Islands of stark contrasts and complex syncretisms, the comoros hold a major key to the history of the western Indian Ocean area. An invaluable resource for anyone interested in the history, economics, cultures, languages, geography, geology, or politics of the western Indian Ocean.