EthnosApril 17, 2026Casper Bruun Jensen, Sarah Milne, A Blok1 citation
The Cambodian regime depends on large-scale extraction of natural resources. However, the regime also acknowledges that Cambodian territories are potent landscapes protected by extra-human beings. Hence, it must accomplish seemingly contradictory objectives: pleasing the land-protectors while ruining the lands they protect. We characterise this effort as Cambodia’s cosmopolitical fix. To...
Moving among the laboratory, the Brazilian Amazon, and herbaria, this article cultivates a theoretical grafting of phytocommunicable strategies that stem from human interactions with ayahuasca and Arabidopsis, two plants that appear – at least geographically – worlds apart. Ayahuasca, a psychedelic Amazonian vine, represents the 'Philosopher Plant', guiding imbibers to greater self-knowledge...
ABSTRACT This article discusses the exorcism of Protestant spirits from Ethiopian Orthodox hosts in Addis Ababa. This controversial ritual is animated by injunctions to draw essential distinctions and boundaries between Protestantism and Orthodoxy, at a time of religious liberalisation. The expulsion of Protestant spirits provides an occasion to reaffirm the centrality of local Orthodoxy to...
In Rastafari smoking herbs (cannabis) and tobacco is central to spiritual practices, including grounding (the process of initiation into Rastafari) and reasoning (ritual discussions). This paper presents ethnographic research with Rastafari smokers in England. It shows that smoking is considered a ‘professional’ activity that communicates dedication to the movement, aids in learning different...
Examining the varied reactions of people to the blood-stained wrapper of a spirit devotee during a bori possession ceremony in Niger, I explore how dirt and disgust are more complex than neat structuralist models of purity and pollution often used to explain them. Understanding menstrual blood in situational terms, and looking at the reactions as shaped more about complex dimensions of agency...