American Ethnologist
July 5, 2011
Michael Winkelman
Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon . Stephan V. Beyer . Albuquerque : University of New Mexico Press , 2009 . 544 pp . Beyer's book developed from trips to the Amazon out of an interest in jungle survival that extended to a personal absorption with Amazonian spirituality. Although purportedly about “mestizo shamanism of the upper Amazon” (p. xi), it covers a...
American Ethnologist
February 1, 2007
Manduhai Buyandelgeriyn
82 citations
In this article, I explore the proliferation of previously suppressed shamanic practices among ethnic Buryats in Mongolia after the collapse of socialism in 1990. Contrary to the Buryats' expectation that shamanism would solve the uncertainties brought about by the market economy, it has created additional spiritual uncertainties. As skeptical Buryats repeatedly propitiate their angry origin...
American Ethnologist
August 1, 2001
Murphy Halliburton
Spirit Possession: Modernity and Power in Africa. Heike Behrend and Ute Luig. eds. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999. vi. 170 pp., figures, photographs, index.
American Ethnologist
November 1, 1998
Shane Greene
In this article I juxtapose and integrate three distinct but interrelated lines of analysis: (1) a critique of “development” with respect to its (misconceptions of ethnomedicines as epistemologically and practically (that is, culturally) static; (2) an explication of how shamanic curing epitomizes such perceived stasis; and (3) an ethnographic analysis of a specific shamanic session (originally...
American Ethnologist
May 1, 1998
Michael Lambek
Using a broadly Aristotelian framework I propose poetic form as a means for distinguishing historicities. I analyze Sakalava performances of possession by royal ancestors as the creative production of a kind of history, distinguish it from a dominant occidental model of history, and elaborate the chronotope on which it is based and the heteroglossia and historical consciousness it enables. I...
American Ethnologist
February 1, 1998
Murray Last
Embodying Colonial Memories: Spirit Possession, Power, and the Hauka In West Africa. Paul Stoller. London and New York: Routledge, 1995. xii. 226 pp., photographs, notes, references, index.
American Ethnologist
February 1, 1997
Michael C. Peletz
Knowledge and Practice in Mayotte: Local Discourses of Islam, Sorcery, and Spirit Possession. MICHAEL LAMBEK. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993. xxx + 468 pp., photographs, notes, glossary, references, index.
American Ethnologist
November 1, 1995
Dolores J. Shapiro
21 citations
In this article I propose to document a symbolic system in northeastern Brazil in which different spirit possession group types assign various meanings to four symbols—blood, oil, honey, and water—that all these groups engage in their religious beliefs or ritual practices. All the groups rely on these symbols either to represent or to disavow an ideology that is in turn correlated with a...
American Ethnologist
November 1, 1995
Adeline Masquelier
16 citations
In this article I explore the semantics of sweetness among the Hausaphone Mawri of Niger. I show how the various configurations of sweetness meaningfully unify the contexts of prostitution, spirit possession, and obstetrics for some Mawri struggling to make sense of changing social realities. These interrelated experiences of production and reproduction in turn provide an idiom for expressing...
American Ethnologist
August 1, 1994
J. Lorand Matory
60 citations
Possession religions have frequently been treated as women's means to redress their subordination. Like many other religions so discussed, the Òyóo‐Yorùbá worship of Sàngó and Yem⊙ja endures in a predominantly Muslim region. The following discussion will illustrate that such religions, though highly gendered in their symbolism and personnel, need not redress the interests of women or of the...
American Ethnologist
November 1, 1988
Michael Lambek
When the identities of the spirits that possess particular individuals in communities of Malagasy speakers in Mayotte are taken into account, it becomes evident that spirits are frequently passed on from generation to generation and thus associated, though not exclusively, with particular families. The paper presents a number of case studies of spirit succession, attempting to draw out some of...
American Ethnologist
August 1, 1988
Salvatore Cucchiari
39 citations
This paper examines the phenomenological and sociocultural character of Sicilian Pentecostal conversion and compares this transformational experience to that offered by traditional Sicilian shamanic practice. The approach to religious conversion advocated here is critical of the family of approaches called “deprivation‐ideology” approach and features a view of conversion that relies on the...
American Ethnologist
February 1, 1988
Janice Boddy
159 citations
Examination of cultural and social factors surrounding zar spirit possession diagnoses in Northern Sudan suggests that a major issue addressed by the cult is the cultural overdetermination of women's selfhood. Circumcision and infibulation operate to establish in women a sense of self congruent with the cultural image of woman as reproducer. When experiences and expectations fail to mesh, some...
American Ethnologist
August 1, 1983
Richard Noll
Shamanism and schizophrenia are examined as altered states of consciousness. A state‐specific approach to the phenomenology of these altered states is employed to demonstrate that the existence in the anthropological literature of the “schizophrenia metaphor” of shamanism and its altered states is untenable. A current psychiatric diagnostic manual is utilized to show that significant...
American Ethnologist
November 1, 1981
S. E. Ackerman, Raymond L. M. Lee
This study is concerned with how diverse definitions of spirit possession events in a factory are organized into predictable equivalence structures. A model of communication is utilized to show how information about possession is exchanged through reciprocal role behaviors at the primary level and through interpretive accounts at the secondary level. This approach emphasizes the complex...