Full Description
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
Contents
List of Illustrations
Foreword
Éva Pócs and András Zempléni
Discerning Spirit Possessions: An Introduction
András Zempléni
PART I. CURRENT CONSTELLATION OF SPIRIT POSSESSION CONCEPTS
Reflecting on the Vocabulary of "Possession" in a South Indian Context
Gilles Tarabout
"Incorporation Does Not Exist": The Brazilian Rejection of the Term "Possession" and Why It Exists Nonetheless
Bettina E. Schmidt
"Figures of Return": The Catholic Church, the Holy Spirit and Embandwa Spirit Possession in Western Uganda
Heike Behrend
Ideas about Spirit Possession and Anti-Devil Practices in the Religious Life of Some Eastern Hungarian Communities
Éva Pócs
The Indigeneity of Spirit Possession: A Contribution to Comparative Theory
Mary L. Keller
PART II. TRANSITIONS AND THRESHOLDS OF CHANGE IN POSSESSION CONCEPTS AND PRACTICES
Specter, Phantom, Demon
Thomas J. Csordas
From Loudun to Dakar, and Back: Possession and Evil in Individualistic and Nonindividualistic Societies
Pierre-Henri Castel
Devil Possession in the Liturgy around the Tenth and Twelfth Centuries
Florence Chave-Mahir
East European Christian Prayers against Hailstorms, Aquatic Demons and Divine Powers in Canonical and Apocryphal Contexts
Emanuela Timotin
The Nightmare in Early Modern England
Janine Rivière
PART III. INTERACTIVE TRANSFORMATIONS OF POPULAR AND OFFICAL POSSESSION IDIOMS AND PRACTICES
Spirit (rwḥ) in the Dead Sea Scrolls
Ida Fröhlich
Domesticating the Dead: Ghosts and Spirit Possession in Late Medieval Italy
Nancy Caciola
Demonic Possession in Orthodox Imperial Russia: Official and Popular Religious Conceptions through the Prism of an 1839-1840 Case Study
Christine D. Worobec
The Healing of the Possessed in Medieval Canonization Processes
Gábor Klaniczay
The Sabbat of the Soul
Sarah Ferber
Ideas of Possession in Eighteenth-Century Hungarian Clerical Thought
Dániel Bárth
PART IV. POSSESSION AND SOCIAL REALITY: POSSESSION AS INDIGENOUS HISTIOGRAPHY
Possession, Communication and Power in Himachal Pradesh (North India)
Daniela Berti
A Day-to-Day Family Chronicle with "Personages" in Madagascar
Michèle Fiéloux and Jacques Lombard
Anthropological Spirits and Colonial Consciousness in Arabic-Speaking Sudan
Janice Boddy
From Illness to Trance: The Socialization of Spirit Possession in Senegal
András Zempléni
On Spirit Possession and Some Parallels with Reincarnation
Michael Lambek
Contributors
Name Index
Subject Index
Geographical Index
