ISBN:
9780520918450
,
0520918452
,
0585276803
,
9780585276809
Language:
English
Pages:
Online Ressource (xix, 345 pages)
,
illustrations, maps.
Edition:
Online-Ausg.
Series Statement:
Comparative studies of health systems and medical care no. 37
Parallel Title:
Print version Possessed and the dispossessed
DDC:
306.089993
Keywords:
Sakalava (Malagasy people) Rites and ceremonies
;
Sakalava (Malagasy people) Religion
;
Sakalava (Malagasy people) Social conditions
;
Spirit possession Madagascar
;
Ambanja
;
Ancestor worship Madagascar
;
Ambanja
;
Spirit possession
;
Ancestor worship
;
Sakalava (Malagasy people) Social conditions
;
Sakalava (Malagasy people) Rites and ceremonies
;
Sakalava (Malagasy people) Religion
;
Spirit possession
;
Ancestor worship
;
Sakalava (Malagasy people) Social conditions
;
Sakalava (Malagasy people) Rites and ceremonies
;
Sakalava (Malagasy people) Religion
;
SOCIAL SCIENCE ; Anthropology ; Cultural
;
POLITICAL SCIENCE ; Public Policy ; Cultural Policy
;
SOCIAL SCIENCE ; Popular Culture
;
Ancestor worship
;
Sakalava (Malagasy people) ; Religion
;
Sakalava (Malagasy people) ; Social conditions
;
Spirit possession
;
Ambanja (Madagascar) Religious life and customs
;
Ambanja (Madagascar) Religious life and customs
;
Ambanja (Madagascar) Religious life and customs
;
Madagascar ; Ambanja
;
Electronic books
;
Electronic books
Abstract:
"This finely drawn portrait of a complex, polycultural community demonstrates that spirit possession reflects in microcosm many of the contradictions of daily life in a plantation economy. Female spirit mediums - a group heretofore assumed to be marginal - are in fact powerful and honored healers who assist their clients, the peasants and migrant laborers of Madagascar's Sambirano Valley. Lesley Sharp's wide-ranging analysis shows how spirit possession, identity, and power are intrinsically linked." "Possession by royal ancestral or tromba spirits is central to the concept of identity in Ambanja, the urban center of the Sambirano Valley. In this town there is an intense competition between insiders and outsiders. The insiders are primarily the indigenous Bemazava-Sakalava, the tera-tany or "children of the soil"; the outsiders are vahiny or "guests," labor migrants come to seek their fortunes. Yet these categories are fluid. Active participation in tromba possession confirms tera-tany status; thus migrant women who become mediums may transform their identities, becoming insiders. This action affects their daily survival, since tera-tany status confers access to arable land and local power structures." "Tromba possession also yields deeper meanings that emerge from the local knowledge of female mediums. These varied meanings are reflected in the performative aspects of healing ceremonies and are articulated through the gestures of the human body. As Sharp shows, healers' words and deeds reveal major sources of affliction, ranging from romance to urbanization and capitalist labor relations. Furthermore, spirit mediums are actively engaged in the reconstruction of indigenous history. Finally, the most powerful mediums draw on symbolic knowledge to influence the thrust of economic development in the Sambirano Valley
Abstract:
"This finely drawn portrait of a complex, polycultural community demonstrates that spirit possession reflects in microcosm many of the contradictions of daily life in a plantation economy. Female spirit mediums - a group heretofore assumed to be marginal - are in fact powerful and honored healers who assist their clients, the peasants and migrant laborers of Madagascar's Sambirano Valley. Lesley Sharp's wide-ranging analysis shows how spirit possession, identity, and power are intrinsically linked." "Possession by royal ancestral or tromba spirits is central to the concept of identity in Ambanja, the urban center of the Sambirano Valley. In this town there is an intense competition between insiders and outsiders. The insiders are primarily the indigenous Bemazava-Sakalava, the tera-tany or "children of the soil"; the outsiders are vahiny or "guests," labor migrants come to seek their fortunes. Yet these categories are fluid. Active participation in tromba possession confirms tera-tany status; thus migrant women who become mediums may transform their identities, becoming insiders. This action affects their daily survival, since tera-tany status confers access to arable land and local power structures." "Tromba possession also yields deeper meanings that emerge from the local knowledge of female mediums. These varied meanings are reflected in the performative aspects of healing ceremonies and are articulated through the gestures of the human body. As Sharp shows, healers' words and deeds reveal major sources of affliction, ranging from romance to urbanization and capitalist labor relations. Furthermore, spirit mediums are actively engaged in the reconstruction of indigenous history. Finally, the most powerful mediums draw on symbolic knowledge to influence the thrust of economic development in the Sambirano Valley
Description / Table of Contents:
1.Introduction: Possession, Identity, and Power: Theoretical and Methodological ConsiderationsCritical Approaches to the Study of AfflictionInvestigating Possession: Social Change, Marginality, and Religious ExperienceLogic and Methods of InquiryPt. I.Historic, Political-Economic, and Social Levels of Experience2.Political Economy of the SambiranoAmbanja, a Plantation CommunityEconomic and Political History of the RegionLocal Power and Reactions to Colonialism3.National and Local Factions: The Nature of Polyculturalism in AmbanjaNational Factions: Regionalism and Cultural StereotypesSocial and Cultural Divisions in AmbanjaEffects of Polyculturalism4.Tera-Tany and Vahiny: Insiders and OutsidersMigrant StoriesPatterns of Association and Means for IncorporationPt. II.Spirit Possession in the Sambirano5.World of the Spirits^Dynamics of Tromba in Daily LifePossession ExperienceOther Members of the Spirit World6.Sacred Knowledge and Local Power: Tromba and the Sambirano EconomyTromba as EthnohistoryTromba, Wage Labor, and Economic IndependenceTromba and Collective Power in the Sambirano7.Spirit Mediumship and Social IdentitySelfhood and Personhood in the Context of PossessionTurning Outsiders into Insiders: Mediums' Social Networks and Personal RelationshipsMiasa ny Tromba: Mediumship as WorkPt. III.Conflicts of Town Life8.Problems and Conflicts of Town Life: The Adult WorldMalagasy Concepts of HealingSickness and DeathWork and SuccessLove and Money, Wives and Mistresses9.Social World of ChildrenPossessed Youth of AmbanjaDisorder of a Fragmented WorldChildren and Social Change10.Exorcising the Spirits: The Alternative Therapeutics of ProtestantismSakalava Perceptions of Possession and Madness
Note:
Includes bibliographical references (pages 311-337) and index. - Description based on print version record
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