People First: The Wa World of Spirits and Other Enemies

Fiskesjö, Magnus

doi:10.1080/00664677.2017.1315330

Cited by 5 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…While the Wa practised patrilateral cross-cousin marriage and recounted long genealogies, Lahu kinship was bilateral, 'non-lineal' with little genealogical depth (Ma 2013b, 97ff), and focused on the conjugal unit of husband and wife (Du 2002). The Wa spirit world is a pantheon of capricious spirits without a high god (Fiskesjö 2017), whereas most Lahu worshipped the high god of Guisha (aka Xeul Sha). Both groups were mobile and membership fluid; over the centuries some out siders became Wa-for instance, Han soldiers and miners (Wang 2010).…”

Section: Three Generations Of Prophetsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Grace Is Incommensurability in Commensuration

Feuchtwang

2022

The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology

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Since the seventeenth century, prophets have reappeared periodically among the Wa and Lahu ethnic groups of mainland Southeast Asia. Exceptionally talented, these men built on the syncretic cults of runaway soldiers, secretive Buddhist sects, and Christian missionaries and became leaders of millenarian movements. Typically, in the Wa language, such leaders are said to be very strong and blessed, or full of grace (bwan). The prophets might be understood as reincarnations of mythical ‘men of prowess’ or as the representatives of the peripheral situation. However, both interpretations fundamentally misread the semantics of grace in Wa and neighbouring languages: a kind of cunning and strength that is so radical that it cannot be measured or mediated. Grace, here, is neither a ‘mediative concept’ (as Pitt-Rivers suggested), nor is it the consequence of Christian conversion. Instead, grace is the incommensurability that emerges at the margin of a world that is being measured.

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Section: Three Generations Of Prophetsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Grace Is Incommensurability in Commensuration

Feuchtwang

2022

The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology

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“…In the past, the ‘moral economy’ of Wa communities included humans, ancestors, spirits and guardians (Fiskesjö ). Capricious spirits had to be respected in everyday life, and the spirit world regulated actual economic behaviour: a hunter who killed too much and didn’t invoke the master spirits of the prey, or didn’t share prey with co‐hunters or relatives, would provoke misfortune.…”

Section: The Peasant Economymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…What distinguishes these sacrifices clearly from others, in particular domestic sacrifice, is that the primary sacrificial victim here was a life‐threatening enemy of the human community. The main purpose of the sacrifice is therefore to convert a life‐threatening force into something else, that is, it ‘has to do with capturing, harnessing and deploying [the] force of the enemy Other’ (Fiskesjö : 324).…”

Section: The Peasant Economymentioning

confidence: 99%

The moral economy of militarism: peasant economy, military state and Chinese capitalism in the Wa State of Myanmar

Feuchtwang¹

2020

Soc Anthropol

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If the moral economies of underprivileged communities are defined in opposition to the rationality of political economy, it is easy to overlook the moral justifications of market and state. War economies and military states, however, force us to look at the nodes of moral and economic action that connect the powerful and the powerless. The Wa State of Myanmar, a de‐facto state governed by an insurgent army, represents the making of such a moral economy of militarism. Examples from the peasant economy, the military state and Chinese capitalism demonstrate the articulation of different work ethics, moral frameworks and economic arrangements. Moral and economic values are combined specifically in codes of honour, military discipline and raison d’état, that is, the value entanglements that are at the core of the moral economy of militarism.

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“… 9 For Wa concepts of healthcare, see Fiskesjö 2017. Other than for their health, people in Wa State also care for machines and plants, for instance.…”

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confidence: 99%

Sovereignty as Care: Acquaintances, Mutuality, and Scale in the Wa State of Myanmar

Feuchtwang

2022

Comp Stud Soc Hist

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Sovereignty always relies on a double movement of violence and care. It requires the power to exercise violence as well as the capacity to care, to protect, and to nourish. In the footsteps of Foucault and Agamben, numerous scholars have rediscovered the same paradox in philosophical and legal texts. Anthropologists writing about informal and practical sovereignty pay attention to violence, but sometimes ignore the importance of care for the exercise of sovereignty. Against such tendencies to focus on texts and on violence, this article deals with sovereignty as care. The concrete examples are the relationships of care between commanders, soldiers, and villagers in the Wa State of Myanmar, a de-facto state governed by an insurgent army. In the absence of an effective government bureaucracy, popular sovereignty in this military state relies on a particular logic of personal relations, in which care is central. Subordinates have to care about leaders, whereas leaders are supposed to care for subordinates. Care provides the balance and foil for the exercise of violence, and both are necessary for the exercise of sovereignty. The combination of violence and care in personal relations is scaled up to create “the people” as the subject and object of sovereignty. The article describes the logic of personal relations that allows for the exercise of popular sovereignty in the Wa State and elsewhere.

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People First: The Wa World of Spirits and Other Enemies

Cited by 5 publications

References 25 publications

Grace Is Incommensurability in Commensuration

Grace Is Incommensurability in Commensuration

The moral economy of militarism: peasant economy, military state and Chinese capitalism in the Wa State of Myanmar

Sovereignty as Care: Acquaintances, Mutuality, and Scale in the Wa State of Myanmar

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