The Social Life of Spirits

Blanes, Ruy Llera; Santo, Diana Espírito

doi:10.7208/chicago/9780226081809.001.0001

Cited by 60 publications

(13 citation statements)

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“…Increasingly, anthropology has seen spirits, objects, ghosts and ancestors not only as symbols but as social agents (e.g. Blanes & Espírito Santo 2014;Hodder 2012;papers in Krmpotich et al 2010). By asking bioarchaeology to engage theories of social agency, embodiment, and materiality, we hoped to help bring bioarchaeology into further conversation with disciplinary advancements in archaeology and elsewhere.…”

Section: Bridging Social Theory and Bioarchaeologymentioning

confidence: 98%

The Bioarchaeology of Postmortem Agency: Integrating Archaeological Theory with Human Skeletal Remains

Crandall¹,

Martin²

2014

CAJ

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Taking the social agency of dead bodies as its main theme, this introduction discusses the articles in this special section on the bioarchaeology of post-mortem agency and discusses theoretical concerns relevant to the (bio)archaeological analysis of agency. In particular, the argument that only biological living persons have social agency or impact the direction of social processes, or the decisions of others is challenged. The challenges of defining and archaeologically detecting such agency of past humans as well as socially alive entities such as ghosts, corpses, relics and totem heads are discussed. A review of the ways investigations of the agency of the dead might unify bioarchaeologists and further integrate social archaeology into future research is also presented. It is argued that a holistic anthropological approach to humans and their ability to impact their surroundings is not complete if the symbolic and material effects of the dead are not considered.

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Section: Bridging Social Theory and Bioarchaeologymentioning

confidence: 98%

The Bioarchaeology of Postmortem Agency: Integrating Archaeological Theory with Human Skeletal Remains

Crandall¹,

Martin²

2014

CAJ

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“…); namely whether the spirits, gods, demons, pagan deities, supernatural forces, and so on, experienced by participants might truly exist or not, and the extent to which such expressions should be taken as manifestations of human power relations or as either valid or skeptical declarations of sincere belief (e.g. Favret-Saada 1980;Luhrmann 1989Luhrmann , 2012Turner 1993;Greenwood 2000, Graeber 2001Lohmann 2003;Fountain 2013;Morgain 2013;Stoller and Olkes 2013;Blanes and Espírito Santo 2014; see also the Book Symposium published in this journal, Hau 2013). Related to many of these arguments is the claim that the culture-bounded ethnocentrism of the Western "rationalistic, " "empiricist, " "objectivist" orientation under which most prior anthropological research on magic had been conducted, in presupposing the nonreality of a spiritual world beyond the realm of sensory experience, has severely limited the anthropological understanding of what could be taken as a universal magical consciousness.…”

Section: Spirits and Words In Magical And Religious Practice-recent Dmentioning

confidence: 99%

Malinowski’s magical puzzles

Mosko

2014

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

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Malinowski's classic accounts of Trobriand sociality have left anthropology with many lasting conundrums. This two-part article examines two such puzzles revolving around contradictory reports over the agencies involved in magical chants (megwa). On the one hand, consistent with his pragmatic and functionalist theories of language and culture, Malinowski claimed that, although ancestral baloma and other spirits are typically invoked in most spells, those incantations' efficaciousness derived instead from the power of the enunciated words. On the other, as part of his evidence in support of Islanders' "ignorance of physiological paternity, " he conceded that spells intended to produce pregnancy in village women were instead expressly aimed at eliciting appropriate ritual actions from baloma spirits as agents of conception and birth. On the basis of ethnographic data recently gathered at Omarakana village interpreted through specific adaptations of the "New Melanesian Ethnography" and Tambiah's earlier "participation" theory of ritual practice, I argue that for Trobrianders the magical power of words is the power of spirits, and vice versa. This insight has important implications for classic and contemporary debates over the nature of "magic, " controversies over paternity and so-called "virgin birth, " theories of personhood and agency, and the character of dala "matrilineage" relations.

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“…My speculative proposal of seeing sorcery as an index stems from my previous interrogations on the 'agency of intangibles' (Blanes and Espírito Santo 2013). In that book, we discussed traces and effects of invisible and intangible objects in social life.…”

Section: Conclusion: Ndoki and Dow Jonesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Social Life of Spirits

Cited by 60 publications

References 0 publications

The Bioarchaeology of Postmortem Agency: Integrating Archaeological Theory with Human Skeletal Remains

The Bioarchaeology of Postmortem Agency: Integrating Archaeological Theory with Human Skeletal Remains

Malinowski’s magical puzzles

The Ndoki Index: Sorcery, Economy, and Invisible Operations in the Angolan Urban Sphere

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