'SELFING': Contact, Magic and the Constituion of Personhood

'SELFING': Contact, Magic and the Constituion of Personhood

This study will explore processes of ‘Selfing' and ‘Othering' in contexts of ‘contact' between social actors. Actors here are defined as agents or entities with capacity to exert ‘effects' or changes in the world, which can as much be spirits and gods, persons and collectives, as national governments, material cultures and other bodies. Through a comparative case study approach, this project will focus on the different kinds of ‘ontological work' through which the forms and boundaries of persons (where ‘person' is subject to ethnographic examination) are cultivated, maintained, transformed, or subverted. Anthropological studies dealing with issues of transnationalism, globalisation and migration, for instance, have demonstrated that social contact often generates situations in which social ‘entities' seen in variable dimensions - in terms of gender, individuals, groups, classes, nations, etc. - can cohabitate in a same locale while pertaining separated social lives, cultures and identities (Pina-Cabral 2002). In such contexts, Selves and Others seem to constitute each other as what Paul Ottino (1986) called ‘intimate strangers' whose interrelation seems crucial for the maintenance of identity. While processes of Selfing and Othering have been abundantly described in the academic literature (Barth 1970, Fabian 2006) few anthropologists have attempted to explain what precisely makes such processes so successful in human society, if we define ‘success' as the ability to co-exist somehow, in this sense, in a multicultural or multiethnic setting. However, by ‘contact', we refer not merely to intercultural, racial, or ethnic interfaces; we wish to extend its meaning from the realm of the sociological to that of the cosmological, in which physicality and embodiment are nevertheless implied. Spirit possession is one powerful example of such forms of contact; forms of initiative travel to and through spaces ascribed with mythical qualities (e.g. the ‘West' for Young middle class Russians) or the symbolic anthropophagy of Western strangers as part of hospitality practices in Madagascar are other pertinent examples.

 

Project 'SELFING': Contact, Magic and the Constituion of Personhood - PTDC/CS-ANT/114825/2009 - Financed by FCT - Principal Contractor: Centro em Rede de Investigação em Antropologia (CRIA)

Estatuto: 
Participant entity
Financed: 
Yes
Entidades: 
Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia
Keywords: 

Magic,

Social contac,

Self-Other relations,

Social phenomenology

This study will explore processes of ‘Selfing' and ‘Othering' in contexts of ‘contact' between social actors. Actors here are defined as agents or entities with capacity to exert ‘effects' or changes in the world, which can as much be spirits and gods, persons and collectives, as national governments, material cultures and other bodies. Through a comparative case study approach, this project will focus on the different kinds of ‘ontological work' through which the forms and boundaries of persons (where ‘person' is subject to ethnographic examination) are cultivated, maintained, transformed, or subverted. Anthropological studies dealing with issues of transnationalism, globalisation and migration, for instance, have demonstrated that social contact often generates situations in which social ‘entities' seen in variable dimensions - in terms of gender, individuals, groups, classes, nations, etc. - can cohabitate in a same locale while pertaining separated social lives, cultures and identities (Pina-Cabral 2002). In such contexts, Selves and Others seem to constitute each other as what Paul Ottino (1986) called ‘intimate strangers' whose interrelation seems crucial for the maintenance of identity. While processes of Selfing and Othering have been abundantly described in the academic literature (Barth 1970, Fabian 2006) few anthropologists have attempted to explain what precisely makes such processes so successful in human society, if we define ‘success' as the ability to co-exist somehow, in this sense, in a multicultural or multiethnic setting. However, by ‘contact', we refer not merely to intercultural, racial, or ethnic interfaces; we wish to extend its meaning from the realm of the sociological to that of the cosmological, in which physicality and embodiment are nevertheless implied. Spirit possession is one powerful example of such forms of contact; forms of initiative travel to and through spaces ascribed with mythical qualities (e.g. the ‘West' for Young middle class Russians) or the symbolic anthropophagy of Western strangers as part of hospitality practices in Madagascar are other pertinent examples.

 

Project 'SELFING': Contact, Magic and the Constituion of Personhood - PTDC/CS-ANT/114825/2009 - Financed by FCT - Principal Contractor: Centro em Rede de Investigação em Antropologia (CRIA)

Objectivos: 
<p>The project will be implemented through a comparative case study approach with ethnographic investigations in Madagascar (on hospitality practice), Cuba (on spirit possession), and Russia (on initiative travel). A forth locale and topic will be determined by the specialisation of a postdoctoral researcher employed by the project. The project researchers, David Picard, Diana Espírito Santo and Dennis Zuev all have PhDs in relevant disciplines and several years of ethnographic fieldwork experience. The different investigations will be framed by a common set of objectives and related methodological strategies. Respective research objectives are (a) the study of the ‘ontological work' transforming Selfhood and Otherhood; (b) practices of contact, assimilation and transformation, and (c) the historicity of culturally specific study contexts. The project will include prolonged periods of ethnographic fieldwork in Cuba, Madagascar and Russia. Methods to be used to gather data are direct ethnographic observation, ethno-linguistic and kinship analysis, interviews and historical archive work. The project will be implemented over a period of three years with two intermediate workshops and a final conference. It involves three external consultants, Saskia Cousin (LAIOS-EHESS), Pamila Gupta (WISER-Witwatersrand) and Simone Abram (CTCC). A detailed outline of data and study methods and the time-line of the project can be found in the main part of this proposal. </p>
State of the art: 
<p>In anthropology, forms of &lsquo;social' contact have been approached through the observation of processes through which &lsquo;selves' are &lsquo;othered' in that they are ascribed alien qualities and potentially dangerous magical powers that invariably justify their submission, repression and social containment on the part of dominant powers (Said 1979, Tambiah 1990, Palmi&eacute; 2002, Graeber 2007). Analyses of accusations of witchcraft and sorcery in particular political climates (Geschiere 1997), and of discourses that render religious activity incompatible with modernity are one example of the observations produced through this perspective. In other contexts, anthropologists have analysed &lsquo;otherness' as that which is assimilated and reincorporated to &lsquo;self' (be it a ritual group or nation) through its exposure to ritualised violence, possession and symbolic anthropophagy (Levi-Strauss 1990, Bloch 1992, Taussig 1993, Sahlins 2005). An emphasis on the annihilation of &lsquo;difference' through such processes is evident, politically, intergenerationally, and so forth. But analytically, these approaches have also tended to highlight social function over an understanding of cosmology proper, and therefore of the social logic that guides this assimilation or reincorporation. One example is anthropological treatments of spirit possession cults (Lewis, 1977), which tend to assume an a priori definition of both &lsquo;self' and &lsquo;other', thus obscuring the ontological dimensions of &lsquo;contact'. </p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>This project therefore suggests to ontologically ground &lsquo;contact' and forms of &lsquo;selfing' and &lsquo;othering in terms of ongoing and mutually constitutive processes. It builds on earlier work. Picard's study on Western tourism and environmental conservation shows how forms of modern travel, conservation, gardening, and scientific observation allow social actors to incorporate powers and qualities associated with nature. Culture and nature, and by that means the modernist idea of historic time, thus appear not to be posed in separated terms, but as mutually constitutive. Through her work on spirit possession in Cuba, Esp&iacute;rito Santo argues that spiritist &lsquo;selves' are not just vehicles for knowledge but constituted on knowledge, in as much as the medium's person is framed as emerging from a continuous web of knowledge relations constructed over time with her spirits. In a different context, Zuev's work on free travelling studies how forms of spatial mobility transform forms of personhood among Eastern European youth travellers, namely by enabling the emancipation of adulthood. What is common to these works is that the moral entity of personhood appears immersed in the environment and in the bodies which they permeate and establish relations with. The works thus go beyond conceptions of Selves and Others as socially constructed, fixed and ontologically separated &lsquo;entities' - as suggested by earlier studies e.g. on gender (de Bouvoir 1953), class (Wallerstein 2004), religious (Durkheim [1915]) and postcolonial relations (Said 1979).</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Many of these earlier studies explain the discursive and social construction of Selves and Others as growing out of, and reflecting, the hierarchies and power relations between separated, &lsquo;dominant' and &lsquo;dominated' &lsquo;entities'. However, if the presumed &lsquo;dominated' (e.g. women; the Orient; the working class; global peripheries) is thought to inhabit and &lsquo;fetishize' (Pietz 1985) Self-conceptions formulated and socially institutionalised by the &lsquo;dominant' (e.g. men; the Occident; global cores), both &lsquo;entities' must be seen as mutually constitutive. A range of studies on colonial and postcolonial contact emphasize the relative degree of agency &lsquo;dominated' social entities have to chose from external models, technologies, or objects, and resignify these in terms of their own signifying practices. Ortiz ([1947]) coined here the term of &lsquo;transculturation'; others, translating linguistic concepts into the general field of social contact, mobilised concepts such as syncretism (Bastide 2003), creolisation (Hannerz 1987) or hybridization. de Pina-Cabral (2002) stressed the idea of &lsquo;equivocal compatibilities' governing relations of selfhood in Macau and Palmi&eacute; (2008) considered &lsquo;transatlantic tradition and modernity' as part of a same realm of Atlantic &lsquo;history'. However, while providing good models to understand the consequences of contact, these approaches appear to remain short of proposing a convincing model to describe the pragmatics of processes of &lsquo;selfing' and &lsquo;othering' in such contexts. </p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>The idea underlying this project is study such processes through a re-reading of the classical anthropological concept of &lsquo;magic'. In classical anthropology, magic has commonly been considered an immaterial quality or power social actors believed able to effect the world (Frazer 1911, Evans-Pritchard 1972, Malinowski 1945, Hubert &amp; Mauss 1902). For most classical authors, forms of magical thinking were ontologically grounded in beliefs that allowed social actors both to explain and to actively influence cause-effect relations. For Malinowski (1945), and later Taussig (1993), magic pertains to social agents - spirits, qualities embodied in objects, people, places, words, forms - that can passively effect a person, but also being actively invoked to fulfill specific requests or objectives. If magic is a priori seen here as being conceived of in terms an outside agent, an Other, it becomes constitutive of selfhood where the qualities and &lsquo;character' of this agent are incorporated by and to the Self - be it at the level of individuals, groups, or nations (Csordas, 1997, Neiburg &amp; Goldman 1998, Jackson 1998, Meyer &amp; Pels 2003, Sahlins 2005, Graeber 2007). However, we see magic here as a dynamic concept mobilized and negotiated in the contact between different social agents. It becomes one of the main currencies of the ontological work of selving and othering, and thus enables a dynamic approach to studies of selfhood constitution. </p>
Parceria: 
Unintegrated
Dennis Zuev
Coordenador Geral 
David Picard
Coordenador ICS 
Referência externa 
PROJ9/2011
Start Date: 
01/09/2010
End Date: 
01/08/2013
Duração: 
35 meses
Closed