&nbsp; <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>