Suomen Antropologi Volume 34, 1/2009
Articles
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AUTUMN LECTURE: What are the Social Relations that Make a Set of Human Groups and Individuals a Society?
Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society Volume 34(1) 2009: 5-18
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“My House is Protected by a Dragon”: White South Africans, magic and sacred spaces
Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society Volume 34(1) 2009: 19-41
Abstract
Abstract Until the end of apartheid, White South Africans were solely presented as Christians, with other religious practices all but forbidden to them. Since the negotiated revolution of 1994, the new liberal constitution has guaranteed religious freedom to all, with the global New Religious Movements gaining popularity. Tens of thousands of White South Africans have seized the opportunity to explore charismatic churches, New Age-practices as well as traditional African religions, while the popularity of traditional Christianity has dropped. The informants of this research are White South Africans from Cape Town, neopagans who practice Wiccan witchcraft and sangomas who practice traditional African religion. In South Africa, Whites are seldom regarded as practitioners of witchcraft or magic. Yet there are thousands of Whites who believe in and practice both, and create their own sacred spaces within the urban spaces which were previously subjected to rules and regulations of racialised social engineering. This article examines how witchcraft, magic and new global religions meet in the conjunctions of global and local, where new concerns arise and where new heterotopias and spatial practices are established as answers to White neopagans’ anxieties about spiritual insecurity and racial boundaries. The places where these sacred urban spaces are created are at homes, in public spaces, and on the Internet.
Keywords African religion, Cape Town, magic, sacred spaces, Wicca, witchcraft
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Food and Bodily Fabrication: An alimentary approach to personhood in Papua New Guinea
Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society Volume 34(1) 2009: 42-61
Abstract
Abstract This paper exposes the integral role of food within the production of social configurations and the persons who constitute them in Papua New Guinea (PNG). The critical appraisal of current perspectives on food in PNG reveals the necessity of providing a theoretical framework that allows its exchange and consumption to be analysed simultaneously. In order to achieve this, a reconceptualisation of the body as fabricated is undertaken, which in turn, evokes recent attempts to translate ‘ontological perspectivism’ into Melanesia. Drawing upon this theoretical manoeuvre, an ontologically significant relationship is elucidated between the ingestion of food, bodily transformation, and the production of different ‘types’ or ‘kinds’ of person in PNG. The reanalysis of data from existing ethnography reveals how persons throughout this region manipulate both external and internal relations through the exchange and consumption of food in order to activate crucial differentiations between persons. These arguments suggest that food should be elevated as a critical focus in anthropological studies of social processes in PNG, specifically those concerned with the activation of personhood.
Keywords bodily transformation, food, ontological perspectivism, personhood, social processes
Research Reports
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The Witch, the Zombie and the Power of Jesus: A trinity of spiritual warfare
Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society Volume 34(1) 2009: 70-83
Abstract
The report discusses neo-Pentecostal gospel, demonology and deliverance in the context of social transformations and economic reforms in Tanzania, via a detailed case-study of a single church in Dar es Salaam—the Glory of Christ Tanzania Church—which displays the conjuncture of a global religion with elements of local ontology such as witchcraft and zombies. It is proposed that the Pentacostal- Charismatic gospel provides the interpretative frame to explain experience of social and economic affliction that is deeply gendered. Further, the deliverance practices are suggested to free the individual believer from the occult forces associated with kinship relations.
Keywords African Pentecostalism, zombie witchcraft
Other Material
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INTERVIEW WITH MAURICE GODELIER: From Imaginary Realities to Social Realities
Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society Volume 34(1) 2009: 62-69
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FORUM: Deconstructing Dumont's India
Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society Volume 34(1) 2009: 84-93
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BOOK REVIEWS - see under 'additional material' below
Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society Volume 34(1) 2009: 94-104
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NEWS: Exploring Normative Pluralism
Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society Volume 34(1) 2009: 105-106