Spirit Possession : : Multidisciplinary Approaches to a Worldwide Phenomenon / / ed. by András Zempléni, Éva Pócs.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Central European University Press eBook-Package 2022
• MitwirkendeR: Behrend, Heike,; Berti, Daniela,; Boddy, Janice,; Bárth, Dániel,; Caciola, Nancy,; Castel, Pierre-Henri,; Chave-Mahir, Florence,; Csordas, Thomas J.,; Ferber, Sarah,; Fiéloux, Michèle,; Fröhlich, Ida,; Keller, Mary L.,; Klaniczay, Gábor,; Lambek, Michael,; Lombard, Jacques,; Pócs, Éva,; Rivière, Janine,; Schmidt, Bettina E.,; Tarabout, Gilles,; Timotin, Emanuela,; Worobec, Christine D.,; Zempléni, András,
• HerausgeberIn: Pócs, Éva,; Zempléni, András,
• Place / Publishing House: Budapest ;, New York : : Central European University Press, , [2022]; ©2022
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (556 p.)

Possession, a seemingly irrational phenomenon, has posed challenges to generations of scholars rooted in Western notions of body-soul dualism, self and personhood, and a whole set of presuppositions inherited from Christian models of possession that was “good” or “bad.” The authors of the essays in this book present a new and more promising approach. They conceive spirit possession as a form of communication, of expressivity, of culturally defined behavior that should be understood in the context of local, vernacular theories and empiric reflections. With the aim of reformulating the comparative anthropology of spirit possession, the editors have opened corridors between previously separate areas of research. Together, anthropologists and historians working on several historical periods and in different European, African, South American, and Asian cultural areas attempt to redefine the very concept of possession, freeing it from the Western notion of the self and more clearly delineating it from related matters such as witchcraft, devotion, or mysticism. The book also provides an overview of new research directions, including novel methods of participant observation and approaches to spirit possession as indigenous historiography

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Table of Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Foreword -- 1 Discerning Spirit Possessions -- Part I. Current Constellations of Spirit Possession Concepts -- 2 Reflecting on the Vocabulary of “Possession” in a South Indian Context -- 3 “Incorporation Does Not Exist” -- 4 “Figures of Return” -- 5 Ideas about Spirit Possession and Anti-Devil Practices in the Religious Life of Some Eastern Hungarian Communities -- 6 The Indigeneity of Spirit Possession -- Part II. Transitions and Thresholds of Change in Possession Concepts and Practices -- 7 Specter, Phantom, Demon -- 8 From Loudun to Dakar, and Back -- 9 Devil Possession in the Liturgy around the Tenth and Twelfth Centuries -- 10 East European Christian Prayers against Hailstorms -- 11 The Nightmare in Early Modern England -- Part III. Interactive Transformations of Popular and Official Possession Idioms and Practices -- 12 Spirit (rwḥ) in the Dead Sea Scrolls -- 13 Domesticating the Dead -- 14 Demonic Possession in Orthodox Imperial Russia -- 15 The Healing of the Possessed in Medieval Canonization Processes -- 16 The Sabbat of the Soul -- 17 Ideas of Possession in Eighteenth- Century Hungarian Clerical Thought -- Part IV. Possession and Social Reality: Possession as Indigenous Historiography -- 18 Possession, Communication and Power in Himachal Pradesh (North India) -- 19 A Day-to-Day Family Chronicle with “Personages” in Madagascar -- 20 Anthropological Spirits and Colonial Consciousness in Arabic- Speaking Sudan -- 21 From Illness to Trance -- 22 On Spirit Possession and Some Parallels with Reincarnation -- Contributors -- Name Index -- Subject Index -- Geographical Index