Paper short abstract:

Poor and unemployed youth in rural South Africa blame witches for killing and resurrecting people known as zombies to engage in economic activities to their detriment. This paper examines the realities and the impact of zombies in development in South Africa.

Paper long abstract:

The pervasiveness of witchcraft beliefs and practice in Africa seems to have no bounds. It serves as explanatory cause for any unexplained fortune or misfortune in many arenas. Such is the case of the zombies in rural economy of South Africa; where extreme poor and unemployed youth blame witches for killing and resurrecting people to engage in economic activities to their detriment. I use this case to argue that witchcraft discourses serve as a "cap" on the extent to which development can take place in Africa. This proposition is made with reference to the fact that almost every African is overtly or covertly afraid of being the target of an attack or being victimised as a witch if he/she falls outside of the normative. Most Africans always find their state of condition in the relation to the external locus of control whether real/imagined. If it is not government, colonialism, slave trade, neighbour, brother, sister, uncle, then it ultimately that old woman, the "witch". In this context, it seems Africans deny the role of self-agency as a locus of control in their personal predicaments- irrespective of what they do, what others perceive of him/her matters. It is based on foregoing that the paper examines the position of the zombie in the economic engagement in rural South Africa, how real and to what extent does it impact development?

Paper short abstract:

The Jewish Chasidic "hitbodedut" practice - secluded meditative prayer - is explored from the perspective of psychoanalytic object relations theory, conceiving of the practice as a literal "meeting" of the internal God object. Important implications for anthropology are discussed.

Paper long abstract:

The remarkable explanatory power of psychoanalysis is based on its understanding of the human personality as undergoing development and transformation, the most essential domain of which is the relationship between self and other. Object relations theory, an important subfield within psychoanalysis, proposes that the counterpart of each such relationship - parent, teddy bear, friend, enemy, country, the breast, etc. - is represented by an intrapsychic object. The object relational contribution to bridge-building between psychoanalysis and religion has been to posit a God object that the ego enters into relationship with, undergoing development and transformation over time.

Following the psychoanalytic approach to anthropology, I apply such ideas to illuminate various aspects of the Breslov Jewish Chasidic group in Safed, northern Israel. Based on material collected from over a year of ethnographic work, I seek to give an object relational perspective on the practice of "hitbodedut" - secluded meditative prayer, involving the practitioner engaging in a vocalised conversation with God as with an ordinary human being.

The specific form that the conversation takes is dependent on the specifics of the practitioner's relationship with their God object. The entire practice, therefore, may be understood as the practitioner literally invoking and meeting that God object. The importance of this material lies in its illustration of the explanatory power of the psychoanalytic approach to anthropology.

Paper short abstract:

This paper will examine the complex and nuanced reasons for how and why women disclose personal experiences and beliefs about witchcraft. Analysis of ritual experiences through a phenomenological lens reveals how, in rituals, participants embody the witch.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will examine the complex and nuanced reasons for how and why women disclose personal experiences and beliefs about witchcraft. Deriving from data collected in both formal and informal witchcraft rituals and social activities, this paper will explore the ways in which witches both mediate and adjust the transparency of their beliefs. This mediation can involve 'coming out of the broom closet', or being open about one's witch status rather than secretive. It is an intangible and unnamed quality, in which being witch is integrated into their belief systems, consciousness and everyday practices; thus, it becomes how they live and who they are, that is: witch. This process of becoming and integration involves doing the deep work, which is described as the work one does over a lifetime. Deep work can include private and public rituals. Witches phenomenologically experience embodiment and bodily experiences through their participation in rituals. In rituals the boundaries between the self and the world become fluid. Analysing this through a phenomenological lens reveals how, in rituals, participants embody being witch through this fluidity. What I will demonstrate in this paper is how they disclose experiences of 'coming out of the broom closet' as a spectrum, depending on how much they trust an individual or group and their correspondence of levels of understanding.

Paper short abstract:

Nuer prophecies have been deeply related to people’s experience of the past and their hope for the future. This paper explores how the Nuer people in post-civil war South Sudan and a fieldworker (re)shape and share their realms of experience by encountering the events of ‘prophecy-fulfillment’.

Paper long abstract:

Nuer prophecies have been deeply related to people's past experience and their hope for the future. In Nuer society today, some famous prophecies are not regarded as mere 'traditional' beliefs. These prophecies have been spread via modern technology, through practices of Christians, as well as miraculous events that took place around the time of independence of the new nation, South Sudan. In one such case, an anthropologist from the East was recognized as a 'prophecy-fulfillment' of the past and given a name 'Nyajal Ngundeng' that indicates 'the daughter of a prophet'. She was also said to be the person who brought them a new nation through the referendum movement. By this time, she had started to doubt her 'rationality' before coming to realize her 'new' version of 'reality' alongside her 'actual' experience. Several studies have suggested that epiphany such as prophecy, divination, possession and dreams of Greater Sudan clarify the people's ways of coping with uncertainty in the current insecurities, or contact with 'modernity'. T. O. Beidelman who studied myth and legacy in East African societies has further suggested the idea of a 'moral imagination' that shapes people's view of themselves and elucidates other versions of people's 'experiences' and 'realities' including that of the anthropologist. By presenting cases that occurred in my 20 months of field-work, this paper explores how the Nuer people and an anthropologist (re)shape and share their new realms of experience without 'knowing' prophecies, but rather by encountering events of 'prophecy-fulfillment' with their/our moral imaginations.

Paper short abstract:

There has been a growing body of anthropological literature which endeavours to take seriously other peoples' beliefs. Here I discuss my research with John of God, a Brazilian healer. I argue that we must engage with extraordinary experiences to decolonise anthropology.

Paper long abstract:

There has been a growing body of anthropological literature which endeavours to take seriously other peoples' beliefs, religious practices and cosmology and by doing so decolonise anthropology. Many researchers have documented the efficacy of rituals, sacred words, and incantations they encountered (and sometimes learned) in the field. Here I follow the insights of experiential anthropology, anthropology of humanism and of consciousness to challenge the positivist Cartesian dichotomies of supernatural/natural, unreal/real, and the West/the Rest, which have constituted our discipline. I do so by discussing my fieldwork research with Western followers of John of God, a Brazilian Spiritist healer who has become famous worldwide by performing physical surgeries in which he cuts people open, scrape their eyes with a kitchen knife, or inserts surgical scissors deep in their noses, all without asepsis or anaesthetics. I argue that we should think the supernatural as an extension of the natural and refrain from explaining it through our Western Enlightenment heritage. We must engage with and report extraordinary experiences in the field in order not only to understand the Other, but importantly to decolonise anthropology.

Paper short abstract:

Taboos that ‘pull us’ into focus: two ontological understandings of photographs. Talismanically, the imprint – or a photograph – has the power to possess, calling into question the protocols and taboos when the experiential is translated into scientific data.

Paper long abstract:

Walter Benjamin described photography as the optical unconscious and the photographer a descendent of the 'haruspice.' Conversely, the transmission of light in alchemically transfixing the life force of the subject-object, conjured a talismanic fear that the person's spirit could be possessed. On examining the German anthropological photographs of Ngarinyin Wanjina cave sites in the North West Kimberley, I review Andreas Lommel's 1938 'degenerative' theories of a 'dying medicine man.' His analysis referred to as 'Gotterdammerung mythology' failed to recognize Ngarinyin ontology's where the life force of humans and non-humans together are contingent to the reincarnation principles of keeping the Wanjina alive. The imprint of the Wanjina in the cave constitutes a space of encounter where male genealogies embody religious belief. A strange ontological twist with photography emerges as families talismanically replicate the Wanjina imprint, whereas Lommel's scientific view fossilizes the Wanjina as 'art.' Lommel's theories parallel the ontology of mechanical reproduction invoking 'what-has-been.' Like the haruspice, Lommel blasphemously dwells within the Wanjina cave in the presence of the ochre covered bones. On viewing the imprint within the cave, the rock hang in the photo strangely morphs into a skull, making visible what descendants often fearfully describe as a space of encounter where 'spirits can take us away.' This response reflects the illogical presence of Lommel in the cave. Talismanically, the imprint - or a photograph - has the power to possess, calling into question the protocols and taboos when the experiential is translated into scientific data. As Benjamin stated: 'Even the dead are not safe'.

Paper short abstract:

The western re-encounter with psychoactive ‘Teacher Plants’ in the last decades has produced a reassessment of human history and human culture. In this paper, which draws on fieldwork in Australia and the Amazon, I sketch out this argument and consider its implications for philosophical anthropology.

Paper long abstract:

In the Peruvian mestizo shamanistic tradition, psychoactive plants are often referred to as 'Plantas Maestras', 'Teacher Plants'. This term has been taken up by many contemporary western users of the plants, and neatly encapsulates a series of propositions at the centre of a revisionist understanding of history hotly discussed in these circles.

The most common form of the argument has several components: a) that psychoactive plants (and to a lesser degree animals), reliably produce noetic and spiritual experiences of great power; b) that in the depths of prehistory these experiences probably facilitated the divergence of homo sapiens from the other hominids; c) that we are heirs to a long and often embattled history (whether shamanic, mystical, pagan or esoteric), of the use of these psychoactives in numerous cultures; d) that today, as the techno-capitalist form of global culture decimates the planet, it is only in learning from these plant teachers, and/or their modern synthetic cousins, that humans can collectively tear themselves away from ecocide.

In this paper, which is informed by fieldwork in Australia and the Peruvian Amazon, I trace the shape of this argument as it has emerged in the contemporary western psychedelic milieu. I conclude that the 'Teacher Plants' do indeed open a phenomenologically distinct realm of experience often replete with subjective presences ('spirits', 'entities'). This realm is now beginning to receive sober scientific investigation; the price of this investigation, however, is almost certainly the transformation of the dominant secular scientific understanding of human history, culture and 'social science' itself.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the drinking of the traditional Amazonian psychotropic tea, ayahuasca, as a healing and spiritual tool for the Western individual transformation.

Paper long abstract:

Ayahuasca is a traditional Amazonian tea made from the Banisteriopsis caapi (ayahuasca) vine and the leaves of Psychotria viridis, which has the capacity to produce powerful changes in awareness and consciousness. Among indigenous cultures in the Amazon Basin, ceremonies involving the drinking of ayahuasca have had a central place in traditional healing for centuries. In these cultures, illness is considered to have varied factors, relating not only to one's body but also to mind and spirit.

The past decade has seen a rapid increase in the drinking of ayahuasca outside its Amazonian origin, including other parts of South America, North America, Europe, and Australia. This typically takes place in ceremonies involving music and prayer with participants who report seeking physical or emotional healing, personal development, or spiritual growth.

This paper will explore the process of "ritual-transfer" associated with ayahuasca drinking outside South America, the translation of traditional healing narratives, and challenges associated with understanding altered states of consciousness as a healing and spiritual tool in a Western context.