Paper short abstract:

This paper investigates the ideas of modernity and globalisation that are attached to the Mami Wata cult in the recent anthropological literature and contrast this with the daily constitution of the spirit economy in Benin.

Paper long abstract:

Mami Wata a light skinned mermaid goddess who is fond of Western consumer items, has almost solely been analysed through the ideas of modernity and tradition.Posters, lithographs and paintings of mermaids and snakecharmers are the key signs of the Mami Wata cult in the articles that I have read.For this reason when I encountered Mami Wata devotees during my doctoral fieldwork in Benin, I was struck by the variety of spirits that had little to do with the sea, water and feminine seduction. Furthermore these spirits , though of recent arrivals in Benin, were not exogeneous deities "outside any social system" (Drewal 1988:102). Neither were they a series of "autonomous cult and shrine practices" disembedded from region-wide practices (Gore&Nevadomsky 1997:60).

My intention in this paper is to elucidate the linkages between Mami Wata spirits in my fieldwork village and elsewhere in Benin and to situate these relationships to my fieldwork context, where creative ritual bricoleurs (Comaroff) have been importing " foreign" deities for hundreds of years.

In addition to this I argue that the literature on Mami Wata phenomenon does not really dwell into the realities of the actual worship of the goddess or portray the multifaceted social environment that brings this phenomenon into being. The guiding idea of my research has been an attempt to observe the categories that the informants use themselves in their daily lives and the processes that constitute them.