The possessed and the dispossessed spirits, identity, and power in a Madagascar migrant town

Summary: "Sharp concludes this study with an analysis of how indigenous spirit mediums and Protestant exorcists treat extreme cases of possession and madness, revealing contradictions inherent in cross-cultural psychiatric praxis. More generally, the book challenges current views about possession and marginal status, particularly in reference to gender and age, insightful discussions of the lives of migrant adults and children as they seek relief. Some personal and social ills make Sharp's investigation relevant to gender studies, medical anthropology religion and ritual, and the politics of culture as well as African and Madagascar studies."--Jacket.

Record details

ISBN: 0520207084
ISBN: 9780585276809 (electronic bk.)
ISBN: 0585276803 (electronic bk.)
ISBN: 0520918452 (electronic bk.)
ISBN: 9780520918450 (electronic bk.)
Physical Description: 1 online resource (xix, 345 pages) : illustrations, maps.
remote
electronic resource
Publisher: Berkeley : University of California Press, 1996, ©1993.

Content descriptions

General Note:	Multi-User.
Bibliography, etc. Note:	Includes bibliographical references (pages 311-337) and index.
Formatted Contents Note:	1. Introduction: Possession, Identity, and Power: Theoretical and Methodological Considerations -- Critical Approaches to the Study of Affliction -- Investigating Possession: Social Change, Marginality, and Religious Experience -- Logic and Methods of Inquiry -- pt. I. Historic, Political-Economic, and Social Levels of Experience -- 2. Political Economy of the Sambirano -- Ambanja, a Plantation Community -- Economic and Political History of the Region -- Local Power and Reactions to Colonialism -- 3. National and Local Factions: The Nature of Polyculturalism in Ambanja -- National Factions: Regionalism and Cultural Stereotypes -- Social and Cultural Divisions in Ambanja -- Effects of Polyculturalism -- 4. Tera-Tany and Vahiny: Insiders and Outsiders -- Migrant Stories -- Patterns of Association and Means for Incorporation -- pt. II. Spirit Possession in the Sambirano -- 5. World of the Spirits --^ Dynamics of Tromba in Daily Life -- Possession Experience -- Other Members of the Spirit World -- 6. Sacred Knowledge and Local Power: Tromba and the Sambirano Economy -- Tromba as Ethnohistory -- Tromba, Wage Labor, and Economic Independence -- Tromba and Collective Power in the Sambirano -- 7. Spirit Mediumship and Social Identity -- Selfhood and Personhood in the Context of Possession -- Turning Outsiders into Insiders: Mediums' Social Networks and Personal Relationships -- Miasa ny Tromba: Mediumship as Work -- pt. III. Conflicts of Town Life -- 8. Problems and Conflicts of Town Life: The Adult World -- Malagasy Concepts of Healing -- Sickness and Death -- Work and Success -- Love and Money, Wives and Mistresses -- 9. Social World of Children -- Possessed Youth of Ambanja -- Disorder of a Fragmented World -- Children and Social Change -- 10. Exorcising the Spirits: The Alternative Therapeutics of Protestantism -- Sakalava Perceptions of Possession and Madness.
Source of Description Note:	Description based on print version record.