The Law of Possession

William S. Sax is Head of the Department of Ethnology at the South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg.Helene Basu is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Muenster.

• 1. The Law of Possession: Ritual, Healing, and the Secular State, William S. Sax and Helene Basu ; 2. In the Courtroom of Jungle Saints: The Poor and Transcendental Justice, Helene Basu ; 3. Between Shrine and Courtroom: Legal Pluralism, Witchcraft, and Spirit Agency in South-Eastern Africa, Arne S. Steinforth ; 4. Delocalizing Illness: Healing and the State in Chinese Medicine, Dominic Steavu ; 5. Justice in Erwadi: A Case Study, Bhargavi Davar ; 6. Possession and the Anti-Superstition Law in Maharashtra: An Actors' Perspective on Modernization and Disenchantment, Johannes Quack ; 7. "If your brother wants to kill you, kill him first": Healing, Law, and Social Justice in an African Healer's Courtroom, Ferdinand Okwaro ; 8. The Darbar of Goludev: Possession, Petitions, and Modernity, Aditya Malik ; 9. Gods of Justice, William S. Sax ; Index

"This is an exciting, well organized and written volume about the controversial, unresolved, and often unexpected interconnection between possession, healing, and the law in contemporary India, Africa, and China...I thoroughly enjoyed reading this volume from the very start."--Raquel Romberg, Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft"[B]eautifully conceived and competently executed Most of the eight essays are crafted with care, and their ethnography is extraordinarily suggestive."--Erik Mueggler, American Ethnologist"It is a must-read for anyone interested in the history and ethnography of unorthodox forms of vernacular healing and the state."--Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft"'Modern' states tend to force a division between the domains of law and medicine, and to separate both, as 'secular' institutions, from the sacred. Yet people everywhere persist in bringing the three together in their search for justice and healing. Why should this be? And how might the phenomenon of 'spirit possession' provide an answer? This provocative set of essays brings rich, comparative insight to such conundrums, to the enchantments that remainintegral to lived modernities everywhere."-Jean Comaroff, Alfred North Whitehead Professor of African and African American Studies and of Anthropology, Harvard University