Where Humans and Spirits Meet

Kjersti Larsen is Associate Professor of Social Anthropology and African Studies at the Department of Ethnography, Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo. She has carried out fieldwork in Zanzibar since 1984 and since 1997 has also conducted fieldwork in Northern Sudan.

• Map of the Western Indian OceanPreface and AcknowledgementsChapter 1. IntroductionConsidering perspectives on spirit possessionThe fieldwork: people, engagement and contextThe fieldwork: ritual participationPerformance, meaning and reflexivityRitual, communication and enactmentKnowledge, experience and forms of negotiationThe bookChapter 2. Introduction to Zanzibar: the place, its politics and organizationA view of the past and the presentIdentity, social privileges and political reorganizationA plural societyGender, distinctions and effects in everyday and ritual lifeGender, ritual participation and knowledgeChapter 3. Spirits, possession and personhoodThe position of spiritsSpirits are beings with a worldly existenceSpirit possession and practicesPersonhood, notions of strength and self-controlExperiencing spiritsChapter 4. Makabila, people and spiritsArticulation of differences and the problem of identityIdentification of a spiritThe demands of spirits belonging to different makabilaThe world of spirits and human beingsChapter 5. Human concerns, spirits and recreation of relationshipsHow the spirits reveal their presence in the human worldCommunication between humans and spiritsThe ritual group and the ritual frameworkNgoma ya sheitani: a celebration and a cureChapter 6. Between self and other: body and mindNgoma ya ruhaniStates of body and states of mindA bodily experience of spiritsLosing oneself to the spiritAltered states of body, altered states of mindChapter 7. Gender: relations, markers and sexualityGender and complementarityConcealment and disclosureActs of disclosure and moral ambiguityEnactment and perceptions of the bodyStrict categories in a flexible universeGender images and human practicesChapter 8. Women, men and gendered spiritsA ngoma ya kibuki ritualMatters of affection, pride and self-controlPresentation, representation and excessComedy, parody and the ways of humans and spiritsBody, aesthetics, and gender imagesOn reflections and acts of transgressionChapter 9. Conclusion: social identities and dramatization of the otherAn aesthetic moving togetherImprovisation, play and the dramatization of a life-worldReflections on embodiment and modes of knowingGlossaryBibliographyIndex

“…a fascinating account of spirit possession in Zanzibar…[that] contributes to and sheds new light on debates on ethnicity, identity, and gender… Its particular value lies in its excellent ethnographic data, which demonstrate the author’s deep knowledge of Zanzibari society and its interconnections with the wider world, both ‘East’ and ‘West’, and highlight the value of long-term ethnographic fieldwork.”  ·  JRAI“Kjersti Larsen’s book raises significant anthropological questions about much writing on spirit possession in Africa…Larsen’s work makes important and detailed considerations of [the] problem [of  racial identity], perhaps more sensitively than many others.”  ·  Social Anthropology/Anthropologie sociale“…a sensitive and rich portrayal of the phenomenon of spirit possession in Zanzibar Town.”  ·  American Ethnologist"[The author] provides a sensitive account of people's experiences of possession and the ways in which they relate to their spirits. It is refreshing to read an account like this in which some of the uncertainties and differences of opinion about spirit possession are highlighted."  ·  Tanzanian Affairs"Written as a reflexive and phenomenological account, and organized into nine short chapters, the book traverses theoretical terrain in ways that challenge theories that reduce spirit possession to an effect of social marginality."  ·  Social Anthropology/Anthropologie sociale