Ethnographies of Doubt
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Contents
# |
Capitulum |
Auctor, -trix |
Paginae |
1. |
Outline for Ethnography of Doubt |
Mathijs Pelkmans |
1-42 |
2. |
Types of Shared Doubt |
Maurice Bloch |
43-58 |
3. |
Religious Reflexivity in the Mongolian |
Mette M. High |
59-84 |
4. |
Old Believers' Passion Play |
Vlad Naumescu |
85-117 |
5. |
A Taiwanese Spirit-Medium Shrine |
Friedrich Binder |
119-47 |
6. |
Suspense in Retroflective Ethnography |
Henk Driessen |
149-64 |
7. |
Certainty in Revolutionary India |
Alpa Shah |
165-89 |
pp. x-xii
p. |
auctor, -trix |
gen. |
universitas |
liber |
x |
Friedrich Binder |
M |
-- |
-- |
|
Maurice Bloch |
M |
London Sch. of Economics |
Essays on Cultural Transmission. 2006. |
x-xi |
Henk Driessen |
M |
Radboud, Nijmegen |
On the Spanish-Moroccan Frontier. 1992. |
xi |
Mette M. High |
F |
London Sch. of Economics |
Dangerous Fortunes. 2010. (in Mongolian) |
xii |
Vlad Naumescu |
M |
Central European, Hungary |
Modes of Religiosity in Eastern Christianity. 2007. |
|
Mathijs Pelkmans |
M |
London Sch. of Economics |
Defending the Border. 2006. |
|
Alpa Shah |
F |
Goldsmiths, of London |
In the Shadows of the State. 2010. |
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1. |
Outline for Ethnography of Doubt |
Mathijs Pelkmans |
1-42 |
pp. 6, 8, 36 doubts by Augustinus and by Descartes
p. 6 |
[A:CG] "Augustine's professed certainty was itself rooted in doubt, and his si fallor, sum (if I am mistaken, I exist) ... is an early anticipation of Descartes' famous cogito, ergo sum. {N.B. This "thinking", if mechanistic-materialistic in its metaphysics, would be [officially] lacking in consciousness, therefore no indication of a conscious self; and if consciousness be necessary for selfhood, then "thinking" need not be any indication of a "self" nor of an "ego".} |
{The purport, however, of this assertion by Augustinus is "I am in inhaerent error, and thus am sinful by nature"; quite different from (and the reverse of) Descartes's Renaissance-style refusal to attribute inhaerent error (and therefore inhaerent sinfulness) to mortals.} |
p. 36, n. 7 |
[D:M 2:1] "The Meditation of yesterday has filled my mind with so many doubts ... . Nor do I see ... any principle on which they can be resolved". |
|
p. 8 |
"Descartes dubbed himself a 'being that doubts'". |
A:CG = Augustinus : The City of God.
D:M = Descartes : Meditations.
pp. 8-9 what indeed??
p. 8 |
"Harding describes ... an interview with a Baptist pastor who who had used the occasion to witness to her ... . Understandably ..., she found herself |
{It would appear that her "God" (spirit-guide) was warning her not to associate with Baptist religious ministres, who tend to bring baleful misfortune into this life, and after this life, damnation.} |
p. 9 |
involuntarily asking : 'What is God trying to tell me?'" |
Harding 1987 = Susan Harding : "Convicted by the Holy Spirit". AMER ETHNOLOGIST 14.1:167-81.
p. 17 disrupting the spiritual
"(Chapter 3) ... Mongolia ... gold mining ... the extraction of this ... sacred, mineral from the animated earth threatened to upset the ... spiritual world." |
p. 19 acknowledging limits of knowledge
"(Chapter 2). In the course of a conversation triggered by this anthropologist, a group of Zafimaniry forest dwellers in Madagascar found themselves engaging in the question ... : |
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can trees think? |
{For this quaestion to be reliably answered, the trees themselves must answer.} |
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Are ancestors who appear in dreams alive? ... . |
{This might be answerable if those "ancestors" were first to shew themselves reliable by stating this they are in the dream-world; then those "ancestors" must explain what became of them in the process of dying and thereafterward.} |
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... those involved acknowledged the limits of their knowledge". |
pp. 24-5 fervency of converts
p. 24 |
"Berger and Zijderveld usefully suggest that ... |
p. 25 |
converts are typically more fervent than "natives" (2009:80)." |
Berger & Zijderveld 2009 = Peter Berger & Anton Zijderveld : In Praise of Doubt. NY : HarperOne.
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2. |
Types of Shared Doubt |
Maurice Bloch |
43-58 |
p. 50 sleep like unto death
"My discussion about sleep {i.e., about dreams} and mind started with my being told with great certainty and unanimity that in sleep one was 'as if dead'. ... |
{The informants' intended meaning certainly was that, just as the dead experience another, an immaterial world, so likewise do persons while dreaming experience another, an immaterial, world. (In both cases one consorts with, talks with, etc., immaterial divine beings.)} |
Rita Astuti, working an another part of Madagascar, has examined with great precision {but astuteness?} a similar ... situation (Astuti 2007)." |
{Not only in every part of Madagascar, but indeed in all the world (excepting only among the very few, vastly outnumbered materialists), is this factuality of an after-death world, and dream-world, generally accepted.} |
Astuti 2007 = Rita Astuti : "Ancestors and the Afterlife". In :- Harvey Whitehouse & James Laidlaw (edd.) : Religion, Anthropology, and Cognitive Science. Chapel Hill : Carolina Academic.
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3. |
Religious Reflexivity in the Mongolian |
Mette M. High |
59-84 |
p. 67 gold-mining resultant in downfall of hailstones
Because of mining for gold, "Hail the size of eggs came down". |
{/Wani`n/, the "alloy of gold", is named for /Wani`/, the Hummingbird ("TM").} |
{When Hummingbird scouted, "Rabbit ... caused hail to fall" (Saline Valley, CA, Shoshoni -- SWShM, p. 254).} |
{Is "egg"-size of the hail alluded to by the the Eastre Bunny's egg-hunt?} |
"TM" = "Tai`no Mythology". http://www.indio.net/taino/pdf/mythcuba.pdf
SWShM = Julian H. Steward : Some Western Shoshoni Myths. BUREAU OF AMER ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 136. 1943. http://www.sacred-texts.com/nam/ca/wsm/wsm03.htm
{Instead of hailstones, ice is crossed upon in the Algonkin Great Hare's theft of fire.}
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4. |
Old Believers' Passion Play |
Vlad Naumescu |
85-117 |
p. 90 dereliction
"Christ's ... 'cry of dereliction on the cross ...' represents the birth of theology, since 'the beginning of wisdom ... was |
|
the acceptance ... that the one whom they believed ... had been forsaken ... on the cross' ([Pelikan] 1999:104)." {"Forsaken" would, of course, imply emphatically repudiated (as a fake) by God.} |
{This exoteric account in the orthodox Gospels is in stark contrast against the Gnostic accounts (e.g., the Valentinian account, according to which Khristos ascended visibly from the Cross into the sky, to the astonishment of all onlookers; and the Basilidean account, according to which the hands of the intended captors slipped through the praeternatural phantom-body body of Khristos, to their extreme astonishment and dismay.} |
Pelikan 1999 = Jaroslav Pelikan : Jesus through the Centuries. New Haven (CT) : Yale Univ Pr.
p. 110, n. 3 materiality of Bible
"what makes Masowe apostolics refuse the evidence of the Bible is precisely its materiality, which ... distances one from God, in stark contrast |
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to the direct experience of God they cultivate in religious practice. ... (Engelke 2007, 2009)" |
{Actually, unlike shamans who actually see the body (and hear the voice) of their tutelary deities, no Christian hath ever ever experienced their imagined deity (being instead content with mere make-believe hocus-pocus).} |
Engelke 2007 = Matthew Engelke : A Problem of Presence : Beyond Scripture ... . Berkeley (CA) : Univ of CA Pr.
Engelke 2009 = Matthew Engelke : "Two Approaches to the the Materiality of Scripture". ETHNOS 74.2:151-74.
pp. 111-2, n. 15 bibliophilia
p. 111, n. 15 |
"The Old Believers' bibliophily was an outcome of |
|
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of the 1666 ban |
{1666 Chr.E. was likewise the year praedicted by Natan of <azzah for the manifestation of the mas^iyah., declared by him to be S^abbatay S.bi^.} |
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on pre-reformation church books in Russia ... . For the next three centuries they hid the old |
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p. 112, n. 15 |
books, preserving them carefully and transmitting them within families; they also copied them ... and distributed them secretly. ... (... Scheffel 1991:104-16; Rogers 2009:77)" |
Scheffel 1991 = David Scheffel : In the Shadow of Antichrist : the Old Believers of Alberta. Peterborough (ON), Broadview Pr.
Rogers 2009 = Douglas Rogers : The Old Faith and the Russian Land : Historical Ethnography of Ethics in the Urals. NY : Cornell Univ Pr.
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5. |
A Taiwanese Spirit-Medium Shrine |
Friedrich Binder |
119-47 |
p. 119 a woman afflicted by infant ghosts
"But the young woman ... was being followed by two infant ghosts (yingli'ng)." |
[p. 143, n. 1 : "For more on these ghosts see Moskowitz (2001)."] |
Moskowitz 2001 = Marc L. Moskowitz : The Haunting Fetus ... and the Spirit World in Taiwan. Honolulu : Univ of HI Pr.
p. 121 diversity of mediumship-practice
"Since the late 1960s Taiwan has seen a continued proliferation of privately operated urban ... shrines which commonly offer seances with a spirit medium among other services and which operate on a fee-for-service basis ... . Through these shrines and their practitioners the practice and content of spirit-mediumship has become increasingly diverse". |
p. 123 protection
"one of the deities at their shrine would dispatch an army of spirit soldiers led by the 'Tiger Marshall' to protect clients from evil evil influences". |
pp. 127-8 forms/styles of spirit-mediumship
p. 127 |
"Once the gods enter the medium's body, a transformation takes place which distances the person of the powerless human medium from that of the powerful god. ... This is especially true of spectacular trance performances. |
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There are forms, or rather styles, of spirit-mediumship in which the transformation into the possessed state is hardly visible or spectacular -- sometimes it is marked by little more than a nod of the head or a change into ceremonial garb. In this form of mediumship, called tongli'ng, the mediums' cognitive faculties remain unaltered while they pass on what the spirit has told |
p. 128 |
them -- they speak with and for the gods, not as them." |
pp. 134, 145 miraculous responses from deities; deities' knowing mortals' minds
p. 134 |
"Initially clients come to the shrine with the hope of obtaining 'miraculous responses' (li'ngyi`ing) from the gods. ... |
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Since the gods are supposed to know people's minds and actions, clients are reluctant to divulge ... information." |
p. 145, n. 12 |
"A common Taiwanese proverb holds that 'the gods are only three inches above our heads'. Another proverb says that 'when people act, gods watch'." |
p. 136 certificates
"the establishment of The Mediums' Association of the Republic of China ... in 1989 ... in the everyday practice of private shrines ... display certificates from Daoist organizations". |
p. 138 outperforming saecular medics
"There is usually a progression in treatment and the the religious expert's help is sought out only after medical professionals have failed in their treatment." "the medium at my main shrine was extremely proud of his main deity for 'outperforming' Western-style doctors." |
pp. 140-1 physical miracles performed by deities while inhabiting bodies of spirit-media
p. 140 |
"Central to spirit-mediumship is ... that the everyday self of the medium is replaced by that of the possessing deity, ... the medium['s] ... 'flesh-body' (ro`uti^) for the god to use. Mediums{'s miracles (performed by deities while inhabiting their bodies)} ... include speaking in dialects unknown to the medium, illiterate mediums who are able to write when in trance and mediums being unable to recall that they underwent the experience of possession. ... The medium at my main field site had his own specialty {in the way of miracles}; to prepare himself for the seance he would sit cross-legged on a little table and wait for the deity to descend into his body. The instance {instant?} the deity 'attached himself', the medium would jump up several times while doing half turns |
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p. 141 |
in mid-air, all the while remaining in a cross-legged position. Both the medium and his wife frequently encouraged customers to try for themselves if they could manage to copy his moves, adding that ... |
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no one ever succeeded." |
{This is also attained in Transcendental Meditation ("YFAE"), but likewise only with divine assistance, achieved by invocation ("TMIC").} |
"YFAE" = Vincent J. Daczynski : "Yogic Flying -Author's Experience". http://www.amazingabilities.com/amaze9a.html
"TMIC" = "TM Initiation Ceremony". http://web.archive.org/web/20111008051647/http://minet.org/Documents/Puja-translation
{If outrightly evident levitation be not performed openly in public in Europe and in the Americas, it is because the spirit-media (and especially the deities who control them) are reluctant to make such a display in the face of hostile materialist governments. But in Africa, governments are not so outrightly hostile; and in, e.g., a public display (recorded on cinema-film by a news-agency) of this miracle in Togo (A-GH) "the levitation lasted almost one minute."}
A-GH = David Hatcher Childress : The Anti-Gravity Handbook. Adventures Unlimited Pr, Kempton (IL). https://books.google.com/books?id=rk5UlsjKHWAC&pg=PT372&lpg=PT372&dq=
p. 142 to possess a spirit-medium is a decision made by a deity
"One medium explained to me that '... whether I get possessed is the decision of my boss ["the possessing deity"] ... he made me his medium ... . For him this was determined {i.e., praedestined} from the beginning {i.e., always was; for there is no actual beginning}.'" |
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6. |
Suspense in Retroflective Ethnography |
Henk Driessen |
149-64 |
p. 151 "the canon on ethnographic fieldwork"
"Russell Bernard's ... (1995) and |
Robben and Sluka's recent reader on fieldwork (2007)." |
Bernard 1995 = H. Russell Bernard : Research Methods in Anthropology : Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches. 2nd edn. Walnut Creek (CA) : Altamira Pr.
Robben & Sluka 2007 = Antonius C. G. M. Robben & Jeffrey A. Sluka (edd.) : Ethnographic Fieldwork : an Anthropological Reader. Oxford : Blackwell.
p. 162, n. 5 Falange
"The Falange (lit. 'phalanx formation') was founded by Jose` Antonio Primo de Rivera, a Madrid lawyer and son of ... Miguel Primo de Rivera. The ideology of the Falange was republican, modernist and favoured a programme of national-syndicalist social organization." |
{[Rather alike unto the Works-Progress Adminstration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt,] Miguel Primo de Rivera had a "concern to advance the lifestyles of the poorest in society ... to reduce unemployment by introducing public works schemes funded by increasing the tax paid by the rich." ("PR")} |
{"Jose Antonio’s version ... was a ... concern for the working man and his plight in 1930’s Spain." ("F")} |
"PR" = "Primo de Rivera" http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/primo_de_rivera.htm
"F" = "Falange". http://www.spanishcivilwar1936.com/falange.htm
{The intentions of Miguel Primo de Rivera, and of his son Jose` Antonio Primo de Rivera, were subsequently mis-repraesented in a fashion similar to that wherein were mis-repraesented the writings of Nietzsche, a liberal and progressive republican professor of antique classics.}
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7. |
Certainty in Revolutionary India |
Alpa Shah |
165-89 |
p. 165 leadership
"in South Asia {India/Bharata} it is generally acknowledged that the leadership is composed of educated middle-class {vais`ya} intellectuals, often urban-based and higher-caste {ks.atriya}". |
p. 185 benefit in Putumayo river-basin
"In the Colombian Putamayo {sic!} |
{The name is /Putumayo/, from Kec^ua /p>utuy/ 'gushing' + Mayu /mayu/ 'river'.} {/Puta-mayo/ would be (in Spanish) 'whore [of] May[day]'.} |
basin described by Michael Taussig (1987) the rubber planters who ruled ... used ... to benefit healing, shamanism and sorcery". |
Taussig 1987 = Michael Taussig : Colonialism, Shamnism, and the Wild Man. Univ of Chicago Pr.
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LIBRARY OF MODERN RELIGION, 32 = Mathijs Pelkmans (ed.) : Ethnographies of Doubt : Faith and Uncertainty in Contemporary Societies. I. B. Tauris, London, 2013.