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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

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.

1.

Outline for Ethnography of Doubt

Mathijs Pelkmans

1-42

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'".

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?'"

"(Chapter 3) ... Mongolia ... gold mining ... the extraction of this ... sacred, mineral from the animated earth threatened to upset the ... spiritual world."

"(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 ... :

can trees think?

{For this quaestion to be reliably answered, the trees themselves must answer.}

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.}

... those involved acknowledged the limits of their knowledge".

p. 24

"Berger and Zijderveld usefully suggest that ...

p. 25

converts are typically more fervent than "natives" (2009:80)."

2.

Types of Shared Doubt

Maurice Bloch

43-58

"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.}

3.

Religious Reflexivity in the Mongolian

Mette M. High

59-84

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?}

4.

Old Believers' Passion Play

Vlad Naumescu

85-117

"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.}

"what makes Masowe apostolics refuse the evidence of the Bible is precisely its materiality, which ... distances one from God, in stark contrast

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).}

p. 111, n. 15

"The Old Believers' bibliophily was an outcome of

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^.}

on pre-reformation church books in Russia ... . For the next three centuries they hid the old

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)"

5.

A Taiwanese Spirit-Medium Shrine

Friedrich Binder

119-47

"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)."]

"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".

"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".

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.

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."

p. 134

"Initially clients come to the shrine with the hope of obtaining 'miraculous responses' (li'ngyi`ing) from the gods. ...

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'."

"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".

"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."

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

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 ...

no one ever succeeded."

{This is also attained in Transcendental Meditation ("YFAE"), but likewise only with divine assistance, achieved by invocation ("TMIC").}

"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}.'"

6.

Suspense in Retroflective Ethnography

Henk Driessen

149-64

"Russell Bernard's ... (1995) and

Robben and Sluka's recent reader on fieldwork (2007)."

"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")}

7.

Certainty in Revolutionary India

Alpa Shah

165-89

"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}".

"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".