The Law of Possession

This volume investigates the great divide introduced by modernization theorists between the “rational,” “scientific,” or “modern,” on the one hand, and “irrational,” “ritual,” or “nonmodern,” on the other. But there are places throughout the world where the relationship between modernity, as represented by the legal and medical institutions of the secular state, and traditional forms of healing and justice, is unsettled. The contributors offer ethnographic studies of diverse historical and contemporary relationships between “spirit possession,” healing, and the law. Part I contains case studies of institutions in India, Africa and China that have been subjected to state practices attempting to “purify” law and medicine from traces of religion; in part II, anthropologists analyze contemporary struggles between modernizers and inventive practitioners in India and Kenya; and part III concludes with case studies of social and cultural forms where religion, healing, and law are still integrated. These do not represent a “premodern” past, but rather a concurrent and viable alternative for the organization of collective life.

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Literature: Basu, Helene/ Sax, William (eds.), The Law of Possession. Ritual, Healing, and the Secular State, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2015.