Book Chapters by Fiona Bowie
Trans Life and the Catholic Church Today, 2024
In this chapter we have sought, as husband and wife and as parents, to reflect
on our individual... more In this chapter we have sought, as husband and wife and as parents, to reflect
on our individual and shared experience of bringing up a young person who
happens to be trans. We are both (retired) academics. Oliver, a Roman
Catholic and lay Dominican, studied modern languages and literature
before taking up a chair in Christian theology. Fiona is an Anglican and an
anthropologist with a speciality in the anthropology of religion. Being alongside a child, now an adult, who is trans has continually challenged and expanded my thinking on personhood, gender, and identity and the ways in which these are reflected in social and religious norms.
Explanation and Interpretation: Theorizing About Religion and Myth. Contributions in Honor of Robert A. Segal. Edited by Nickolas P. Roubekas & Thomas Ryba. Brill: Leiden. Supplements to Method and Theory in the Study of Religion., 2020
This essay explores the tension between the study of religion as an exercise in phenomenological ... more This essay explores the tension between the study of religion as an exercise in phenomenological bracketing on the one hand, and as engagement with a world of transpersonal forces on the other. I argue that certain experiences of encounters with spirits, non-human others, and with what are perceived as diving beings, have cross-cultural features that transcend specific cultural interpretations. One reason for their ubiquity could be their origin in direct human experience. The ontological force of anomalous and transpersonal experience has been debated by anthropologists for well over a century, gaining recent visibility via explorations in the anthropology of ontology.
The Insider/Outsider Debate: New Perspectives in the Study of Religion, eds.George D. Chryssides & Stephen E. Gregg, 2019
In this chapter I look at some ethnographic examples in which the boundaries between insider and ... more In this chapter I look at some ethnographic examples in which the boundaries between insider and outside have become blurred and then at some of the methodological considerations that arise. My position, while similar to many of those associated with the ‘ontological turn’ in anthropology, is not identical to it. My interests in the paranormal, mediumship and the afterlife have drawn me more towards parapsychology and the experiential source hypothesis (Hufford, 1982), and in some ways have more in common with the critical realism proposed by David Graeber (2015). I note that refusing to bracket out certain tabooed phenomena (practising methodological agnosticism), presents a particular challenge when studying in Western contexts. Engaging with entranced mediums in Singapore or in Brazil is exotic and exciting. To do so in England or Germany can be regarded as perverse and academically compromising. I suggest, that we do have tools that enable us to tackle ontological questions in ways that open up the field, questioning the boundaries between Self and Other, Insider and Outsider, privileged versus forbidden knowledge, religion and interpretation versus science and hard facts.
The Insider/Outsider Debate in the Study of Religion, Eds. George Chryssides and Stephen Gregg, 2018
The boundaries between being an insider and an outsider in the study of religion are seldom clear... more The boundaries between being an insider and an outsider in the study of religion are seldom clear-cut. This is in part because fieldwork or any type of qualitative research involves a process of increased knowledge, familiarity and, one might hope, acceptance by those being studied. This can be the case whether one is studying a group of which one was not initially a member (making the strange familiar) or negotiating new relationships as a researcher rather than just a member of a particular community (making the familiar strange). With any work with human subjects relations are dynamic and fluid, and the communities being studied are not necessarily coherent uniform entities. There will be degrees of membership according to one's positionality, whether one is initially an insider or outsider. This chapter examines some of the ways in which fieldwork relationships are negotiated, and the blurred boundaries between the terms 'insider' and 'outsider'. The author uses examples from her anthropological fieldwork with two communities in a number of settings: the Focolare Movement and the Bangwa people of Cameroon. The first setting is the Cameroonian 'town' of Fontem where the Focolare and Bangwa live as neighbours, and where the author has conducted long-term fieldwork. The other settings are the UK, Europe and the United States, where members of the Focolare and Bangwa also interact with one another, and with the researcher (separately and together). Bowie concludes that methodological approaches to studying religious communities based on dialogue, empathy and respect are similar whatever one's status and relationship to those studied. Description The boundaries between being an insider and an outsider in the study of religion are seldom clear-cut. This is in part because fieldwork or any type of qualitative research involves a process of increased knowledge, familiarity and, one might hope, acceptance by those being studied. This can be the case whether one is studying a group of which one was not initially a member (making the strange familiar) or negotiating new relationships as a researcher rather than just a member of a particular community (making the familiar strange). With any work with human subjects relations are dynamic and fluid, and the communities being studied are not necessarily coherent uniform entities. There will be degrees of membership according to one's positionality, whether one is initially an insider or outsider. This chapter examines some of the ways in which fieldwork relationships are negotiated, and the blurred boundaries between the terms 'insider' and 'outsider'. The author uses examples from her anthropological fieldwork with two communities in a number of settings: the Focolare Movement and the Bangwa people of Cameroon. The first setting is the Cameroonian 'town' of Fontem where the Focolare and Bangwa live as neighbours, and where the author has conducted long-term fieldwork. The other settings are the UK, Europe and the United States, where members of the Focolare and Bangwa also interact with one another, and with the researcher (separately and together).
The Insider/Outsider Debate: New Perspectives in the Study of Religion, eds. George Chrysiddes and Stephen Gregg, 2016
As I sat in a darkened séance room, holding the hands of my neighbours and singing along to popul... more As I sat in a darkened séance room, holding the hands of my neighbours and singing along to popular songs on a cassette recorder, I felt a mixture of foolishness and nervous expectation. Neither 'believer' nor 'sceptic' I was open to experience whatever the evening had in store. The physical/trance demonstration was part of my research into mediumship and afterlife phenomena. Spirit possession and mediumship are not unusual topics for an anthropologist of religion, but by studying paranormal phenomena in the UK I had crossed a disciplinary boundary of academic probity, and risked being seen as gullible and academically unsound. A second boundary crossing involved the body of the medium. The discrete boundary we like to think unites our physical body with whatever other elements make us human (soul, spirit, consciousness, mind) was suddenly called into question. Assuming the séance was not simply an elaborate hoax, was it perhaps evidence that we live simultaneously on more than one plane of existence, and that direct communication between planes and their inhabitants is possible? This discussion is about boundary crossing, methodologically, in terms of subject matter, and ontologically, in seeking to understand how the world is constructed.
See Papers for details and links.
Indigenous Religions: A Companion, edited by Graham Harvey, 2000
In the chapter I argue that Bangwa notions of witchcraft (and methods for dealing with it) are be... more In the chapter I argue that Bangwa notions of witchcraft (and methods for dealing with it) are best understood in the context of a specific cultural history. The Bangwa of South West Cameroon (West Africa) are not and never have been an isolated group, and their beliefs and practices have much in common with those of neighbouring peoples, which in turn reflect particular cultural and historical experiences. Witchcraft is a flexible and adaptive phenomenon. It is not a sacred or hidden 'tradition', but part of the way in which many contemporary Bangwa, whether living in Cameroon or overseas, conceive of themselves as individuals and as social beings. Although concerned with the occult and forces of the night, witchcraft is at the same time a necessary concomitant of power and success, spoken of openly and acknowledged as a fact of life, as ordinary as breathing or eating.
(Bibliographical references are given at the end of the volume as a whole and are not reproduced here. For details readers will need to access the volume in which this paper appeared).
The coming deliverer: millennial themes in …, Jan 1, 1997
As human beings we live with paradox. We are conscious and self-reflective,
aware of our existen... more As human beings we live with paradox. We are conscious and self-reflective,
aware of our existence, assured of our position as
hunters rather than prey, without predators in the world in which
we live, and yet we remain ignorant of the world - of our place in
the delicate ecological balance which holds our existence in its
thrall - and powerless before the reality of death, the great
equalizer which puts paid to our specious notions of superiority.
Human societies and individuals have historically come to two
broadly contradictory conclusions concerning our predicament.
These contrasting emphases may be present within each person,
but the stress on each element varies from one culture to another,
across time and within individuals. The first approach is to
conceive of the world (the limits of which are culturally
determined) as existing in a delicately balanced state of
equilibrium, to which human beings, through their social and
religious actions, contribute. The forces of nature and human
misdemeanours threaten to upset this ideal harmony,
as may the actions of destructive gods or spirits, who must be
constantly opposed if chaos is to be averted. Such a view may be
combined with a notion of endless cosmic cycles of growth and
decay, mirroring the experience of life itself within a time-scale
set between the life-span of creatures on earth and the stars on
which they gaze. The main thrust of such a vision tends to be
this-worldly and life-affirming. Through constant struggle and
vigilance human beings can and must play their part in the great
drama of life on whi'ch fhe continued existence of the world
depends. By way of contrast we have the solution of those whose
eyes are set on a future utopia, or perhaps on a golden past which
they seek to recreate in a transformed world. The present
constraints of existence are eschewed in favour of a new world in
which suffering and chaos are finally overcome. This new world,
whether for the few or the many, recreated on this earth or in
some future existence, demands the destruction of the old order
and is therefore life-denying and transcendental. The notion of a
coming deliverer belongs to the latter scheme of things - a human
or divine (or divine-human) saviour will come who is stong
enough to take on the forces of chaos and evil and defeat them
once and for all, leading the chosen few to the new world beyond
the boundaries of the present age.
A longer version is available at:
http://www.box.net/shared/ua564722rx
Cross-Cultural Approaches to Adoption, Jan 1, 2004
Preface to volume:
Adoption is currently subject to a great deal of media scrutiny. High-profile... more Preface to volume:
Adoption is currently subject to a great deal of media scrutiny. High-profile cases of international adoption via the Internet or other unofficial routes have drawn attention to the relative ease with which children can be obtained on the global circuit, and have brought about legislation which regulates the exchange of children within and between countries. however, a scarcity of research into cross-cultural attitudes to child-rearing, and a wider lack of awareness of cultural difference in adoptive contexts, has meant that the assumptions underlying Western childcare policy are seldom examined or made explicit. the articles in Cross-Cultural Approaches to Adoption look at adoption practices from Africa, Oceania, Asia, South and Central America, including examples of societies in which children are routinely separated from their biological parents or passed through several foster families. Showing the range and flexibility of child-rearing practices that approximate to the Western term 'adoption', they demonstrate the benefits of a cross-cultural appreciation of family life, and allow a broader understanding of the varied relationships that exist between children and adoptive parents.
The uploaded document includes the Preface and Contents, Glossary, Chapter One and Editor's Introduction to Chapter 2.
Encounter, Transformation and Identity: Peoples of the Western Cameroon Borderlands, 1891-2000. Edited by Ian Fowler and Verkijika G. Fanso, Pp.184-198, 2009
In an interview conducted in cambridge in 1982,r Audrey Richards contrasted her own training and ... more In an interview conducted in cambridge in 1982,r Audrey Richards contrasted her own training and fieldwork experience, which involved studying a rvhole tribe or society, with the more modest anrbitions of contemporary ethnographcrs, who generally take a single theme or a subgroup as their focus. For the first half of the twentieth century, the concern of anthropologists was to fill in the blanks on the nrap. At the London School of Economics, Audrey Richards was a student of Malinorvski, who was actively promoting his new brand of anthropology based on prolonged residence and participant observation. She recounts how, when leaving to undertake fieldu,'ork among the Bemba of Northern Rhodesia in 1930, Malinowski ran along thc platform of victoria Station,'to my great regret carrying about fourtecn coloured pencils'that he thrust into her hand, saying, .Now remenrber, brown for economics, red for politics, blue for ritual!' when I was preparing for.my own fieldrvork in cameroon in t9g0 the situation was not so very different.: I knerv that I wanted to do .mud-hut'anthropology based on extended participant observation in a single location, preferably as rural as possible. I chose Fontem (Lebang),r in what was then Mamfe Division of Anglophone South west cameroon, for logistical reasons. I had a long-term interest in Fontem and the chance of supplementing my limited research grant witlr some paid rvork at the mission or Mariapolis run by a christian group known as the \Volk of Mary clr the Focolare Movenrcnt.a Locating the Field I had knou,n of Fontenr through regular upctates on the progress of the nrission 'to\\'n' or Mariapo lis frorn the early I 970s as a member of the young people's section of the Focolare Movcment. As a nrember of the Gen Movement (the second or new generation of the work of Mary), I had been involved in raising money Notes lbr this chapter bcgin on page 197 lrrr trrr,,,, r\l Iolltttltlllteltorrtl,rl,rrlt,'t'l;11111uotIslrtrlt:rrttrlrYtrtctrrlrcrsolllreIor',,lrrr. \l lltotttll I lorcrl llrt'sltrlt':ltorrs lttttl irccotlttts ol tlrc lllrrrgrvrr tlrlrt I lrclrrtl lrt lotol;rrc Ittcctittrs irr l{orrrc. I srrrrllly tlid rrot bclicvc that thc rclationslrrps tlcscribctl rrurc t;ttitc lts pcrfl'ct os p()rtritycd artd gucsscd tlrat tlrc story was rnuclt ntorc corrr;tlicittcd alrd intcrcsting than llre otflcial version ol'events. I did not attentpt to repeat thc cthnographic work of Robert Brain on tsangwa kinship and marriage. rvood carving and masquerades, although l certainly observec! asked questions, and sought to understand as much as I could about Bar.rgwa socicty and culture.s Robert Brain had arrived in Fontem shortly before the arrival of the first r.r.rcrnbers of the Focolare in the rnid 1960s, and therefore documented the society belore and during this period of initial contact, providing an excellent basis lionr which to judge changes anq! continuities instigated by the presence of the Focolare. He had lived near the mission site as a guest of a Chief lrobellah Nkeng, rvho also became a great friend of the Focolare and one of my own infonnar.rts. Mar.ry of the people Robert Brain had talked to were, not surprisingly, those I also found to be good interlocutors. Tlrey tended to havc a reasonablc krrowledge of English or Pidgin English, had often lived outside Lebialem (the name of the Division that encompasses the Bangwa and Mundani) and were likely to have becn educated to at least primary school level. ln other words, they had errough distance from their own society and sufficient contact with Western fbrrns of thought and education to understand and respond to the kinds of abstract models and obtuse questions that anthropologists insist on asking. I suspcct that I spent rnore time with wonren than Brain had done, but as Edwin Ardencr observed wourclt tend not to rxeet the prerequisites of the ethnographer's ideal infornrant. Thcy have less tin.rc ro spcnd talking to anthropologists, less access to education, and rrrorc likelihood ot'bcing monolingual. Above all, women are less likcly than mcn to modcl thcir knowledge of society in abstract ways (8. Ardener 2007).
Encounter, Transformation and Identity: Peoples of the Western Cameroon Borderlands, 1891-2000. Edited by Ian Fowler and Verkijika G. Fanso. Pp 93-109, 2009
Women and Missions: Past and Present. …
The chapter looks at the experience of the Mill Hill Missionaries (Society of St Joseph) among th... more The chapter looks at the experience of the Mill Hill Missionaries (Society of St Joseph) among the Bangwa and Mbo peoples of Cameroon, West Africa, from 1930s-1960s. Like other missionaries of the period, the Mill Hill Fathers faced the dilemma of how to form Christian families based on a Western model of monogamy in a society which practices polygyny.
Inside European Identities: Ethnography in Western Europe, edited by Sharon Macdonald, Berg: Providence/Oxford., Jan 1, 1993
Through the auto-ethnographic lens of a learner of the Welsh language living in Gwynedd, a largel... more Through the auto-ethnographic lens of a learner of the Welsh language living in Gwynedd, a largely Welsh-speaking region of North West Wales, Fiona Bowie explores the phenomenon of Welsh identity, its fluidity and variety, and the contested and political nature of identification with Wales, its language and culture. The simple essentialism sometimes implied by terminology (to be or not to be 'Welsh' or a 'Welsh-speaker' for example) takes on particular nuances as one moves from the micro level of ethnographic observation to the wider national stage and political arena. The value of combining these perspectives becomes clear not just for Wales, but when examining any form of identity politics.
Papers by Fiona Bowie
1517 Media eBooks, Jun 1, 2019
An anthropological approach to religion is characterised by engagement with the people studied th... more An anthropological approach to religion is characterised by engagement with the people studied through participant observation in the field. Although the ethnographer might be changed by this experience, the majority of anthropologists are constrained by academic and cultural conventions that prevent them from fully engaging with it. The challenge for anthropologists is to find a language that moves beyond the security of phenomenological or scientific approaches to religion, without becoming apologists for any one theological perspective.
1517 Media eBooks, Jun 1, 2019
Fortress Press eBooks, Apr 1, 2018
The movement of abandoned, neglected or surplus children from one family or group to another that... more The movement of abandoned, neglected or surplus children from one family or group to another that has a perceived shortage is a phenomenon widely documented from many different historical periods and cultures. What is relatively new is the way children now cross international borders. Surplus children might be created by, for instance, a culture that does not permit unmarried women to bring up their “illegitimate” babies, as with the movement in the 1950s of children from Catholic Quebec in Canada to Jewish couples in the United States. The Korean War in the early 1950s gave rise to a generation of Korean American babies, many thousands of whom were placed for adoption overseas. A similar process followed the Vietnam War in the 1970s. China’s one-child policy has produced a “surplus” of girls, many thousands of whom have been adopted by North American, European, and Australian families. International adoption is controversial, because underlying the humanitarian motivation to give disadvantaged children a better life there are issues of international politics, commercialization, and commoditization. Adoption can be a profitable business, and there is an underworld of kidnapping and child trafficking. As adoptees reach adulthood there is also reflection on the psychological challenge of growing up in a new culture, often with an unknown personal history. Similar issues are often faced by transracial adoptees, and a section on transracial adoption has therefore been included. Internationally recognized and local legal frameworks, in particular The Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption (1993), represent attempts to mitigate the worst excesses of unregulated international adoptions and to ensure that the interests of the children concerned remain paramount. Such frameworks are, however, predicated on a Western notion of the individual and of the nuclear family. They do not sit well with cultural practices in which child rearing is often shared, temporary, flexible, and pragmatic. Whether due to poverty, indigenous kinship norms, or attempts to maximize a child’s opportunities, in many parts of Africa, South America, and Asia, children are frequently reared for some or all of their childhood by people other than their biological parents. When these practices are mistaken for abandonment, or when an informal foster situation is translated into permanent adoption, there is an often painful clash of cultures. Anthropological accounts have therefore been included that enable social policy research to be seen within a broader cultural context.
Uploads
Book Chapters by Fiona Bowie
on our individual and shared experience of bringing up a young person who
happens to be trans. We are both (retired) academics. Oliver, a Roman
Catholic and lay Dominican, studied modern languages and literature
before taking up a chair in Christian theology. Fiona is an Anglican and an
anthropologist with a speciality in the anthropology of religion. Being alongside a child, now an adult, who is trans has continually challenged and expanded my thinking on personhood, gender, and identity and the ways in which these are reflected in social and religious norms.
(Bibliographical references are given at the end of the volume as a whole and are not reproduced here. For details readers will need to access the volume in which this paper appeared).
aware of our existence, assured of our position as
hunters rather than prey, without predators in the world in which
we live, and yet we remain ignorant of the world - of our place in
the delicate ecological balance which holds our existence in its
thrall - and powerless before the reality of death, the great
equalizer which puts paid to our specious notions of superiority.
Human societies and individuals have historically come to two
broadly contradictory conclusions concerning our predicament.
These contrasting emphases may be present within each person,
but the stress on each element varies from one culture to another,
across time and within individuals. The first approach is to
conceive of the world (the limits of which are culturally
determined) as existing in a delicately balanced state of
equilibrium, to which human beings, through their social and
religious actions, contribute. The forces of nature and human
misdemeanours threaten to upset this ideal harmony,
as may the actions of destructive gods or spirits, who must be
constantly opposed if chaos is to be averted. Such a view may be
combined with a notion of endless cosmic cycles of growth and
decay, mirroring the experience of life itself within a time-scale
set between the life-span of creatures on earth and the stars on
which they gaze. The main thrust of such a vision tends to be
this-worldly and life-affirming. Through constant struggle and
vigilance human beings can and must play their part in the great
drama of life on whi'ch fhe continued existence of the world
depends. By way of contrast we have the solution of those whose
eyes are set on a future utopia, or perhaps on a golden past which
they seek to recreate in a transformed world. The present
constraints of existence are eschewed in favour of a new world in
which suffering and chaos are finally overcome. This new world,
whether for the few or the many, recreated on this earth or in
some future existence, demands the destruction of the old order
and is therefore life-denying and transcendental. The notion of a
coming deliverer belongs to the latter scheme of things - a human
or divine (or divine-human) saviour will come who is stong
enough to take on the forces of chaos and evil and defeat them
once and for all, leading the chosen few to the new world beyond
the boundaries of the present age.
Adoption is currently subject to a great deal of media scrutiny. High-profile cases of international adoption via the Internet or other unofficial routes have drawn attention to the relative ease with which children can be obtained on the global circuit, and have brought about legislation which regulates the exchange of children within and between countries. however, a scarcity of research into cross-cultural attitudes to child-rearing, and a wider lack of awareness of cultural difference in adoptive contexts, has meant that the assumptions underlying Western childcare policy are seldom examined or made explicit. the articles in Cross-Cultural Approaches to Adoption look at adoption practices from Africa, Oceania, Asia, South and Central America, including examples of societies in which children are routinely separated from their biological parents or passed through several foster families. Showing the range and flexibility of child-rearing practices that approximate to the Western term 'adoption', they demonstrate the benefits of a cross-cultural appreciation of family life, and allow a broader understanding of the varied relationships that exist between children and adoptive parents.
The uploaded document includes the Preface and Contents, Glossary, Chapter One and Editor's Introduction to Chapter 2.
Papers by Fiona Bowie
on our individual and shared experience of bringing up a young person who
happens to be trans. We are both (retired) academics. Oliver, a Roman
Catholic and lay Dominican, studied modern languages and literature
before taking up a chair in Christian theology. Fiona is an Anglican and an
anthropologist with a speciality in the anthropology of religion. Being alongside a child, now an adult, who is trans has continually challenged and expanded my thinking on personhood, gender, and identity and the ways in which these are reflected in social and religious norms.
(Bibliographical references are given at the end of the volume as a whole and are not reproduced here. For details readers will need to access the volume in which this paper appeared).
aware of our existence, assured of our position as
hunters rather than prey, without predators in the world in which
we live, and yet we remain ignorant of the world - of our place in
the delicate ecological balance which holds our existence in its
thrall - and powerless before the reality of death, the great
equalizer which puts paid to our specious notions of superiority.
Human societies and individuals have historically come to two
broadly contradictory conclusions concerning our predicament.
These contrasting emphases may be present within each person,
but the stress on each element varies from one culture to another,
across time and within individuals. The first approach is to
conceive of the world (the limits of which are culturally
determined) as existing in a delicately balanced state of
equilibrium, to which human beings, through their social and
religious actions, contribute. The forces of nature and human
misdemeanours threaten to upset this ideal harmony,
as may the actions of destructive gods or spirits, who must be
constantly opposed if chaos is to be averted. Such a view may be
combined with a notion of endless cosmic cycles of growth and
decay, mirroring the experience of life itself within a time-scale
set between the life-span of creatures on earth and the stars on
which they gaze. The main thrust of such a vision tends to be
this-worldly and life-affirming. Through constant struggle and
vigilance human beings can and must play their part in the great
drama of life on whi'ch fhe continued existence of the world
depends. By way of contrast we have the solution of those whose
eyes are set on a future utopia, or perhaps on a golden past which
they seek to recreate in a transformed world. The present
constraints of existence are eschewed in favour of a new world in
which suffering and chaos are finally overcome. This new world,
whether for the few or the many, recreated on this earth or in
some future existence, demands the destruction of the old order
and is therefore life-denying and transcendental. The notion of a
coming deliverer belongs to the latter scheme of things - a human
or divine (or divine-human) saviour will come who is stong
enough to take on the forces of chaos and evil and defeat them
once and for all, leading the chosen few to the new world beyond
the boundaries of the present age.
Adoption is currently subject to a great deal of media scrutiny. High-profile cases of international adoption via the Internet or other unofficial routes have drawn attention to the relative ease with which children can be obtained on the global circuit, and have brought about legislation which regulates the exchange of children within and between countries. however, a scarcity of research into cross-cultural attitudes to child-rearing, and a wider lack of awareness of cultural difference in adoptive contexts, has meant that the assumptions underlying Western childcare policy are seldom examined or made explicit. the articles in Cross-Cultural Approaches to Adoption look at adoption practices from Africa, Oceania, Asia, South and Central America, including examples of societies in which children are routinely separated from their biological parents or passed through several foster families. Showing the range and flexibility of child-rearing practices that approximate to the Western term 'adoption', they demonstrate the benefits of a cross-cultural appreciation of family life, and allow a broader understanding of the varied relationships that exist between children and adoptive parents.
The uploaded document includes the Preface and Contents, Glossary, Chapter One and Editor's Introduction to Chapter 2.
1. My first example is of a Cameroonian people known as the Bangwa. The Internet plays an important role in keeping families and communities together, and in the process reaffirms religious identity and ideas.
2. The Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids (OBOD) is a relatively new form of Druidry, a Pagan religion with ancient roots. It is based on the idea of creating a new community and form of religious identity.
3. The Focolare Movement uses the Internet to create a common identity and build a sense of family among members who belong to different countries, cultures and religions.
I will finish with some reflections from the perspective of religion on the power of thought and intention, and the role the Internet plays in this process.
Anthropologists have made some cautious moves towards validating personal and interpersonal experience as a respectable research tool (Briggs, 1974; Jackson, 1996; Jakobsen, 1999; Turner and Bruner, 1986), and have described their own uncanny experiences in the field, whether from a perspective of doubt in the interpretations offered by their hosts (Favret-Saada, 1980; Louw, 2015), by internalising emic explanations (Stoller, 1987; Turner, 1992), or while struggling to make sense of the challenge these experiences can pose to one’s settled view of the world (Clifton, 1992; Jenkins, 2015). The potentially transformative effects of fieldwork in general and extraordinary experiences in particular have also found their way into academic texts (Goulet & Miller, 2007; Young & Goulet, 1994). Having gained at least a glimmer of a very different psychic world and range of relationships with human and non-human others in Cameroon, I was taken aback by some of the continuities I later discovered among alternative healers in the United Kingdom, particularly when discussing forms of psychic energy, possession and the fluidity of the Self. This raised questions concerning the role of personal experience and its cultural manifestations and codifications on the one hand, and the challenges of interpreting uncanny or unusual experiences in a largely secular, rationalist society on the other. Along with David Hufford (1982), Michael Winkelman, (2016), Gregory Shushan (2018) and others, I suspect that first hand and recounted experiences of ‘magical’ phenomena, particularly near death experiences, encounters with the deceased, mediumistic and shamanic experiences, out of body travel, Psi (clairvoyance, telepathy, pre-cognition, psychokinesis), sleep paralysis and spirit possession, have profoundly shaped the ways in which human beings in all times and places have formed their religious ideas and cosmological outlook.
Taking the example of spirit possession, I explore some of the ways in which experiences that appear to be universal and ancient appear or reappear in Western society to be interpreted in ways that seek a sometimes uneasy accommodation with normative medical, scientific (and religious) models of reality. Ethnographic enquiry is based on a conference organised by the Spirit Release Forum (SRF) in London (Bowie, 2017), and some of the wider work of those involved in this event. Motivations for involvement in the work of the SRF and similar bodies vary, but simple curiosity and a research agenda (Haraldsson, 2012) seems to play less of a role than direct experience of the intrusion of spirits into an existing clinical practice, which then leads clinicians new and unorthodox directions (Fiore, 1995; Zinser, 2010). In some cases a first-hand haunting or possession experience leads those affected to search for an explanation and relief or release from an unwanted and disturbing intrusion. Engagement in a world of spirits is not seen as an alternative to or escape from religion, science, or the ‘ordinary’ world, but as a result of ghostly or spirit-related experiences the world as it was has often slipped from view. Rationalist explanations for extraordinary and often frightening and life-changing encounters with spirits cannot be wished away and, as Jeanne Favret-Saada’s Normandy peasant farmers informed her, the Church can generally only provide a small, and not very powerful means of combatting the power of witchcraft and other psychic phenomena (1980). The medical profession may well pronounce the sufferer insane and resort to chemical treatments and perhaps incarceration. A de-witcher, shaman, spirit release therapist or suitably trained and experienced medium is therefore sought out, often as a last resort, although they may come disguised as a regular psychologist, psychiatrist or alternative healer (almost certainly in private practice).
The focus of this particular SRF conference was mental health and ways in which a phenomenology of spirits and spirit possession can help provide clinical help for various types of mental illness. Much of the focus was on schizophrenia and hearing voices, conditions poorly understood and inadequately treated by conventional pharmaceutical and psychiatric methods, but which appear amenable to spirit release therapy. A range of other conditions, including obsessions and compulsions and Tourettes, which are similarly unresponsive to psychoanalytic treatment, are fertile ground for ‘magical’ healing methods (cf. Rapoport, 1989). Most of those taking part in the conference were both open to studying the effects of spirit release techniques in clinical situations and realistic about the barriers that such ideas openly expressed encounter within the NHS.
While the cosmology of spirit release might seem a strange mixture of European folklore, Jungian psychology, science fiction and Western esotericism, it is also fairly consistent among practitioners. As publications and practices continue to develop spirit release is gaining in
popularity and visibility, presenting an alternative to the more established church practices of exorcism.
This paper asks the question, 'to what is this tradition an alternative?' It looks briefly at some contemporary Western notions of the Self and that are challenged by the tradition of spirit release, before giving an overview of some of these trends and attempting to map the main features of contemporary Western spirit release.
Key Words: Ontology, Self and Other, cognition, Spirit release, exorcism, spirit attachment, therapy, possession.
Paper short abstract We need to reimagine our relationship with the world, and with one another, in a manner that takes account of trans-personal realities. Instead of neutralising or bracketing out alternative models of the world we can enter into a dialogue with them in a search for new syntheses.
Paper keywords Ontology, Spirits, Possession, Shamanism, Methodology
20th February 2016.
In this talk I will attempt to do three things:
(1) Outline a general approach to the study of non-ordinary reality through a form of cognitive, empathetic engagement;
(2) Briefly survey some of the cross-cultural and historical evidence for an experiential source for many non-ordinary phenomena, including after-death contacts, reincarnation, spirit possession, near death experience and out of body travel.
(3) Examine what narratives of personal transformation might tell us about encounters with non-ordinary realities.
The term ‘spirit release therapy’ and presence of individuals who advertise their skills as ‘spirit release therapists’ are relatively recent – gaining ground in the last couple of decades in the UK. The idea that spirits can cause problems to the living, can attach themselves to someone, attack them psychically, and even take over their minds and bodies to ‘possess’ them, is certainly not new. Spirits, usually but not only of the deceased, who continue to trouble the living and who may need help to ‘move on’ appear in one form or another in all cultures and geographical locations. As far as we can tell they also have an ancient pedigree and human societies have evolved various means of dealing with spirits, honing specialised skills of exorcism, ‘de-obsession’, soul retrieval, healing and spirit communication. Anthropologists have been interested in documenting such beliefs and practices since the inception of the discipline in the Nineteenth Century. Spirit practices and the unseen world of psychic forces, be they in the form of witchcraft in Africa, spirit possession in Brazil, shamanistic practices in Northern Europe or Australia, or the so-called folk beliefs of Europe that stubbornly resurface whenever presumed to be on the verge of extinction, remain ubiquitous. What is new is a particular configuration of ideas concerning spirit release as a therapeutic tool in the United States and the United Kingdom (and no doubt elsewhere) that currently finds expression in a range of publications, web sites, conferences, group and individual healing practices. It is this loose-knit community of healers and clients, very much dependent on modern means of communication and technology, and the ideas and practices that are in circulation within it, that I wish to discuss in this presentation.
Theoretically a priori as mistaken or inferior (Henare, Holbraad and Wastell, 2007), are all part of this wider engagement with interconnectivity and process. Whether we use terms such as ‘new materialism’ or ‘the anthropology of ontology’, similar ideas recur. For my purposes these trends sit comfortably with the views of contemporary spirit release practitioners and their clients. We live as modern, rational, scientifically educated individuals in a world that is constantly interacting with and open to the influences of external forces - spirits – and it is assumed in most instances that the processes involved can be explained in physical terms and studied scientifically by those who are sufficiently open-minded. It is a world of vibration, energy, frequencies, intention, experience and matter, constantly interacting with one another in ways that can be documented and described. There is an element of predictability, sufficient for the development of expertise and for healing practices to be tested and honed, and unpredictability, as life and experience are never wholly replicable, and each new event affects the composition of the whole.
In this talk I will give an overview of some of the key texts and ideas current among spirit release practitioners and their clients, and describe the ways these circulate and serve to build up overlapping networks than encompass both academic university departments and individual practitioners operating well outside the mainstream. Using case studies and illustrations of mediumistic readings and therapeutic encounters, we can approach more general questions concerning the ontological status of these practices – an area that has for long been taboo among social scientists - as well as giving a phenomenological account of contemporary spirit release therapies. In doing so I am indebted to the pioneering work of Edith Turner (1993). In opening-up the question of the ‘reality of spirits’, she enabled the sorts of discussions that take place in Young and Goulet (1994) and Goulet and Miller (2006), which acknowledge the extraordinary and transformative encounters that take place through an engagement with alternative world views. Like David Hufford (1982, 1995) and Gregory Shushan (2013, 2014) I find both the similarities and differences involved in comparative studies of anomalous phenomena (for want of a better term), including mediumship and spirit release, suggestive of a core of experiential data that is, as Jack Hunter remarks (2013, 2015) innately human, whatever its source.
References
Fuentes, A. 2017. The Creative Spark: How Imagination Made Humans Exceptional. Dutton: New York.
Goulet, J-G. & Miller, B.G. (eds.) 2006. Extraordinary Anthropology: Transformations in the Field. Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press.
Henare, A, Holbraad, M. & Wastrell, S. (eds.) 2007. Thinking Through Things: Theorising Artefacts Ethnographically. Abingdon & New York: Routledge.
Hodder I. (ed.) 2013: Humans and landscapes of Catalhoyuk: reports from the 2000-2008 seasons. Catalhoyuk Reseach Project Series Volume 8. British Institute at Ankara Monograph No. 47 / Monumenta Archaeologica 30. Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press.
Hodder, I. 2014. The Entanglements of Humans and Things: A Long-Term View. New Literary History 45(1): 19-36.
Hufford, D. 1982. The Terror that Comes in the Night: An Experience-Centered Study of Supernatural Assault Traditions. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Hufford, D. 1995. Beings Without Bodies: An Experience-Centered Theory of Belief in Spirits. In Walker, B. (ed.) Out of the Ordinary: Folklore and the Supernatural. Logan: Utah State University Press.
Hunter, J. 2013. Numinous Conversations: Performance and Manifestation of Spirits in Spirit Possession Practices. In A. Voss & W. Rowlandson (eds.) Daimonic Imagination: Uncanny Intelligence. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press.
Hunter, J. 2015. ‘Between Realness and Unrealness’: Anthropology, Parapsychology and the Ontology of Non-Ordinary Realities. Diskus: Journal of the British Association for the Study of Religion. 17(2):4-20.
Ingold, T. 2011. Being Alive: Essays on movement, Knowledge and Description. Routledge: London & New York.
Ingman, P., Utriainen, T., Hovi, T. & Broo, M. (eds.) 2016. The Relational Dynamics of Enchantment and Sacralization: Changing the Terms of the Religion Versus Secularity Debate. Sheffield: Equinox.
Latour, B. 1993. We Have Never Been Modern. Translated by C. Porter. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press.
Latour, B. 2010. On the Modern Cult of the Factish Gods. Translated by H. MacLean and C. Porter. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Latour, B. 2017. Facing Gaia: Eight Lectures on the New Climatic Regime. Translated by Catherine Porter. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Pina-Cabral, J.d. 2017. World: An Anthropological Examination. Chicago: Hau Books. Shushan, G. 2013. Rehabilitating the neglected ‘similar’: Confronting the issue of cross- cultural similarities in the study of religions. Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological
Approaches to the Paranormal. 4(2):48-53.
Shushan, G. 2014. Extraordinary experiences and religious beliefs: deconstructing some contemporary philosophical axioms. Method and Theory in the Study of Religion. 26:384- 416.
Young, D.E. & Goulet, J.-G. 1994. Being Changed by Cross-Cultural Encounters: The Anthropology of Extraordinary Experience. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press.
Turner, E. 1993. The Reality of Spirits: A Tabooed or Permitted Field of Study? Anthropology of Consciousness. 4(1):9-12.
Organised by the Spirit Release Forum. Regent's College, London, 4 February 2017.
The online Word version has not preserved all the formatting, but downloaded should preserve the internal links, which the pdf version may not.
Bettina begins by outlining the aims and scope of the sessions, in which they hoped to bring together anthropologists, ethnographers and Religious Studies scholars with many different methodologies for looking at encounters with the non-ordinary. Fiona Bowie outlines her methodology for these kinds of studies, empathetic engagement, in which issues of ontological truth are set aside, but not ‘explained away’. She argues that such experiences may be at the root of “religious experience”, and are thus vital to the field. Davids Wilson and Robertson discuss whether the transformative nature of these experiences is epistemological at core. Remembering our critical approach, however, Jonathan challenges the emerging consensus that different methodologies require different epistemological postulates to be made sense of. It gets fairly heated.
The Anthropology of Religion: An Introduction by Fiona Bowie is a fascinating textbook that takes up subjects such as "The body as a symbol", "Sex, gender and the sacred" and Shamanism to mention a few. Bowie writes with authority on all the subjects and seems to truly know what she is writing about. In fact she inspires the reader to further ones knowledge in several fields and this is indeed a tall task as many textbooks are quite difficult and taxing to read and one does it merely to finish a class. The chapters that I thought were the best where the following, "Maintaining and transforming boundaries: the politics of religious identity" and the chapter that took up gender and the sacred was also great. I highly recommend this textbook and I will definitely buy the next edition whenever that is published.
Of particular value is the perspective of those who were themselves objects of missionary activity and who reflected upon this experience. Women actively absorbed and adapted the teachings of the Christian missionaries, and Western models are seen to be utilized and developed in sometimes unexpected ways.
The editors have assembled, organized and introduced a rich collection of the prose and poetry of Christians from Brittany, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Although many of the works are translated from modern or ancient Breton, Irish, Welsh and Scottish Gaelic and from Latin, all flow with grace and feeling. The works from over a thousand years ago provide profound insights on the issues we face today and on how we can address our local problems through the love of all creation. The modern works are intensely personal but all have the ability to touch readers far from the Celtic homelands. A wonderful introductin to Celtic, Christian or Celtic Christian literature and an excellent springboard for wider studies.
Equinox Publishing Limited: Sheffield, 2016. Hardback pp.286 including 97 b/w figures.
ISBN: 9781781791677. £75. Paperback ISBN: 9781781791684. £30.
Humphrey J. Fisher
The Journal of African History / Volume 37 / Issue 01 / March 1996, pp 124 - 126
DOI: 10.1017/S002185370003485X, Published online: 22 January 2009
Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S002185370003485X
How to cite this article:
Humphrey J. Fisher (1996). The Journal of African History, 37, pp 124-126
doi:10.1017/S002185370003485X
FIONA BOWIE
The Journal of African History / Volume 55 / Issue 03 / November 2014, pp 510 - 512
DOI: 10.1017/S002185371400053X, Published online: 22 September 2014
Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S002185371400053X
How to cite this article:
FIONA BOWIE (2014). The Journal of African History, 55, pp 510-512 doi:10.1017/
S002185371400053X
DOI: 10.1017/S0021853710000101, Published online: 21 May 2010
Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0021853710000101
How to cite this article:
RALPH A. AUSTEN (2010). The Journal of African History, 51, pp 109-111 doi:10.1017/
S0021853710000101
I end with a case study of spirit possession in popular Chinese religion taken from Fabian Graham's book 'Voices from the Underworld: Chinese Hell deity worship in Contemporary Singapore and Malaysia', Manchester University Press 2020
http://www.uwtsd.ac.uk/sophia/
Featuring:
Fiona Bowie, Eddie Bullard, Charles Emmons, David Hufford, Jeffrey Kripal, Stanley Krippner, Tanya Luhrmann, Antonia Mills, Gregory Shushan, Paul Stoller and Ann Taves.
Available here:
http://anthreligconsc.weebly.com/esalen-interviews.html
My chapter addresses the use of mediumistically channelled material as ethnographic data, using the example of conventional and mediumistic accounts of sacred power associated with the Himalaya and Mount Fuji.
This panel will explore ethnographic approaches to relations between individual personhood, material and immaterial forms of existence.
http://afterliferesearch.weebly.com/iuaes-2013-congress.html
Featuring Fiona Bowie. Bettina Schmidt, David Luke, Paul Devereux, Nicholas Campion, David Gordon Wilson.
http://anthreligconsc.weebly.com/lecture-archive.html