Miho Ishii

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor (Associate) at Kyoto University

en This paper discusses the recent emergence of ontological approaches in science and technology studies (STS), anthropology and philosophy. Although it is common to hear of a turn, or the turn, to ontology, more than one line of intellectual development is at stake. In reality, we are witness to a plural set of partly overlapping, partly divergent...

This study investigates the politics of environmental movements by focusing on how new mega‐ industries, anti‐development movements, and religious practices interface in South India. Since the 1990s, the government has promoted a massive construction project in Mangalore, Karnataka State—the Mangalore Special Economic Zone (MSEZ). During this proje...

An experiment in ethnographic theory, this article aims to finds new ways of getting Japanese spirit worlds into view. In the attempt to find ways of repopulating spirit worlds with more than beliefs, socioeconomic realities, and politics, the broader “ontographic” issue is how to facilitate engagement with spirits in a way that is not overdetermin...

This paper investigates spirit (būta) worship in a special economic zone (SEZ) in India by considering practices of care around specific constellations of nature and infrastructure: fluid, contingent assemblages of the ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’ environments. Occult phenomena in modern settings have often been interpreted as metaphorical critiques...

The ritual practices of the low castes have often been considered through concepts such as Sanskritization as well as consensus and replication, but have also been interpreted as resistance against the dominance of the high castes. The tendency common to these analyses is their interpretation of the low castes’ ritual practices in terms of caste hi...

Matriliny in South India is often considered as having declined in the course of modernization. Recent studies, however, highlight the social construction of matriliny by modern legal discourse. As an alternative to these perspectives, this article presents a fresh viewpoint from which to analyze the reflexive relationship between modern law and lo...

In this paper, I analyse relations between humans and nonhuman entities, including deities and machinery, linking the concepts of dividual persons and substance-codes (Marriott 1976) with transactional networks (Appadurai and Breckenridge 1976) and the ideas of hybrid and limited networks discussed by Strathern (1996). In būta (spirit) rituals in t...

The aim of this study is to investigate spirit possession through the lenses of mimesis, permeability, and perspectivity. Recent studies have explored the significance of perspective exchange as reciprocal subjectification. At the same time, the importance of reflexive self-awareness amid perspective exchange has been noted. Linking studies on pers...

The aim of this study is to investigate how divine worlds can be created, vitalized, and lived by people. Focusing not on cognition and operating through things but on bodily action with things, this paper examines the actuality of these actions, which occur prior to the cognitive articulation of the event and create novel experiences of the world....

The aim of this study is to investigate how divine worlds can be created, vitalized, and lived by people. Focusing not on cognition and operating through things but on bodily action with things, this paper examines the actuality of these actions, which occur prior to the cognitive articulation of the event and create novel experiences of the world....

In this article I attempt to analyze the transformation of savanna-originated spirit or suman shrines in a cocoa-producing migrant society in the Eastern Region of the Republic of Ghana. At the beginning of the twentieth century, various suman shrines were established as places where people were accused of witchcraft or exorcized in Akan societies....

In this article I have tried to analyze indigenous logic and practices of land inheritance in Akyem Abuakwa, one of the most intensive cocoa producing areas in the Republic of Ghana. Most of literatures on kinship and political economy in African societies have insisted on the transformation of a society from a lineage-based kinship and inheritance...

In this article I have tried to analyze indigenous logic and practices of land inheritance in Akyem Abuakwa, one of the most intensive cocoa producing areas in the Republic of Ghana. Most of literatures on kinship and political economy in African societies have insisted on the transformation of a society from a lineage-based kinship and inheritance...