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Taming the Wind of Desire: Psychology, Medicine, and Aesthetics in Malay Shamanistic Performance.
... The literature on midwives within the discipline of anthropology is outlined in various sources. Laderman (1983;1991) studied midwives' practices in Terengganu, Malaysia and furthered her analysis on the shaman practices or traditional method of healing other diseases than childbirth. Laderman's comprehensive review of midwives, women and birth remain the complete long-standing study for more than 30 years. ...
... The literature on midwives within the discipline of anthropology is outlined in various sources. Laderman (1983;1991) studied midwives' practices in Terengganu, Malaysia and furthered her analysis on the shaman practices or traditional method of healing other diseases than childbirth. Laderman's comprehensive review of midwives, women and birth remain the complete long-standing study for more than 30 years. ...
... The details of her research include the conduct of postpartum care, including the massage with roasting bed and bertungku stone, the ritual for shaving the baby hair, purifying bath, and the circumcision process. In terms of foods, Laderman (1983) was detailed on the food restrictions, namely the hot and cold foods, but absent from her account was the herbal remedy used for postnatal care (pp. 183-188). ...
... Although some indigenous healing traditions do use words (i.e. songs, prayers) as a form of suggestive 'word-sound' (talking cure) therapy (Laderman 1983;Littlewood & Dein 1995;McGuire 1983;Porath 2003; in press), the case study that Lévi-Strauss used to develop his brilliant comparative argument with psychoanalysis was not an appropriate case example. He could not have known this, however, as his analysis was based not on fieldwork but on an interpretation of a text collected by others. ...
... Embodied semanget is permeable because it shares in the same substance as that of the spirit dimension (alap lain) and therefore can be affected by it and through it. I have already elaborated on Sakai notions of embodied semanget elswhere (Porath 2003;2007;2008; and for Malay see Laderman 1991). Here it will be sufficient to say that the concept of semanget is not simply a 'belief ' , but forms a cultural theory of consciousness based on the experiential sensoriality of self (the sensorial icon of the body-self and non-physical alter) in states of not being aware (tak soda' la'i) (Porath 2007). ...
... In the next stage, the woman is given the surrogate baby. Kapferer (1979;1991) has already pointed out that healing rites can be seen as rites of passage, which have for their aim the total transformation of the initiate. In this case, the aim is to transform the patient's body from one sensorially habituated to a childlessness existence into a body accepting impending motherhood (mak). ...
... , Vol. 7, No. 11 ISSN: 2222 Malay has changed the animism cosmology, but the beliefs of spiritual still exist amongst Malay particularly in the practice related to disease treatment, ritual, and healing. Laderman (1993) argued Cuisinier and Endicott opinion based on recorded material in 1936 regarding Malay ritual where he sees that a wide discussion about Malay beliefs, illness treatment, and healing. Cuisinier focused on dramatic aspect and symbolic in the ritual method and shamanistic that presented while looking for arrangement in parallelism Malay shaman between universe macro aspect and human micro cosmos. ...
... In the process, the disease diagnosed by the mediums and the community members who assemble will conclude based on what have been presented during the peak of the trance during the ritual. Laderman, C (1993) cited that Winstedt has written about attempted to tease Hindu and Sufi elements out of the shaman's seance, as well as those that he ascribed to an indigenous religion practiced by Malays before their conversion from Hinduism and later to Islam. The main point of the axcerp is about the passing of the microcosm and macrocosm relation of man and the universe. ...
... The works that have been generated post-1930 have come mainly from Malay(sian) scholars (e.g., Haji Mokhtar, 1979;Hamid, 1964;Kasimin, 1997;Moain, 1990;Ng, 2009;Osman, 1991, Sweeney, 1987Tan, 2010) and Western anthropologists (e.g., Bialecki, 2000;De Danaan, 1984;Endicott, 1970;Firth, 1967;Laderman, 1991;McHugh, 1955;Provencher, 1979). 1 In most of these writings, everyday talk about hantu was not directly addressed. Hantu were discussed peripherally; for example, hantu associated with traditional healing recitals or representation in film, or within penglipulara (professional traveling storyteller) performances. ...
... While Osman's conjectures show interesting connections between communication activity and meaning systems, his focus remains on typologies of storytelling as a narrative arrangement delivered by usually one speaker to a presumably passive audience. This view of cerita hantu as monologues is not surprising since the bulk of the literature on Malay language and consciousness (with exceptions such as Laderman, 1991 andSweeney, 1987) derives from the field of linguistics (e.g., Knowles & Don, 2005;Omar, 1987, Tham;1977;Thang, 2004). The report citing cerita hantu as memorates is nonetheless seminal; hitherto, there had been little academic attention given specifically to everyday accountings of hantu. ...
Malay(sian) cerita hantu (ghost stories) are not merely innocuous renderings meant to entertain or instill fear-they are places where socio-cultural worldviews are constituted. We use ethnographic observations to explore how cerita hantu are also reflections of interconnected cultural perspectives around race, class, religiosity, sexuality, and gender. Such intercultural workings are maintained and perpetuated in complex cultural processes, which we call "hauntings," that negotiate group identification, solidarity and separation, social hierarchies, and that situate normative order.
... More and more researchers have been taking on the task of the anthropology of experience (Duncan Earle 2007, Tim Knab 2003, George Mentore 2007, Laura Scherberger 2005, Tenibac Harvey 2006, Bonnie Glass-Coffin, personal communication, January 2007, Barbara Tedlock 2005, Dennis Tedlock 1990, William Powers 1982, Jean-Guy Goulet 1994, H. Stephen Sharp 1996, the perspectivism of Michael Uzendoski and Vivieiros de Castro, Bruce Grindal 1983, Colin Turnbull 1990, Benetta Jules-Rosette 1976, Paul Stoller 1984, John McCall 1993, Benjamin Ray, personal communication 2005, Steven Friedson 1996, Roy Willis et al. 1999, Alma Gottlieb et al. 1998, Jennifer Nourse 1996, Larry Peters 1981, Robert Desjarlais 1992, Carol Laderman 1991, Roberta Culbertson 1995, Suchitra Samanta 1998. 2 They have found that when they handle spirit events and experience them they are surprised and heart-warmed, for they find them curiously effective. So it is possible that we have got religion all wrong. ...
Victor Turner broke anthropology free from cultural determinism when it was anchored in the reductionist theories of Durkheim. Like Tolstoy in his recognition of the origin of violence in government, Turner recognized the origin of the denaturing of cultures in culture’s own penchant for the building of social structures in order to perpetuate itself. He saw in the cracks between structures, and in the liminal gaps necessary for changes in structure, the revival of the lost immediacy of social relationships and the communitas that is its mark. Nowadays one may include signs of spirituality in those gaps, although that spirituality has been a topic previously tabooed in anthropological circles or hidden under structural analysis. Turner saw the inconvenient truth that if structuralism as a value and philosophy (plus what we now see as the violence inseparable from the political state, along with neoconservatism and neoliberalism—business doctrines multiplied by themselves ad infinitem) were to continue as the world’s philosophy, we would continue with wars and the smothering of the natural flexibility of social intercourse (see Robert Putnam 2000, who shows in stark figures how sociality in general is losing ground in our era).
Keywords: Victor Turner, social process, rites of passage, liminality, communitas, anthropology
of experience, brain studies
... In contrast, during the post-partum period, women are strongly recommended not to take "wind foods", as they have "the cold body." The concept of wind (angin) in Malay society linked to the notion of sickness and treatment is believed that wind can bring the dirt and disease which can cause the human body to become ill (Ishak and Nassuruddin, 2014;Laderman, 1991). The concept of "wind" is also posed in the Chinese concept of illness (Green et al., 2006). ...
Obstetric medicine and reproductive technology have been spread out worldwide and become the symbol of modernization. Its expansion might displace the traditional treatments which mostly are practiced by the people in developing countries. However, the Malaysian women who lived in a Western country and had a well-educated background still practiced the traditional treatments after giving birth. The study was conducted in 2016 at Durham, a county in the United Kingdom, and it utilized qualitative research by interviewing five Malaysian women who had a birth experience in the United Kingdom. The result of the study revealed that heating the body with hot stone has still mostly practiced by Malaysian women even living in the United Kingdom, where there were optional sophisticated technology and qualified medical professional. In addition, some of them still obeyed the recommended and prohibited foods ruled by the origin culture during the postpartum period. The treatment was conducted at home supported by the family and colleagues whose the same ethnicity and nationality. In conclusion, the national boundaries, high education, and the existence of sophisticated health technology and qualified medical professional are irrelated to why people still undertake traditional treatments. The treatment was primarily chosen because of its health effects on the body after treatments. Therefore, health policymakers have to know and consider the migrant‟s cultural values in order to make the health system convenient and appropriate to either the migrants‟ health. In addition, the study needs further research to find the effectiveness and efficacy of traditional treatments to women‟s health. Keywords: traditional treatments, postpartum period, humoral system, heat therapy, cultural value, Malaysian culture
... More recent theories of embodiment and performance have distanced themselves from the intellectualism of earlier models to pay increasing attention to phenomenology, but likewise place great emphasis on inter-personal engagement: the healing response is assumed to emerge from the empathy, fame or sensorial dimension of the healer's technique. Many such approaches to indigenous healing have drawn parallels with Western psychotherapy (or, indeed, have sought to vindicate the efficacy of indigenous therapies based on their similarity with psychotherapy), stressing cross-cultural similarities (Kleinman and Sung, 1979;Devereaux, 1980;Kleinman, 1988;Kakar, 1991;Laderman, 1993;Kaptchuk, 2011; for exceptions see Calabrese, 2008;Ranganathan, 2015). Western psychotherapy places paramount emphasis on the role of the therapist, particularly on their deontological empathy, warmth and sincerity (e.g. ...
This thesis examines the phenomenon of healing efficacy among the Akha of highland Laos, in light of the science of ‘placebo effects.’ Swidden farmers of Tibeto-Burman language origin, the Akha have a rich ancestral system of oral customs, centred on animism and a robust shamanic tradition. Based on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in a remote village, the first part of the dissertation is a detailed investigation of the whole gamut of Akha therapeutic practices. Among its key findings is that rituals for spirit affliction challenge a number of assumptions about healing performances that are widespread in medical anthropology. Specifically, the analysis shows that only few of these rituals engage the sick person’s senses in a way that harness ‘placebo effects’, as prevailing theories would predict. It is argued, however, that the most compelling aspect of efficacy lies at the level of Akha aetiology. The ways of explaining illness and healing – through a distinction between naturalistic and personalistic causes – reveal intriguing parallels with the aetiological picture of symptom perception that is borne out of placebo science. Overall, Akha thought is shown to capture something fundamental about the nature of illness and healing. The final part of the dissertation dwells on the implications of this finding. The material analysed invites a shift in focus from the narrow domain of the patient-healer interaction to the wider social and conceptual framework that underpins the phenomenon of health. It also has direct bearings on the understanding of the ‘placebo effect’, a notion that captures a nexus of contradictions central to modern naturalism. Espousing a kind of anthropology that looks at the ‘other’ for insights into one’s own culture and the human condition, the thesis examines how Akha resolve these contradictions, and what we can learn from them.
... It"s different from the emergence of Catholicism as the dominant religion in the Philippines and Latin America since the 15 th century which was accompanied by military and cultural conquests (Azra 1999: 37). Maxwell (1883), Winstedt (1920Winstedt ( , 1985, Hamilton (1926), Shaw (1972Shaw ( , 1975, Werner (1986) Endicott (1991), Laderman (1991), Hopes (1997), Daud (2001), and Hermansyah (2010). Today, local occult practice is adjusted with Muslims or specifically Malay people. ...
... A more holistic approach would also mean the recognition that social and structural solutions need to be implemented. Examples from numerous cultures indicate that communal rituals where the community comes together to heal individuals as well as relationships (Katz, 1982;Laderman, 1991). Many of these ceremonies, including the Native American sweat lodge, are based on an ethic of reciprocity and maintaining balance of interrelationship (Garrett et al., 2011;Portman & Garrett, 2006). ...
This paper reflects on potential contributions from anthropology to the field of “psychedelic science.” Although the discipline’s beginnings went hand in hand with colonialism, it has made significant contributions to the understanding of Indigenous knowledge systems. Furthermore, recent calls to decolonize our theoretical frameworks and methodology, notably the “ontological turn,” open up the space for engaging meaningfully with Indigenous worldviews. At this critical juncture of the “psychedelic renaissance,” it is important to reflect on whether the current model is satisfactory and on ways to decolonize psychedelic science. What we need is a shift in paradigm, one that will acknowledge the validity of Indigenous worldviews as equal partners to scientific inquiry. Acknowledging the contributions of Indigenous knowledges to psychedelic science is necessary and needs to go hand in hand with attempts to revise biomedical models to be more inclusive in substantial ways. The paper does not argue for the abandonment of the scientific paradigm, rather for the abandonment of its privileged position. Decolonizing psychedelic science will require allowing multiple perspectives to coexist and contribute equally to our efforts going forward.
... · gous to what in Western terms is broadly defined as psychotherapy (Kiev 1964;Frank and Frank 1991). Renewing and updating this agenda, cultural variants of healing and therapeutic process emphasizing modulations in bodily experience, transformation of self, aesthetics, and religion have been contributed by Csordas (1994Csordas ( , 2002, Desjarlais (1992), Mullings (1984), Laderman (1991). and Roseman (1991). ...
Anthropology and psychiatry as disciplines appear to have a considerable amount of common ground. Both are interested in human beings, the societies within which they live and their behaviours. A key starting difference between the two is anthropology's interest in relativism, whereas psychiatry has been interested in uni-versalism. Also, both anthropology and psychiatry have a long history of common interest in phenomenology and the qualitative dimensions of human experience, as well as a broader comparative and epidemiological approach. jenkins illustrates the common ground by emphasizing that both disciplines contribute to the philosophical questions of meaning and experience raised by cultural diversity in mental illness and healing. Both disciplines also contribute to the practical problems of identifying and treating distress of patients from diverse ethnic and religious groups. Psychiatry focuses on individual biography and pathology, thereby giving it a unique relevance and transformation. Patient narratives thus become of great interest to clinicians and anthropologists. Development of specializations such as medical or clinical anthropology puts medicine in general and psychiatry in particular under a magnifying glass. Using Jungian psychology as an exemplar could lead to a clearer identification of convergence between the two disciplines. The nexus between anthropology of emotion and the study of psychopathology identified in her own work by Jenkins looks at normality and abnormality, feeling and emotion, variability of course and outcome, among others. She ends the chapter on an optimistic note, highlighting the fact that the convergence between these two disciplines remains a very fertile ground for generating ideas and issues with the potential to stimulate both disciplines.
... Over the span of 100 years since the publication of the book, there have been a variety of works about magic in the Malay world, in the form of books and journal articles. These works were written among others by Maxwell (1883), Winstedt (1920Winstedt ( , 1985, Hamilton (1926), Shaw (1972Shaw ( , 1975, Werner (1986) Endicott (1991), Laderman (1991), Hopes (1997), Haron David (2001, and Hermansyah (2005). This paper specifically addresses the practice of magic in the inland communities of West Kalimantan, especially in the area of Embau. ...
... Always keeping in mind that there is no such thing as an experience that admits of one and only one interpretation, one nonetheless develops a basis in transpersonal experiences for understanding how particular metaphors come to stand for what are largely ineffable states. Take for instance anthropologist, Carol Laderman's (1988Laderman's ( , 1993 experience while researching Malay shamanic healing. She found that Malays were reluctant to talk about their experiences of the "Inner Winds" that arise during ritual trance states. ...
Based on the author’s nearly 50 years of meditation, it is observed that as a given alternative state is accessed and used over the span of years, experiences and capacities within that state are not merely static but may themselves shift as a practitioner develops neuropsychologically. An ethnographer using a substance within the context of a cultural practice may gain helpful direct insights into that cultural practice, but the researcher may fail to realize that the state attained by a novice may be substantively different from that gained by an elder or shaman with years of experience in the practice. The author’s meditation led to insight that visual and other phenomenal experiences are constructed out of sensory particles, or sensory dots. This practice later led to a state in which pure awareness was aware only of itself, and to an experiential realization of the Buddhist teaching of no-self.
... Over the span of 100 years since the publication of the book, there have been a variety of works about magic in the Malay world, in the form of books and journal articles. These works were written among others by Maxwell (1883), Winstedt (1920Winstedt ( , 1985, Hamilton (1926), Shaw (1972Shaw ( , 1975, Werner (1986) Endicott (1991), Laderman (1991), Hopes (1997), Haron David (2001, and Hermansyah (2005). This paper specifically addresses the practice of magic in the inland communities of West Kalimantan, especially in the area of Embau. ...
Belief and practice as part of culture which exists in society is the result of a dynamic process that is growing and developing, and affected by both internal and external aspects of the society. All of this is a manifestation of a continuity of the treasures of humanity. Derivation and transfer of a culture toward forming a new more complex culture is natural and inevitable. There is no culture and civilization in the world built without relationship and interchange with other cultures and civilizations. It is also the case with the religious life of the rural community in West Kalimantan which is the subject of the study in this article. This continuity shows that local communities have a vibrant culture passed down from one generation to the next. The existence of tradition heritage recorded in magic called ilmu in inland Islamic societies of West Kalimantan shows that their peaceful process of accepting Islam since its spread, to a certain extent, accommodates local culture. The dialectic process of Islam and local culture serves as an example of religious acceptance in a massive fashion in a region far away from the coastal area.
... Possession practices are widespread in Southeast Asia. Many of them are strongly, but not solely, associated with healing, such as the ritual possessions of the Vietnamese bà đồng and ông đồng (Nguyễn Thị Hiền 2002; Chauvet, this volume; Kendall, this volume), the seances of the Malay bomoh (Laderman 1991), or the numerous "shamanic" practices of ethnic minority groups in the interior or upland areas of Southeast Asia (Neumann Fridman and Walter 2004). Other possession practices are instrumental in communicating with spirit entities for divination purposes and establishing contact with the ancestors. ...
In many parts of the contemporary world, spirit beliefs and practices have taken on a pivotal role in addressing the discontinuities and uncertainties of modern life. The myriad ways in which devotees engage the spirit world show the tremendous creative potential of these practices and their innate adaptability to changing times and circumstances. Through in-depth anthropological case studies from Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam, the contributors to this book investigate the role and impact of different social, political, and economic dynamics in the reconfiguration of local spirit worlds in modern Southeast Asia. Their findings contribute to the re-enchantment debate by revealing that the "spirited modernities" that have emerged in the process not only embody a distinct feature of the contemporary moment, but also invite a critical rethinking of the concept of modernity itself. © 2011 Kirsten W. Endres and Andrea Lauser. All rights reserved.
... Although the highly elaborate relationships of wind and breath in these scholarly texts stand in contrast with the more inchoate relationships of many hunter-gatherers, Zysk points out that these sophisticated practices of breath control, much like those techniques Roseman describes among the Temiar hunter-gatherers, are ultimately performed with the aim of anchoring winds in the body. Laderman (1991) furthermore observed that among the contemporary Temiar, the inner winds, angin, which make possible imagination, feeling, and thinking, constitute a key component of a Malay person. Temiar shamanic ritual is directed at modulating the state of inner winds. ...
The introduction contextualizes the historical, ethnographic, and theoretical accounts of wind in the following papers, all of which deal with how wind the 'natural' phenomenon relates to human life and culture. It draws attention to the diversity of relationships with wind whilst also addressing why it is that similar patterns of ideas surrounding wind exist across cultures. It explores the notion that human/wind relationships are tightly bound to the sensuous qualities of wind, which in turn reflect the embedded unfolding of human life as an aspect of environment, and drawing on phenomenology as a particularly apposite hermeneutic approach to understanding the relationship.
... Possession practices are widespread in Southeast Asia. Many of them are strongly, but not solely, associated with healing, such as the ritual possessions of the Vietnamese bà đồng and ông đồng (Nguyễn Thị Hiền 2002; Chauvet, this volume; Kendall, this volume), the seances of the Malay bomoh (Laderman 1991), or the numerous "shamanic" practices of ethnic minority groups in the interior or upland areas of Southeast Asia (Neumann Fridman and Walter 2004). Other possession practices are instrumental in communicating with spirit entities for divination purposes and establishing contact with the ancestors. ...
Spirits have haunted the human imagination since times immemorial. Conceptualized in countless human and non-human forms, they may appear as the disembodied souls of the dead, as fiery demons with drooling fangs, as seductive heavenly fairies, or as uncanny creatures that can assume any shape. They may be envisioned as an anonymous mass of hungry ghosts or spirit soldiers, or as clearly defined personalities with noble moral qualities.1 Some are identified as ancestral beings, mythological heroes, or saintly guardians. Spiritual entities inhabit the landscape, including forests, fields, rivers, and mountains; they reside at the margins of human habitation, in abandoned spaces, cemeteries, or in shrines erected for them in various spaces, including bustling urban centers. As dwellers of the invisible world, they may manifest themselves as dreamlike apparitions,
as bodiless, ethereal voices, or, spontaneously or summoned at will, in the bodies of human beings. Spirits depend on human care and need to be propitiated with offerings and rites lest they cause misfortune, illness, and disaster. For either good or evil, they may interfere in worldly affairs, local politics, and matters of morality. Tylor’s classic minimum definition of religion as “the belief in spiritual beings” (Tylor 1871: I, 424) may be semantically debatable, but it speaks to the immutability of spirit conceptions throughout the world and thus still serves as a useful starting point for a discussion of spirits in and of modernity.
... 7. The shaman has always figured in the Western imagination (Znamenski 2007), but recent work has focused specifically on the allure of the shaman to Western tourists, especially in the mythical homeland of the shaman, Siberia, and Central Asia (Bernstein 2008), and among Native Americans (Bunten 2008) and the indigenous people of Central and South America (Feinberg 2006;Davidov 2010). For shamanism in Southeast Asia, see Laderman (1991) and Sather (2001). 8. Fletcher (2010) has identified something similar for adventure tourism. ...
This essay attempts to explain why international backpacker tourists in Indonesia are so interested in indigenous religion and especially in shamanism. It articulates the indigenous mode of analysis or reverse anthropology of the people whom the tourists visit: in this case, the Sakaliou clan on the island of Siberut, the largest of the Mentawai Islands off the west coast of Sumatra. According to Sakaliou, tourists seem to be looking for something they have lost, a kind of secret knowledge that is possessed by the shaman. Unlike other people, who keep their secrets in isolation, the shaman must skilfully reveal some of his secret knowledge as part of a public performance. It is this secret knowledge, indicated by the skilled revelation of skilled concealment, for which tourists seem to be searching among the members of the Sakaliou clan and their shamans.
... The common utilization of vegetative organs, particularly roots, for medicine in India and Malesia suggests that these regions might have influenced each other in the development of eggplant uses. Malay medicine is known to have been influenced by the practices of various other Asian medical systems, including those of India and China (Laderman 1993;Winstedt 1944); therefore it is plausible that uses were adopted from India to the Philippines. However, the higher number of root attributes in the Philippines demonstrates that uses probably developed in Malesia and not by diffusion based on patterns from other crops (Table 1), and although more work is needed to understand the development of root use knowledge, diffusion in the direction from Malesia to India is plausible (Hyp 2). ...
Comparing Medicinal Uses of Eggplant and Related Solanaceae in China, India, and the Philippines Suggests the Independent Development of Uses, Cultural Diffusion, and Recent Species Substitutions. The ways in which geographically separate communities use crops reflect the agricultural and cultural influences on each community. The eggplant (Solanum melongena L.; Solanaceae), which was domesticated in South and Southeast Asia, has long been used in a variety of medicinal and culinary preparations across many different Asian ethnolinguistic groups. Here, we report the total uses for eggplant and sixteen related species in three regions, India, southern China, and Malesia, and conduct a comparative analysis in order to form hypotheses about how influences on plant use in one region could have affected use and evolutionary trajectories in other regions. Results from literature review and 101 interviews show a total of 77 medicinal attributes for eggplant, with few similar attributes mentioned in different regions, leading us to hypothesize that largely pristine (i.e., without influence from other regions) development of uses, which could serve as selection pressures, occurred for eggplant in India, southern China, and Malesia. Results also show that many Solanum species have been fluidly adopted into uses developed for other species in a single region.
... This ceremony was a sort of sympathetic rite intended to facilitate the delivery of the baby when the time for confinement came, particularly if the expectant mother was pregnant with the first child. In addition, if pregnancy complications occurred, the midwives and shamans were the first to be solicited for advice (Laderman, 1991). Mothers would only go to a hospital for treatment when they could not see any improvement. ...
The health of mothers and infants, particularly in Malay States during the re-gion's colonization, has not been extensively studied by historians. This study thus aims to analyze the pattern and causes of maternal and infantile mortality rates in Selangor during the colonial era from 1900 to 1940. This period covers the mass arrival of Chinese and Indian immigrants in Selangor. The study examined the three main ethnic populations in Selangor: Malays, Chinese, and Indians. The data used were obtained from an analysis of primary sources, especially from the health records of the Selangor Health Department in the national archives of Malaysia. The study found that the rate of increase in maternal and infantile mor-tality in Selangor during that period was caused by various factors, including the unplanned system of urbanization that led to population congestion, the lack of basic health facilities, poverty, the lack of knowledge about health care, diets fol-lowed during and after pregnancy and, finally, cultural practices inhibiting certain ethnicities from receiving modern treatment from maternity hospitals.
... The placenta represents also a source of anxiety for the child's wellbeing. Carol Laderman (1991) reports on the recitation during a healing séance in Malaysia which portrays the ambivalent feelings people believe the placenta would harbor: He was brave, but he suffered injustice. Body of a beast with a human face, he is the genuine older brother. ...
... Shamans consistently have chants, songs, and specific words which facilitate the onset of trance, and invoke spirit-helpers. These chants are an integral part of shamanic rites, for instance, for the Malay bomoh (Laderman 1991), the kuran of the eastern Indian Sora (Vitebsky 1993), and the Korean kam (Kendall 1985). For the buili, chanting allows him to engage with a spirit world in which transformation into a fowl and flying are possible. ...
The use of 'shamanism' and/or neuropsychology in the interpretation of has been much contested, with opinions often polarized between so-called 'shamanophobes' who support or oppose these lines of enquiry, respectively. analyses have, arguably, suffered most in this controversy. In this article ethnography of the bwili or 'flying tricksters' of Malakula, Melanesia, to in the northwest of the island - in the same region and, apparently, Layard's bwili. In contrast to uncritical shamaniac interpretations and their tion of'entoptics = shamanism', and as a challenge to the criticisms of theorize the term 'shamanisms', scrutinize Layard's ethnography, and critically Williams and Dowson's (1988) neuropsychological model to interpret the west Malakula. The article therefore seeks to reinstate these approaches neuropsychology - as complementary elements in the interpretation.
... In particular this article presents some extracts of collected and translated vocal rituals 5 which illustrate the power of a complex poetic interweaving of speech, song and instrumental music in ritual performances of healing (cf. Laderman 1991). ...
This article explores the significance of stone in Southeast Asia, arguing that within the animistic ontologies of the region stone is a central cosmological concept. Stone, for the people of this region, is a locus of sentience, expressed through the presence of spirits. Cosmic power, which is equivalent to vital force, is believed to flow through the cosmos, flowing fastest in water and coalescing in stone. Stone is a source of power and life and is associated with origins and ancestors; the placing of stone is associated with status and becoming a significant ancestor. Southeast Asian ontologies, which regard the material world as made up of a constant flow of cosmic power, closely identified with life itself, do not separate mind and matter and see stone as alive. Stone is a lens through which we can view these ontologies and perhaps even question our own.
Ethnographic study that related communcal identities in Kalimantan gave important understanding that customary
communities, believes and local languages were interrelated. Scharer (1963) classified Dayak Baroto community as Ngaju.
The term Ngaju in the local languate meant “toward upper course”. Additionally, some used the term “Oloh Ngajus” to
identify the communities that differed themselves from “Oloh TUmbang” representing the community of Dayak living in the
area alongside estuary. The Olong Tumbang was the areas alongside the estuary of Barito River in which Bakumpai people
lived. Using ethnographic approach, data were collected in the area of Barito, Samba and Long Iram Rivers. The data of the
narration of the life of Bakumpai people and their identity were collected in the period of August 2015 to June 1016. the
study found the religious identity of Bakumpai people in the context of Dayak and Islam in South Kalimantan and Central
Kalimantan. Bakumpai people converted to Islam did not automatically leave their Dayak identity. They did not change their
customary and cultural identity as the case of other communities of Dayak in Kalimantan who changed their identity into
Malay (Tame Melayo, Basalam). The social structure of the people in the past could not instantly be changed into Malay social
structure. The issue of customary identity as raised in the study has been discussed by researchers. Dayak was not
compatible with Islam. However, Bakumpai people proudly acknowledged that they were part of Malay of the descendants of
Ngaju.
Almost all previous studies on the Makyung dance theater concurred that the aforementioned performance was the oldest form of traditional theater amongst the Malays in Southeast Asia. It arrived or started before the arrival of Islam to the Malay Peninsula. Unfortunately, the written record on Makyung only existed at the end of the 18th century. Hence, the exact date on the origin of Makyung is difficult to determine. This means that the main sources of research on Makyung are from oral traditions, including myths, as well as the evidence contained in the self-titled performances, and not only depending the sources of writing, material evident or archaeological materials. Consequently, this article offers that Makyung is the oldest dance theatre in Southeast Asia through the analysis of previous historical records, studies and opinions about stories and elements in the performance structure.
The early literature on Malay animism and magic includes a passing reference to a concept called maya. This reference is hardly noticeable in the literature, and when Kirk Endicott wrote his Malay Magic, he omitted the word altogether. In this article the author uses ethnographic material from the Malayan-speaking Orang Sakai of Riau to examine the concept of maya (image) as it relates to a 'lifeless soul' inherent in material objects, giving physical objects vitality of form, appearance and use. The Author Nathan Porath holds a PhD in anthropology from Leiden University in the Netherlands and has carried out anthropological field research in Riau, Indonesia and southern Thailand. He is currently a visiting post-doctoral research fellow at
The early literature on Malay animism and magic includes a passing reference to a concept called maya. This reference is hardly noticeable in the literature, and when Kirk Endicott wrote his Malay Magic, he omitted the word altogether. In this article the author uses ethnographic material from the Malayan-speaking Orang Sakai of Riau to examine the concept of maya (image) as it relates to a ‘lifeless soul’ inherent in material objects, giving physical objects vitality of form, appearance and use.
Does kinship still matter in today’s globalized, increasingly mobile world? Do family structures continue to influence the varied roles that men and women play in different cultures? Answering with a resounding ‘yes!', Linda Stone and Diane E. King offer a lively introduction to and working knowledge of kinship. They firmly link these concepts to cross-cultural gender studies, illuminating the malleable nature of gender roles around the world and over time. Written to engage students, each chapter in Kinship and Gender provides key terms and useful generalizations gleaned through research on the interplay of kinship and gender in both traditional societies and contemporary communities. Detailed case studies and cross-cultural examples help students understand how such generalizations are experienced in real life. The authors also consider the ramifications of current social problems and recent developments in reproductive technology as they demonstrate the relevance of kinship and gender to students’ lives. The fully-revised sixth edition contains new case studies on foster parenting in the United States and on domestic violence. It provides new material on pets as family members and an expanded discussion of the concept of lineal masculinity. There is also a comparison of the adoption of new reproductive technologies in Israel with other countries, along with a discussion of the issue of transnational movements in the use of these technologies.
Sabah is a country rich in ethnic diversity, art and culture. One of the famous cultures is the healing beliefs practiced among the indigenous people in remote areas. Healing beliefs in each district are different and have their own uniqueness in according to their traditional beliefs. Therefore, this study focuses on healing ritual known as berasik among the indigenous Bajau/Sama'people in Kampung Beliajung, Kota Marudu located on the West Coast (North) of Sabah. Ngalai/Berasik is a form of special performances practiced only by the locals in Kampong Beliajung. It combines several elements of performances such as role play, music and ngalai. An ethnographic study will be carried out in order to understand the discourse of healing performance in the community. It also aimed at sustaining the receding culture. The researcher will also discuss the practices and beliefs that shape the structures and forms of the Berasik performances practiced by the locals in the designated area.
Cosmopolitan forms of alternative medicine have become very popular in contemporary Indonesia. Many healers have trained in an eclectic range of techniques, predicated on ontological claims so diverse that they call each other's legitimacy into question. This article explores how a collective of alternative healers in central Java navigated the quandaries presented by such therapeutic eclecticism over a six‐year period. Healers’ engagement with, or indifference toward, the principles underpinning therapeutic efficacy fluctuated in ways that allowed them to surmount the dilemmas of Islamization, the changing demographic of their collective's membership, and the threat of commercialization, thereby maintaining a medical landscape in which alternative healing was widely available and accessible. Transformations in their understanding, experience, and practice of healing should thus be understood in terms of how enduring ethical commitments are refracted through ongoing engagements with a changing social world. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved
The legacy of Alfred Gell offers a rich stock of ingenious ideas to apply and extend to the thought-provoking artwork of Mohammad Din Mohammad, who combines the skills (ilmu) of the Malay martial art silat with the knowledge of the traditional Malay healer, to press life, breath, and divine power into his painting and sculpture. The artist's agency is said to open a gateway to the unseen realm. By painting calligraphic motifs derived from the Quran with his bare hands, the artist channels Allah's energy from within, energy that is embodied and suspended within his artworks, to protect the patient from spiritual attack. The artwork serves as a protective talisman during spiritually vulnerable moments, such as birth, marriage, fasting, and death. During crisis, the power stored within the artwork may be unleashed to counter attacks from ghosts, vampires, or other nefarious creatures. [
The concept of the cultural construction of illness is important in terms of understanding people's behaviour. In this article, this idea is applied to psychiatric illness in Malaysia to explore how it is informed by sociocultural elements, a process that will help us understand the psychiatric expression and help-seeking behaviour of the country's population.
This paper is an account of research collaborations and an interdisciplinary community that is being forged among experts who have few traditions in common, but who bring diverse expertise to the seemingly unreachable ‘moonshot’¹1 The author's work was named one of Google's Solve for-X “moonshot” efforts. Drawing on the massive effort that lead to the American space programme, Google defines a moonshot project as one that addresses a huge problem, involves breakthrough technology and offers a potentially radical solution that “could someday make the world a radically better place” (www.solveforx.com/projects) [Accessed June 2, 2016].View all notes problem that is chronic pain. It provides analyses of how such collaborations among outliers—from health research, pain medicine, art, design, music, computer science and engineering—arose, and how these collaborators found support in usual and unlikely places, and created a small but vibrant and growing community of researchers. Specifically, this account focuses on artists and designers in this collaborative context; what was required of them, their roles in changing the very conditions of research, how their relationships to their originating (or ‘legacy’) discipline changed, and how their commitments profoundly redefined their very notions of what art can mean.
Social constructions of reality must account for adversity and calamities. In East Java this is commonly done with reference to the spirit world and to God, with only occasional appeals to modern science. Rather than being a uniform phenomenon, adversity can be conceptualized as happening on the individual, the household, the community, and the state levels. Explanations similarly vary from specific individual offences, to communal household or community culpability, and national-level disasters like tsunamis and volcanic eruptions that are blamed on the activities of gods and spirits. All these social units are seen as porous, and care must be taken to protect them from deleterious outside influences. Parallel to these explanations at all levels run appeals to God and His mercies. The difference between these streams of explanation is resolved in the case of the more pious by either denying the spirit world, or otherwise resolving them in various ways by unifying the categories of God and the spirit world.
In this chapter, I will be dealing with the case of the Mazatec healer María Sabina and the series of representations of her and her activities by which she became known outside her community. While we have tape recordings of her chanting and performing rituals, she never wrote anything herself, so what we do have is a complex textual and representational chain in which others have represented her or translated and transcribed her own words. Thus we have a figure who, like Black Elk, can be seen as a mediator between different realms—namely, shamanic/Christian, sacred/secular—who is herself being mediated and used within Western culture via a number of discourses ranging from the scientific and anthropological to the aesthetic.
The belief in " hantu " is the result of animism and dynamism among Malays before the arrival of Hindu, Buddha and Islam. Hantu is portrayed as the incarnation of evil souls wishing to harm humans. This belief is related to the concept of soul existence or " semangat " (essence) in everything including the human body. This ancient belief is integrated into their new religions through adaptation process. After embracing Islam, the belief in hantu is not totally dispelled since its features are similar to that of jinn and shaitan, whose existence are acknowledged in Islam. The belief is also supported by the concept of human soul in the afterlife, where it is deemed as immortal. Hantu is portrayed as the soul of the dead, dwelling in certain places and harming the humans. Based on the analysis of the texts of the Quran and Sunnah, it is found that the soul of the dead could never become hantu, as opposed to the Malays' belief. It is because the soul of the dead is in barzakh, the impassible barrier between the world and the Hereafter. It is a place where the soul is either rewarded or punished for his or her deeds in the past life. The souls cannot act independently by themselves as they are under the control of Allah. Based on this, the belief in hantu is against the Islamic teachings. This belief is capable in affecting a Muslim's faith as it indirectly leads to the denial of rewards and punishments in the afterlife.
El autor presenta algunos de los fundamentos de la cultura malaya en relación con la salud y la enfermedad en el ámbito rural. La cosmología malaya se basa en un corpus sincrético integrado por creencias animistas e Islam. El contenido cognitivo y simbólico de este corpus heterogéneo resulta particularmente ejemplar para revelar tanto aspectos generales de la cultura malaya (cosmología, estructura social, relaciones de género, hechicería) como aspectos singulares relacionados con la salud y la enfermedad (comprensión del cuerpo, reproducción, enfermedad). La descripción etnográfica de este sistema permite un doble ejercicio metodológico: abordar el contexto social y cultural en el que se concibe localmente la enfermedad entre los malayos y dilucidar vínculos de comparación con otras sociedades musulmanas en el contexto del sistema biomédico contemporáneo.
Espiritismo is a system of ritual healing indigenous to the Caribbean. Nearly 3 years of fieldwork in an Espiritismo worshipping community in Manhattan has produced a rich and textured source of ethnographic information that is analyzed in terms of its feminized spatiality. The central figure in this community is Maria; the priestess/medium who negotiates the exigencies of this world and the world of the spirits through trance-possession performance. Her articulation of Espiritismo uses the boundaries between self and community, male and female, Catholic and non-Catholic, the human world and the spirit world, and racial identities as resources for solving problems of well-being such as poor health, lost love, and economic deprivation for herself and her community of devotees. Maria's body is the primary site where these issues are resolved in that her body (re)presents, (re)produces and (re)valorizes the Espiritismo community's use of (in)visibility, particularity, trance-possession and inclusivity as a means for healing everyday problems in familiar spaces.
This article uses chinging hairdos in Samoa to construct a hsitory of female sex roles and gender politics from contact to the present. The diachronic view that body symbols provide casts light on the nature of Samoan sexual relations- a subject that has long perplexed anthropologists. In turn, this sexual history reflects upon the controversy about hair symbolism in the anthropological literature, a controversy that concerns both the particularity or comparability of body symbols between cultures, and their communicative or personal nature within cultures.
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This article argues that anthropological theory necessarily takes the form of interpretive theory, for in order to understand human affairs it is necessary to understand the cultural systems of meaning that mediate the world that people experience. Even anthropologists who eschew interpretive approaches use them, often unwittingly, and the article analyzes the work of Radcliffe-Brown and Julian Steward to make this point.
It explores the nature of interpretive theory, giving an analysis of a variety of 'families' or types of interpretation that have appeared in the literature. It suggests that we may speak of progress in anthropological theory and indicates how this is achieved, and concludes by proposing that we may also speak of progress in ethnography.
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