Possession, Identity, and Power: Theoretical and Methodological Considerations

Women, migration, and power: these are the themes that frame this study of spirit possession and identity in northwest Madagascar. The setting is Ambanja, a booming migrant town in the heart of a prosperous plantation region called the Sambirano Valley. Here identity is shaped by polyculturalism and manipulated through religious experience. Healing rituals, involving possession by ancestral tromba spirits, provide an important arena in which to articulate the problems of urban life. In this latter respect this is a study in medical anthropology.

Identity in Ambanja is dynamic and multifaceted, defined in reference to a subjective conceptualization of self, an individual’s role as social actor, and cultural—or ethnic—origin. In this migrant town, these three levels of experience are bounded by competing statuses of insider and outsider. Insiders are, specifically, the indigenous Bemazava-Sakalava;^[1] outsiders are other Malagasy speakers who have come to this region as wage laborers searching for work. Ethnicity is the most important marker for defining identity and status in Ambanja. Although migrants form the majority of the valley’s population, the Sakalava comprise the largest single ethnic group.

These competing statuses define the powerful and the vulnerable, where local ancestors and access to land are pivotal. To some extent, length of stay and material wealth may affect one’s position in local arenas of influence, yet indigenous notions of power require that one be symbolically rooted to the land. The Sambirano Valley is the tanindrazan̂a (HP: tanindrazana), or “ancestral land” of the Sakalava. The significance of this concept is reflected in indigenous terms that are used to distinguish insiders from outsiders: Sakalava are the tera-tany (“the children” or “possessors of the soil”) or the original inhabitants of the Valley; while migrants are referred to as vahiny (“guests”). These symbolic distinctions also carry significant economic weight, ultimately affecting success or, even, survival. It is Sakalava tera-tany who most often control access to and hold rights over the use of the most important local resource: arable land.

Tromba, as the spirits of dead Sakalava royalty, define the key features of contemporary Sakalava identity.^[2] Amid rapid social change, they remain the guardians of local sacred space and they are significant historical actors for collective experience. Possession by the dead is deeply rooted in Sakalava history: among the earliest surviving written accounts is one recorded by Luis Mariano, a Portuguese Jesuit who described this phenomenon when he visted the island in 1616 (Lombard 1988: 23, who in turn cites A. and G. Grandidier, eds. 1903–1920, vol. 2: 251, 255). Spirit possession as an institution subsequently accompanied the rise of royal dynasties and their associated kingdoms in the sixteenth century. Because spirit possession is central to Sakalava culture, descriptions of this form of possession provide a means through which to trace the historical development of the Sakalava as a people, who today are organized into a chain of kingdoms along the west coast of Madagascar (Kent 1968; see also S. Ramamonjisoa 1984). In turn, since tromba spirits are known, historic personalities, spirit possession is an indigenous form of recorded history where Sakalava preserve knowledge of royal genealogies and, ultimately, of who they are more generally. In everyday terms, it is the tromba spirits that define who Sakalava are in contrast to the ever-increasing influx of migrants.

Tromba possession is a mainstay of everyday life in Ambanja. Tromba spirits address the living through mediums, the majority of whom are female. In precolonial times (prior to 1896) there was only a handful of mediums who served as counselors to members of the royal lineages. Within the last fifty years, however, there has been a virtual explosion in the incidence of tromba possession throughout Sakalava territory. Today, tromba spirits proliferate, especially in Ambanja. In this town of approximately 26,000,^[3] perhaps 60 percent of all women are possessed, of whom nearly 50 percent are non-Sakalava migrants. Tromba mediums are respected by both commoner Sakalava and non-Sakalava as powerful healers and as advisers on personal affairs. Through the assistance of tromba spirits and their mediums, insiders and outsiders may manipulate their statuses and their personal relationships in this town.

In Ambanja, tromba is perhaps the most significant local instititution for both Sakalava and non-Sakalava, and its importance is reflected in several ways. First, as a key aspect of indigenous religion, it is dynamic, constantly changing in form so as to remain a central defining principle of what it means to be Sakalava. In turn, as an essential Sakalava cultural institution, it also manages or regulates the incorporation of outsiders into the Sakalava community. An important feature of tromba in this polycultural town is that most non-Sakalava may, over time, actively participate in tromba, either as observers, mediums, or mediums’ clients. Tromba is the only local institution that enables migrants to permanently transform their identities. Through a complex fictive kinship system, non-Sakalava mediums are symbolically redefined as Sakalava. In this way they become enmeshed in local networks that increase their access to local institutions of power. Since tromba mediumship is primarily a female experience, tromba facilitates the incorporation of migrant women over men, and no comparable institution exists for men.

Tromba possession as ritual has a performative dimension (G. Lewis 1980: 22ff) where the actions, gestures, words, and knowledge communicated during large-scale possession ceremonies and smaller, private healing sessions reveal indigenous conceptions of well-being. For Ambanja’s residents, well-being does not hinge simply on one’s physical state; it is also mediated by one’s status as tera-tany or vahiny. Tromba mediums, as the embodiment of royal ancestral power, assist others in their attempts to cope with the problems they encounter while living in this urban community, one that is dominated by a plantation economy. Thus, embedded in the symbolic order of tromba are critiques of community life and its tensions, the meaning of work, the local political economy, and the dynamics of local power relations over time.