Investigating Possession: Social Change, Marginality, and Religious Experience

An assumption running throughout anthropological studies of religion is that through the study of belief and ritual we may grasp indigenous conceptions of the world; ritual especially provides fertile ground for the expression of social tensions or for coping with sudden change (see, for example, La Barre 1970; Linton 1943; Wallace 1956; and Worsley 1968). Studies set in colonial Africa explore the effects of forced resettlement, migration, and urbanization on the web of social life, and the manner in which religion functions as a means for expressing conflict (Colson 1971; Epstein 1958; Gluckman 1954; Mayer 1971; Mitchell 1956; Powdermaker 1962; Richards 1951; Scudder 1966). Furthermore, it is well documented that the incidence of spirit possession often rises dramatically in times of social disruption and crisis. Colson, for example, found that possession occurred with greater frequency among the Gwembe Tonga (in what is now Zambia) when they were relocated by force after the British colonial administration decided to dam and then flood their valley (1969, 1977). The works of Colson and others remain influential in studies of possession, since this phenomenon continues to be investigated in light of the tensions and uncertainties of everday life. A problem underlying these studies, however, is that indigenous peoples are generally portrayed as powerless victims of change who do not fully comprehend the forces that are responsible for new predicaments in which they find themselves.

Ritual, Symbolic Action, and Power

More recent studies of religion have sought to go beyond a functionalist analysis, relying instead on a neo-Marxist framework.^[8] These studies are historically situated and set within the complex of unequal relations that characterize colonized societies in the Third World, and they are concerned with economic oppression and exploitation. A primary focus is the dispossessed, the marginal and powerless members of societies who are victims of a world capitalist system. Examples include investigations by such authors as J. Comaroff (1985), Nash (1979), Ong (1987), and Taussig (1980a, 1987), in southern Africa, Bolivia, Malaysia, and Colombia, respectively.

These authors do not reject religious experience as evidence of false consciousness (see Marx 1964: 43–44); instead, religion reveals an indigenous awareness of the inequalities that characterize capitalist economic relations. Although this level of consciousness is not fully articulated in everyday action and discourse, it is, nevertheless, richly interwoven in the symbolic imagery of religious expression. Nash and J. Comaroff both illustrate how religion lends order to the world, symbolically (and temporarily) empowering its participants. Nash describes how Bolivian tin miners attempt to control the hazards of their work through magic and by appeasing Tio, a hungry and greedy devil who lives underground. Comaroff argues that among the Tshidi of southern Africa, the rituals associated with the Church of Zion are evidence of attempts to reorder the world, where military and other symbols of power are incorporated into the regalia and ritual language of the church. Ong shows how spirits that possess young female Malay workers on the shop floor are a manifestation of the exploitative labor relations that characterize the electronics industry. While possessed, these women attack microscopes and other objects that are the instruments of their oppression (see also Lim 1983). Taussig, in turn, describes the disorder and madness that capitalist exploitation imposes on landless laborers in Colombia and the manner in which an indigenous awareness of such chaos is inherent to healing sessions and other ritual spheres.

Thus, as each of these studies illustrates, ritual action may be rich in symbols that reveal a keen awareness of the manner in which capitalist relations define or undermine the local social order. In Ambanja, perceptions of social and economic change are reflected within the context of tromba possession in several ways. First is the theme of historical knowledge, where Sakalava may reflect on and reinterpret who they are in relation to other peoples. In the context of tromba, power and historical knowledge are intrinsically linked, enabling Sakalava tera-tany to manipulate social and economic forces that shape their world. Second, healing rituals, involving tromba spirits, are an important arena for the expression of the meaning of affliction for tera-tany and vahiny.

Third, land, work, and identity are important local themes that are shaped or redefined through the logic of tromba. In the Sambirano, the meanings associated with land are multifaceted, since it is both an economically and symbolically defined category. Madagascar is a nation of peasants: it is estimated that approximately 80 percent of the population acquires some proportion of its subsistence needs from farming (World Bank 1980). Natural disasters—such as droughts and cyclones, coupled with population pressures and deforestation—threaten the viability of a large percentage of the population maintaining rights to arable land (cf. Downs and Reyna, eds. 1988). Severe economic problems also make it difficult for many to find wage labor. Migrants come to the Sambirano hoping to acquire work or land. In this region land is valued as a means of production, since ownership ensures that one may remain economically independent and thus free from capitalist relations that characterize wage labor. But ethnic identity and land are also intertwined, since access to land is defined by the opposing categories of tera-tany and vahiny. Vahiny seek to be rooted symbolically to the local ancestral land because it provides a means to achieve insider status. This is something that may occur through participation in tromba possession. In addition, the importance of this opposition of insiders and outsiders is reflected in the multiple meanings assigned to the word “work” (asa) by Sakalava, migrants, and employees of the French colonial and present governments. The meaning of work may also be redefined through possession.

The Question of Possession and Marginality

The relationship between powerlessness and symbolic expression is central to many studies of spirit possession. This argument is most widely known through the work of I. M. Lewis (1966, 1971, 1986, 1991). Lewis argues that possession gives marginalized people a voice and simultaneously enables them to displace the blame for their actions onto their spirits. This is possible because of the manner in which possession operates: it involves a foreign spirit or entity taking control of a living person, whose spirit, soul, or essence is temporarily displaced. Whatever is said or done during possession is the fault of the spirit, not the person. Lewis notes that it is women who predominate in possession cross-culturally, and so his theory is a corollary to a more general theory in gender studies which assumes the nearly universal subordination of women. A key assumption of this argument is that in any given culture, it is men who dominate formal power structures (Rosaldo and Lamphere, eds. 1974; Ortner 1974; and Reiter 1975).^[9]

The question of why possession is so common cross-culturally (Bourguinon 1973) has been a perplexing problem for anthropologists. Numerous authors have sought to break from I. M. Lewis’s argument, proposing other lines of inquiry. Dominant themes include exploring possession from psychological or psychiatric angles, either by analyzing the cultural construction of self and personhood (Crapanzano 1973, 1983; Crapanzano and Garrison, eds. 1977; Obeyesekere 1977, 1981), possession as pathology (Krippner 1987), or by challenging the pathological model and, more generally, assumptions about culture-bound syndromes (Bartholomew 1990; Hahn 1985; Karp 1985). Others have proposed a biological model; among the better known is the calcium deficiency hypothesis (Kehoe and Giletti 1981; Raybeck et al. 1989). Social roles and function provide another focus, including possession’s therapeutic role (I. and P. Karp 1979; Prince 1964) and its communicative and performative aspects (Ackerman and Lee 1981; Lambek 1980; Lebra 1982; Leiris 1958; Rouget 1980; V. Turner 1987: 33–71). Others draw on feminist theory (Boddy 1988; 1989) or political-economic approaches (Lim 1983; Morsy 1978, 1991; Ong 1987).^[10]

Functionalist arguments about marginality, nevertheless, remain implicit in the majority of writings on possession, since many authors share I. M. Lewis’s assumption that possession provides the powerless with a means to symbolically express social, economic, or political oppression. A second assumption that dominates the literature is that possession is a temporary experience confined to ritual contexts. In the literature framed by a political-economic approach, for example, possession is viewed as a means to express one’s powerlessness relative to established structures, but it has no long-term effects that alter relationships with spouses, employers, and others (see, again, Ong 1987, for example). Psychological studies focus on possession as a means to redefine identity, yet the subjects under study are still assumed to be somehow marginal to the greater society. For example, Crapanzano, in his study of the Hamadsha, presents an interesting case, since it involves men rather than women. He argues that adherents experience shifts in their identity and social roles, yet this institution remains a “peripheral” or “fringe phenomenon” relative to the greater Moroccan society (1973: 7) because they are members of the urban poor who are also psychologically disturbed.

There is, however, a growing body of literature that has begun to challenge the presumed universal association between marginality and the possession experience. Giles argues that women engaged in possession activities in Mombasa are not marginal members of their society, nor is possession, as Lewis advocates, peripheral to orthodox Islam. She advocates that possession by pepo (or sheitani) spirits is a central aspect of Swahili society, and historical analysis reveals that in the past it was more widespread than it is today. Pepo cults provide their members with close-knit groups that offer social support that extends beyond possession ceremonies into daily life. She also stresses the importance of gender differences for understanding the significance of possession in the community, and that possession cults are among the few places where women and men may interact on equal footing. This is an argument that Boddy (1989) has also taken up in her study of zar possession in the Sudan. She stresses that there is insufficient evidence to support the “fantasy” of a dominant male culture that subordinates the culture of women—it is a matter of perspective which is mediated by the gender of the informant (1989: 6) (and, perhaps, the anthropologist).

In Madagascar, several authors have analyzed possession in reference to social and economic change. An assumption running throughout these studies is the assumed centrality of possession in the local culture. Althabe (1969: 95–118), for example, illustrates the manner in which tromba possession among Betsimisaraka laborers of eastern Madagascar operates to integrate outsiders into communities located near a large sugarcane plantation. Marriage patterns are exogamous and virilocal; in this context a woman who is a “stranger” may become a spirit medium for the ancestors of her husband’s kin. Thus, possession operates as an institution for incorporation, whereby the new wife becomes more closely linked to her affines. In turn she is empowered, since it is through her that the ancestors speak. Fieloux and Lombard (1989), writing from southwest Madagascar, illustrate the usefulness of an analysis that focuses on the local political economy for understanding possession (again, see Morsy 1978, 1991). They describe changes in bilo possession which reveal the unease felt by local Masikoro, among whom the introduction of a new cash economy is undermining animal husbandry. Individuals who have grown “rich” and “fat” from their involvement in the cotton industry have lost sight of kin-based social relations, and bilo, as a ritual form, reflects these concerns and transformations.

This study of tromba possession in northwest Madagascar seeks to offer other important counterexamples, where the dominant assumptions about religious experience—and, more specifically, about possession and its participants—are inappropriate. As I will show, tromba possession is not a peripheral domain in the community of Ambanja; rather, it is a central and defining aspect of Sakalava culture. Furthermore, tromba possession may be permanently empowering, its significance extending beyond the ritual context into everyday life. This case from Madagascar also offers an example of the structural legitimacy of possession, in which kinship is a central operating principle. As a result, tromba carries with it important ramifications for those who occupy competing statuses of insider and outsider. What I will show is that to be active in tromba is a sign that one is not marginal.

The Body as a Natural Symbol

As Mauss reminds us, “The body is the first and most natural tool of man” (1979; quoted in Scheper-Hughes and Lock 1987: 1). Medical anthropology and sociology are rich in accounts that detail how the body serves as a field on which affliction is experienced and expressed (see, for example, Blacking 1977; J. Comaroff 1985; Crapanzano 1973; Martin 1987; Ong 1987; Taussig 1980b; B. Turner 1984, 1987). It is assumed here that spirit possession has a performative aspect and thus, in the context of tromba, the human body is a vehicle for the expression of conflicts through the manipulation of a symbolic order that is shared by members of this community. The aim of this study is to analyze the logic (or, as Taussig [1987] would say, the chaos) of the symbolic meanings that are played out on the body of the medium. Also, tromba possession may be a transformative process that affects different levels of identity.

Scheper-Hughes’s and Lock’s concept of “the three bodies” is helpful for exploring the symbolic nature of tromba possession, since tromba is significant to individual, social (as well as cultural), and political experiences. As a medium enters and exits trance, she experiences shifts in different levels of identity, shifts that may be temporary or permanent. These include selfhood,personhood, and ethnic identity. On the first or “individual” level, the first two forms of identity come into play. As these two authors stress, the manner in which the notion of self is defined (and therefore experienced) is not universal but culturally specific. In the context of tromba, selfhood is subjectively perceived as shifting in nature as the medium moves in and out of trance. In this sense it operates on a very personal (or psychological) level. Possession also affects notions of personhood: in this sense, the medium is perceived as a social being who experiences structural shifts in relation to her kin and friends, and these shifts affect her role and status in the community.^[11]

On the second level, or in reference to the “social body,” indigenous concepts of ethnic identity are significant. As a medium for royal spirits, a woman embodies what it means to be Sakalava, and this is evident in her words, attire, and actions. Thus, when possessed, her individual body provides a map of the social body. In addition, an important shift occurs if she is a migrant, because, through tromba possession, her ethnic identity is altered: when she becomes a medium for tromba spirits she is redefined ethnically as Sakalava. Since the concept of ethnic identity is central to this study, unless specified otherwise the term identity refers to ethnicity.

The third level is the “political body”: in this sense possession may be seen as politically charged (see, for example, Lan 1985). The political nature of tromba is defined through ancestral authority, a form of power that is respected locally and legitimated through recent national policies, including malagasization. As a vessel for Sakalava spirits, a medium embodies the Sakalava past: she helps record, shape, and redefine what it means to be Sakalava in the context of social change. She carries the authority of Sakalava ancestral power, and thus it is she who may manipulate relationships between individuals and groups in the Sambirano. This occurs most often during healing ceremonies, where she helps individual clients gain control over events that disrupt their lives. In other instances mediums may dictate the thrust of future economic development in the valley. The economic importance of the Sambirano, at a national level becomes more apparent when it is evaluated against the backdrop of the country as a whole.