Laurel Kendall
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824833435
- eISBN:
- 9780824870577
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824833435.003.0006
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Asian Cultural Anthropology
This chapter explores as contradictory impulses the desire for and the moral disdain of new wealth and what it can buy. Shamans, gods, and ancestors enact this contemporary paradox through the medium ...
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This chapter explores as contradictory impulses the desire for and the moral disdain of new wealth and what it can buy. Shamans, gods, and ancestors enact this contemporary paradox through the medium of material goods. Through the aperture of offerings, and offerings turned into props, new marketplace commodities (e.g. exotic fruit, foreign whisky, chocolates) enter ritual space. As static offerings, such goods index changing tastes and the ability to finance them. When taken up as props, these same objects provoke mime and commentary about and around the things themselves, no less than does the more traditional kut fare of pigs' heads and tubs of rice cake. More generally, a focus on props enriches interpretations of shamanic and mediumistic rituals as emergent, situation-contingent performances, a theme that runs through this entire study.Less
This chapter explores as contradictory impulses the desire for and the moral disdain of new wealth and what it can buy. Shamans, gods, and ancestors enact this contemporary paradox through the medium of material goods. Through the aperture of offerings, and offerings turned into props, new marketplace commodities (e.g. exotic fruit, foreign whisky, chocolates) enter ritual space. As static offerings, such goods index changing tastes and the ability to finance them. When taken up as props, these same objects provoke mime and commentary about and around the things themselves, no less than does the more traditional kut fare of pigs' heads and tubs of rice cake. More generally, a focus on props enriches interpretations of shamanic and mediumistic rituals as emergent, situation-contingent performances, a theme that runs through this entire study.
