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Sorcery Divination Among the Abau of the Idam Valley, Upper Sepik, Papua New Guinea
Ist Teil von
Journal of ritual studies, 2008-01, Vol.22 (2), p.37-51
Ort / Verlag
Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh
Erscheinungsjahr
2008
Link zum Volltext
Quelle
Alma/SFX Local Collection
Beschreibungen/Notizen
This paper reports on the practice of sorcery, healing and sorcery death divination among Abau speakers of the upper Sepik River basin of Papua New Guinea. A detailed processual account of one particular sorcery death divination demonstrates that rumour and gossip (Stewart and Strathern 2004) provides the basis for sorcery accusations that canvass possible sorcerers from inside and outside the victimised community. The divination process identified sorcerers from outside the community of the dead person, a reason for the attack that had nothing to do with the dead person or her family, and concluded that responsibility for setting things right should fall on a female, rather than a male, member of the victimised community. This analysis lends some support to Mary Patterson's (1974-75) generalisation that in communities where the social structure generates inconstancy of effective male membership, sorcery accusations made after a death are almost invariably outgroup, with the caveat that in the case of the Abau, since Western contact changed settlement patterns, the attributions are outgroup but the accusations are both ingroup and outgroup.