Paper short abstract:

Why do modernizing people look down on "spirit possession"? Why do they stigmatize it as pre-modern and "backward"? In this paper I address this question from a broad sociological perspective, as well as from an ethnographic perspective based on my research in the Western Himalayas.

Paper long abstract:

Throughout the world, high-status groups create and perpetuate their status by strictly controlling their forms of movement, particularly those of their women. Examples include forms of dance in Indonesian Kratons, controversies attending the introduction of the Waltz in Europe, the difference between highland and lowland dance in Sri Lanka, the forms of possession in a West Himalayan village, academic processions vs carnival processions: the list goes on and on. All these examples contrast a high-status group with restricted forms of movement with a low status-group whose characteristic forms of dance, procession, ritual, and so forth are seen as wild, primitive, hyper-sexual, and so on. This observation is supported by the influential writings of Norbert Elias, Michel Foucault, and Charles Taylor, whose historical analyses show that negative judgments of possession are also characteristic of the modern (or modernizing) subject. In this chapter, I document a similar process, based on my own ethnographic research in the Western Himalayas, arguing that the rejection of possession and its associated rituals has more to do with claims about social identity than with theologically- or ideologically-motivated action.