Sorcery and Witchcraft in Melanesia: An Ethnographic Survey

Patterson, Mary

doi:10.1002/j.1834-4461.1975.tb01856.x

Cited by 7 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…Marila also includes taboo marks ( hatsiatsi ) and washes and rubbings with leaves, kalala . Whilst the effect of breaking a taboo—for instance, picking betelnuts from a marked tree—can be serious physical harm, this is not classified as poisen , a widespread Melanesian pattern (Chowning ; Patterson ). In the case of broken taboo marks another person is affected, but this is the outcome of their own breaching of a commonly accepted rule.…”

Section: Poisenmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The best example of this is sanguma , a Tok Pisin term that has no counterpart in Halia, Solos or Haku. In a Buka Tok Pisin context, sanguma describes both the practice and the practitioner: it approximates a ‘witch’ concept in the sense that the sanguma would have intrinsic powers to cause harm (Glick ; Patterson ). The notion of such ‘intrinsic’ powers is most likely not indigenous to Buka (Blackwood :465), and becoming a sanguma is the effect of using certain techniques, which the sanguma continues to use, in ever greater self‐abandonment and desperation.…”

Section: Poisenmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Coral Roads and their Sorcery: Lost Authority and Spectral Commodification in Buka

Oppermann

2016

Oceania

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Sorcery in Buka, Autonomous Region of Bougainville, is understood as reprehensible in most present contexts, but it is also believed to have once played a constructive role in maintaining social order. This mytheme is important both to the analysis of how traditional systems of sorcery come to be rearticulated in postcolonial contexts, and as a means of understanding how villagers conceptualise social order itself. Here, an analysis of the selective means by which vernacular forms of sorcery are assimilated to the Tok Pisin term poisen is presented together with an examination of the history of institutions of social control in which sorcery is remembered -and forgotten -to have played key roles. In the past, sorcery would have been gavman blong peles, a 'village government', a power over and from people, accumulated by the hierarchical integration of lineages within houses known as tsuhana. Sorcery has been privatized and commodified, slipping out of control of traditional authorities, who now pursue a strategy of achieving power over land. Power from people entails, in the Buka context, sorcery or other forms of internalised violence; power over land entails the assertion exclusivist genealogical claims. The pursuit of such claims is mediated by courts, and frequently creates rifts in communities. Sorcery, once freed from its role as government, returns to haunt traditional authorities as the spectre of their former power, and as the spectre of resistance to their current power: to the extent that they emphasize the historical role of poisen, the more they are suspected of it; imagined as the anarchy of jealousies, poisen multiplies in proportion to their success in parlaying forms of traditional authority into economic and political advantage.

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Section: Poisenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Poisenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Coral Roads and their Sorcery: Lost Authority and Spectral Commodification in Buka

Oppermann

2016

Oceania

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“…Guadalcanal is, in some sense, 'famous' for its magic (see Patterson 1974Patterson , 1975. The Vaturanga live in an area that is rapidly being reshaped by modern, post-colonial political and economic forces.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Using Patterson's (1974Patterson's ( , 1975 typology, I found that the Vaturanga practiced Personal Leavings Magic, Disease Sorcery, Vele (Assault sorcery), Miscellany, Tabu, Lucky and Curative forms of magic. Some specific magics were regarded as new and particularly problematic, especially the two most important forms which played a role in local understandings of the Sandline Controversy: riana pupuku and poke sosolo both of which are widely regarded as forms of mischief.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Silent Missiles of Guadalcanal: Magic as Rhetoric in the Sandline Controversy

Ryniker

2012

Oceania

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In February of 1997, Sir Julius Chan, then Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea, hired mercenaries from the Sandline Corporation to help fight the Bougainville Revolutionary Army. This act would create a distinct controversy in PNG, with the firing of the head of the PNGDF, General Singirok, a threatened coup d'etat, followed by public protests in Port Moresby and the eventual resignation of Chan. While these events were taking place, I was conducting field work in neighbouring Solomon Islands, specifically in Guadalcanal. The Vaturanga, among whom I lived during this period, took an especial interest in this controversy. They even believed that they themselves were playing a part in it, through forms of magic or sorcery, known locally as riana pupuku and poke sosolo. Guadalcanal has been renowned for its sorcery for many decades. But with modernization and its attendant institutions and patterns, these and other forms of magic have been reinterpreted by the Vaturanga and used as a sort of commentary about the economic, social and political changes they have experienced. This work explores the transnational aspects of the Sandline Controversy from the perspective of Guadalcanal Islanders and probes how this consciousness would play a role in the emergence of conflict in Guadalacanal eighteen months later.

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Notions of Personhood and Being across Cultures: Models in the Social Sciences

Carr

2021

Being Scioto Hopewell: Ritual Drama and Personhood in Cross-Cultural Perspective

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Sorcery and Witchcraft in Melanesia: An Ethnographic Survey

Cited by 7 publications

References 32 publications

Coral Roads and their Sorcery: Lost Authority and Spectral Commodification in Buka

Coral Roads and their Sorcery: Lost Authority and Spectral Commodification in Buka

The Silent Missiles of Guadalcanal: Magic as Rhetoric in the Sandline Controversy

Notions of Personhood and Being across Cultures: Models in the Social Sciences

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