Wrathful Ancestors,Corporate Sorcerers: Rituals gone Rogue in Merauke,West Papua

Anthropological studies of ritual ‘failure’ challenge the assumed efficacy of ritual in affirming the social order. Drawing from fieldwork in West Papua, I examine the ‘failure’ and ‘success’ of two rain‐making ceremonies – one hosted by an indigenous Marind expert, the other by an Indonesian oil palm corporation. Participants conceived the failure of the first ritual as a punishment meted by ancestral spirits against Marind who support agribusiness expansion. Meanwhile, the success of the corporate ceremony confirmed rumours that corporations wield foreign and powerful forms of sorcery. Drawing on Gregory Bateson's notion of the double bind, I suggest that the ritual outcomes dramatize the irreconcilable demands placed on Marind by custom and capitalism. Attempts to endorse agribusiness incur ancestral punishment, while efforts to oppose it are thwarted by the superior power of corporate sorcerers. In this context, I argue, the moral implications of the corporate ritual's unexpected ‘success’ prove just as problematic as those of the customary ritual's dramatic ‘failure’. Co‐opted yet efficacious, corporate rituals point to a new social order in which both Marind and their ancestral spirits find themselves subjected to foreign sources of supernatural control.     

A first note on the excavations at UAQ38, a new Neolithic site in the Emirate of Umm al-Quwain

At the end of 2018, the first season of excavation was carried out at the shell midden site of UAQ38. The site occupies the top of a sand dune not far from UAQ36 and UAQ2, two other recently investigated Neolithic shell middens. Several well-stratified anthropogenic levels were excavated at UAQ38, which can be dated mainly to the 5th millennium BC, although the recorded artefacts suggest a possible older date for the lowest levels. Food waste, post-holes, fireplaces, and burnt shell dumpings attest to human activities that took place at the site over a rather long period of time. Here the stratigraphic sequence will be presented, together with a first overview of the artefactual assemblage. The collected data will be concisely discussed in order to fit the site within the typology of Neolithic settlements that can be proposed for the area. UAQ38 is so far the only Neolithic site along the northeastern coast of the UAE for which stratified charcoal is available for dating.     

Symbol and power: the Dalai Lama as a charismatic leader

This article originated in a brief but inspiring analysis by Margaret Nowak. Nowak used Sherry Ortner's concept of ‘summarising symbol’ to imply that, much the same way as the American flag was the epitome of the United States to each and every American, the Dalai Lama encompasses everything Tibetan to the Tibetan people. What does this comparison say about the Dalai Lama? I examine the relationship between symbol, power and charisma with Tenzin Gyatso, the current Dalai Lama, as a case in point. With exile, there has been a shift in the symbolic importance of the Dalai Lama, both as a man and as an institution, from a symbol of Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism to a symbol of the Tibetan cause and, more generally, to a symbol of Buddhism in the world. These changes have given Tenzin Gyatso a new authority in the Tibetan community: he is now the unique and unquestioned leader of the Tibetan cause in the world. I discuss the problems that occur when a symbol is also a man and a leader, as well as the solutions proposed, at a moment when the Tibetan community in exile is experiencing democratisation.