'Stalking the stalker': a Chwezi initiation into spirit possession and experiential structure

Among Sukuma (Tanzania) the Chwezi spirit society operates in the shadow of, and in tension with, the lineage cults domesticating the dead. As this ethnography describes, Chwezi candidates are initiated into spirit possession by 'stalking the stalker', that is, by seeking synchrony with intrusion. Recognition of the healing and of the power/resistance in spirit performances once resuscitated anthropology from its crisis of representation, but now arrests advance. Both functions obscure possession itself, which, unlike rituals, has a subversive, 'quaternary' structure that reveals the gap between experience and communication, and thus decentres both self and society. Spirit possession exposes the plurality of experiential structures. This may better account for its role world-wide in dialectics of social resistance and of cathartic healing

Faeneratores, negotiatores and financial intermediation in the Roman World (Late Republic and Early Empire)

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Magistrates, patrons and benefactors of voluntary associations: status building and Romanisation in the Spanish, Gallic and German Provinces of the Roman Empire

Social historians are becoming increasingly aware that voluntary associations provide the ‘missing link’ between the civic elites and the ‘lower classes’. This raises an important question: how did the Roman collegia contribute to the Romanisation of the (Western) provinces ? Romanisation is the outcome of a confrontation between cultures. There are major differences between provinces in how Romanisation took place. I will argue that status-achievement through collegia was markedly more significant in the Gallic and German provinces than in the Spanish provinces. The associations in the Gallic and German provinces were a major factor in the integration of local elites and business men into the ‘New Roman Order’. They do not seem to have had this prime importance in the Spanish provinces