This paper examines a variety of different theoretical perspectives
on the nature of spiritual beings from within the discipline of anthropology.
It takes a broadly historical perspective, outlining the development
of key approaches from the earliest pioneers to the present day.
It is argued that reductive explanatory models fail to account for
the complexity of spiritual beings as social agents, especially in
the context of the author's own research into contemporary trance
mediumship, which forms the basis for this exploration of anthropology’s
engagement with spirits. It is suggested that an ontologically open-minded,
participatory and experiential approach to the nature of spiritual
beings, which emphasises the many processes involved in their manifestation
as socially active agents, represents a potentially fruitful direction
for future research.
“Spirits are the Problem”
At a symposium on ‘Anthropology and the Paranormal’ held
at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, in October 2013, folklorist
David J. Hufford argued that for many in Western academia the belief
in spirits represents the ‘cut-off point' between the ‘primitive’
and the ‘modern.’ His paper explored the processes of
disenchantment that have gradually overcome Western academic thinking,
and highlighted some of the problems that contemporary encounters
with ostensible spiritual beings pose for the dominant framework of
Western rationalist materialism (which actively constructs itself
in opposition to the 'spiritual'). In this respect, so Hufford argues,
‘Spirits are the Problem.’ It is from Hufford’s
paper, therefore, given on the very edge of the Pacific Ocean, that
the title of this paper is drawn.
This paper will, then, survey a variety of different approaches to
the 'problem of spirits' from within the discipline of anthropology,
and in so doing will hopefully suggest some interesting directions
for possible future research on contemporary entity encounters.
