People First: The Wa World of Spirits and Other Enemies

The Wa spirit world implies a certain rootedness. Knowledge of the location and propensities of spirits is necessary to engage their capricious menace through divination diagnostics and sacrificial remedies. Even as outsiders have attempted to introduce modern medicine, spirit neighbours and enemies...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inAnthropological forum Vol. 27; no. 4; pp. 340 - 364
Main Author Fiskesjö, Magnus
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Crawley Routledge 02.10.2017
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Subjects
Autonomy
Burma
China
death
disease
Divination
forced resettlement
medicine
sacrifice
Spirits
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Summary:The Wa spirit world implies a certain rootedness. Knowledge of the location and propensities of spirits is necessary to engage their capricious menace through divination diagnostics and sacrificial remedies. Even as outsiders have attempted to introduce modern medicine, spirit neighbours and enemies continue to figure prominently in Wa health, disease and death. I outline how these practices for managing the menaces of the spirit world survived the demise of the political autonomy of the Wa in the 1950s and 1960s, when the ancient Wa lands were divided and annexed by the nation-states of China and Burma. Finally, I discuss the disastrous consequences of recent forced displacements of large numbers of people, which caused many unnecessary deaths by disrupted the victim's established ways of dealing with disease as anchored in the local landscape.
ISSN:0066-4677
1469-2902
DOI:10.1080/00664677.2017.1315330