Knowledge and Practice in Mayotte Local Discourses of Islam, Sorcery, and Spirit Possession

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1 Knowledge and Practice in Mayotte Local Discourses of Islam, Sorcery, and Spirit Possession In a major ethnography of the religious and ethnomedical practices of Malagasy speakers in Mayotte, an island off the coast of East Africa near Madagascar, Michael Lambek formulates an anthropology of knowledge. Based on lengthy participant-observation fieldwork, and making extensive use of case histories, Lambek's work provides a rich account of the disciplines of Islam, cosmology (astrology), and spirit possession as they emerge in the practice of local experts and ordinary villagers. Lambek views local culture neither as system nor as structure, but as a conjunction of discourses with no common measure. He describes the way in which the knowledge comprising each discourse is circulated and reproduced, and how each permeates social practices. He compares the objectified textual knowledge characteristic of Islam and of cosmology with the embodied knowledge of spirit possession. The author emphasizes the power and the authority constituted by each discipline, the scope for action each provides, and the limitations placed upon action. The account links power and meaning, analysis and interpretation, while also demonstrating the diversity of ways in which people experience the world and take action within it. Careful attention is given to the ideas and practices of specific individuals - Islamic experts, wellinformed citizens, cosmologers, sorcery extractors, clients, and spirit mediums. The book argues for the ethical nature of their activity and shows how their knowledge emerges in practice. MICHAEL LAMBEK is a member of the Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto. He is the author of Human Spirits: A Cultural Account of Trance in Mayotte, and the editor of From Method to Modesty. Michael Lambek is the general editor of Anthropological Horizons.

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3 MICHAEL LAMBEK Knowledge and Practice in Mayotte: Local Discourses of Islam, Sorcery, and Spirit Possession UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

4 University of Toronto Press Incorporated 1993 Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada ISBN (cloth) ISBN (paper) Printed on acid-free paper Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Lambek, Michael Joshua Knowledge and practice in Mayotte (Anthropological horizons) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN (bound) ISBN (pbk.) I. Islam - Mayotte. 2. Mayotte - Social life and customs. 3. Spirit possession - Mayotte. 4. Knowledge, Theory of (Islam). I. Title II. Series BP64.M3L ' C This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Social Science Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

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6 The... character of knowledge [is] intersubjective not only because it refers to the one real world common to all of us and because it is subject to confirmation and refutation by others, but also because the personal knowledge of each of us refers to the knowledge acquired by others - our teachers and predecessors - and handed down to us as a preorganized stock of problems, with the means for their solution, procedural rules, and the like. All these manifold problems belong to a theoretical science dealing with the social distribution of knowledge. The present inquiry is just one modest step in this direction. Its purpose is to investigate what motives prompt... [people] living their everyday life... to accept unquestioningly some parts of the relatively natural concept of the world handed down to them and to subject other parts to question. Alfred Schutz, 'The Well Informed Citizen: An Essay on the Social Distribution of Knowledge'

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