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From sickness to history: evil spirits, memory and responsibility in an Ethiopian market village

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2017

Tom Boylston
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Abstract

This article discusses contemporary anxieties about buda spirit attacks around a marketplace in Amhara region, Ethiopia. It asks how we get from the immediate experience of a buda attack – an emotionally intense scene of sickness, fear and uncertainty – to a reflexive situation in which buda becomes a vehicle for discussing and understanding deep historic concerns about market exchange. I make two main arguments: first, that apparent connections between spiritual attack and the spread of capitalism in fact reflect a deeper-lying opposition, on the part of landed elites, between moral hospitality and immoral exchange. Second, I show how this historical consciousness develops from processes of verification and questioning through which immediate experiences of sickness and fear become interpretable as buda attacks associated with particular human agents and historical relationships. It is only by following this local epistemological work that we can understand how spirits become identifiable as historical agents within a web of other social relations.

Résumé

Cet article traite des anxiétés contemporaines concernant les attaques de l'esprit buda sur une place de marché de la région Amhara, en Éthiopie. Il pose la question de savoir comment on passe de l'expérience immédiate d'une attaque du buda (une scène intense de malaise, de peur et d'incertitude) à une situation réfléchie dans laquelle le buda devient un véhicule de discussion et de compréhension des préoccupations historiques profondes concernant les échanges de marché. L'auteur présente deux arguments principaux : premièrement, que les liens apparents entre une attaque d'esprit et l'expansion du capitalisme reflètent en réalité une opposition plus profonde, de la part des élites terriennes, entre hospitalité morale et échange immoral. Deuxièmement, l'auteur montre comment cette conscience historique se développe à partir de processus de vérification et de questionnement à travers lesquels des expériences immédiates de malaise et de peur deviennent interprétables en tant qu'attaques du buda associées à des agents humains particuliers et à des relations historiques. Ce n'est qu'en suivant ce travail épistémologique local que nous pouvons comprendre comment des esprits deviennent identifiables en tant qu'agents historiques au sein d'un tissu d'autres relations sociales.

Type
Evil spirits in Ethiopia
Information
Africa , Volume 87 , Issue 2 , May 2017 , pp. 387 - 406
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2017 

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