Papers by Christian Hammons
The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 2016
General Anthropology, 2016
American Ethnologist, 2015
Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 00141844 2014 938673, Aug 20, 2014
General Anthropology, 2012
The Storytelling Class tells a profound story about understanding others despite immense differen... more The Storytelling Class tells a profound story about understanding others despite immense differences in culture and experience. It announces itself simply as an account of one teacher's efforts to help kids get to know each other at Gordon Bell High School in Winnipeg, Canada, where ...
American Anthropologist, 2013
This essay attempts to explain why international backpacker tourists in Indonesia are so interest... more This essay attempts to explain why international backpacker tourists in Indonesia are so interested in indigenous religion and especially in shamanism. It articulates the indigenous mode of analysis or reverse anthropology of the people whom the tourists visit: in this case, the Sakaliou clan on the island of Siberut, the largest of the Mentawai Islands off the west coast of Sumatra. According to Sakaliou, tourists seem to be looking for something they have lost, a kind of secret knowledge that is possessed by the shaman. Unlike other people, who keep their secrets in isolation, the shaman must skilfully reveal some of his secret knowledge as part of a public performance. It is this secret knowledge, indicated by the skilled revelation of skilled concealment, for which tourists seem to be searching among the members of the Sakaliou clan and their shamans.
Anthropology once occupied the high ground in the study of religion and film. It has now ceded th... more Anthropology once occupied the high ground in the study of religion and film. It has now ceded that ground to the field of Religion and Film in the discipline of Religious Studies. This column is a call to action -to anthropologists of religion, visual anthropologists, and ethnographers in any discipline -to regain some of that ground by turning our attention back to the intersection of religion and media.
Societies against the state are not always animist, but they often are. The religions of state te... more Societies against the state are not always animist, but they often are. The religions of state tend to be something else. As James Scott observes in The Art of Not Being Governed (2009: 3019), in Southeast Asia, where the religion of state is Buddhism, the religion of marginal populations is animism, Christianity, Hinduism, or Islam; where the religion of state is Islam, marginal populations are animist, Christian, Hindu or Buddhist. In either case, when marginal people adopt the core-state religion, it is usually a heterodox version, a hybrid of Buddhism or Islam and animism. In all of these permutations, animism is the one kind religion that is against the state. Animism, it seems, is a technique in the art of not being governed. But why should the religions of societies against the state often be animist?
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Papers by Christian Hammons