Ethnographies of Doubt: Faith and Uncertainty in Contemporary Societies 9781848858107, 9780755625765

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Ethnographies of Doubt Faith and uncertainty in contemporary societies

Edited by MATHIJS PELKMANS

Published in 2013 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd 6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 www.ibtauris.com Distributed in the United States and Canada Exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 Copyright Editorial Selection © 2013 Mathijs Pelkmans Copyright Individual Chapters © 2013 Eszter Bartha, Friedrich Binder, Maurice Bloch, Henk Driessen, Mette M. High, Giulia Liberatore, Julie McBrien, Vlad Naumescu, Mathijs Pelkmans, Alpa Shah The right of Mathijs Pelkmans to be identified as the editor of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Library of Modern Religion 32 ISBN: 978 1 84885 810 7 A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available Printed and bound in Great Britain by T.J. International, Padstow, Cornwall

Illustrations 1

Ninja mining in Uyanga, Mongolia, 2006 (M. High) 2 Household altar in Uyanga, Mongolia, 2005 (M. High) 3 A Sunday liturgy with a visiting priest. When the priest is absent the altar doors remain closed (V. Naumescu) 4 Artiom, the last reader of the community, reading from the Book of Psalms (V. Naumescu) 5 Inside one of the shrines (F. Binder) 6 Clients visiting a medium (F. Binder) 7 Gerda Taro, Republican soldiers on a street in the village of La Granjuela, mise-en-scène after battle, June 1937 (Anon.) 8 Monument for Republicans killed in the Civil War, Cemetery of Santaella, inaugurated April 2005 (H. Driessen) 9 The dusty town of Bero in Jharkand, India (A. Shah) 10 Closed and abandoned factories in Budapest. (Balázs Gárdi)

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Acknowledgements The inspiration for this volume has its roots at the Centro Incontri Umani Ascona, where I was a fellow in the summer of 2007. My gratitude, therefore, goes first and foremost to Angela Hobart, the Centro’s director. In 2007, when I hesitantly expressed my interest in organizing a workshop on the topic of doubt, Angela was immediately confident and enthusiastic about it. She offered invaluable advice and support as the conference took shape and continued to play a vital role in the subsequent production of this book. The workshop, Ethnographies of Doubt, was held at Monte Verità Conference Center in Ascona, Switzerland. Over the course of its illustrious history, the site, which began as an early twentiethcentury utopian colony, has attracted unwavering ideologists and artists such as Bakunin, Steiner, Hesse and Klee. Some of them perhaps found ‘truth’ on the hill, while others probably only found confirmation of its elusiveness. The irony of a workshop on doubt being organized on a Hill of Truth (Monte Verità) could not have been lost on the Centro, which so kindly hosted us. Perhaps unwittingly, the venue contributed to the ambience of the workshop with its central themes of the fragility of truth and the impact that the illusion of truth has on social life. I wish to thank all those who participated in the workshop as presenters, speakers and chairs, with special thanks to Don Kalb, Thomas Blom Hansen, Roy Dilley, David Napier, Jennifer Johnson-Hank and Matthew Engelke for their valuable input. I.B.Tauris have played a crucial role in pushing me to complete the manuscript, in a rather unintended manner. In March 2011, while struggling to write the introductory chapter, I happened across an announcement of the book at amazon. co.uk. Although the manuscript had not yet been submitted, the website already mentioned its price, its length – 256 pages – its expected release date – September – and the fact that it could

Acknowledgements

already be pre-ordered. Although doubting that the number of pages and publication date would turn out to be correct, this apparent confidence in the volume did push me to work harder, and to complete the introductory chapter. The contributors have each made acknowledgements in their respective chapters, but here I would like to end with thanking Anton Blok, Matthew Engelke, Vlad Naumescu and especially Julie McBrien for their critical and stimulating comments on earlier versions of the Introduction. Mathijs Pelkmans

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List of Contributors Eszter Bartha is Assistant Professor in the Department of Eastern European History at the  Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. She received her PhD in Comparative History from the Central European University in 2007. Her current work examines and reevaluates social changes in Europe in the twentieth century, socialist dictatorships and the systemic changes in Central and Eastern Europe from 1989 to 1990. Her forthcoming book, Alienating Labor: Workers on the Road from Socialism to Capitalism in East Germany and Hungary, will be published by Berghahn Books. Friedrich Binder received his MA in Religious Studies and Sinology from the Philipps University in Marburg, Germany. He is currently an associate of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle/Saale, Germany, where he is working on his doctoral dissertation in anthropology. He has done fieldwork on entrepreneurial spirit-mediums in the city of Hualian, Taiwan. Maurice Bloch is Professor Emeritus at the London School of Economics. He has carried out fieldwork among irrigated rice cultivators and shifting agriculturalists in Madagascar, and in other parts of the world including Japan. Among his many books are Essays on Cultural Transmission (2005: Berg), How We Think They Think: Anthropological Approaches to Cognition, Memory, Literacy (1998: Westview) and Prey into Hunter: The Politics of Religious Experience (1992: Cambridge University Press). Henk Driessen is Professor of Mediterranean Studies and Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Radboud University, Nijmegen. He has carried out several long-term fieldwork projects

LIST OF Contributors

in Spain and Morocco and is the author and editor of numerous books, including his monograph On the Spanish-Moroccan Frontier: A Study in Ritual, Power, and Identity (1992: Berg) and an edited volume, with Ton Otto, Perplexities of Identification: Anthropological Studies in Cultural Differentiation and the Use of Resources (2000: Aarhus University Press). Mette M. High is a British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the London School of Economics. She received her PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge in 2008. Having carried out fieldwork in Mongolia since 2001, she focuses her research on the relationship between local religiosity and macro-level politics and economics in the context of the country’s current mining boom. She is the author of Dangerous Fortunes: Wealth and Patriarchy in the Mongolian Informal Gold Mining Economy (2010: Admon Press), which was published in Mongolian. Giulia Liberatore is a PhD candidate in the Department of Social Anthropology at the London School of Economics. She holds a BA in Geography from Durham University and an MSc in Social Anthropology from the London School of Economics. Her doctoral work explores personal experiences of religious transformations across two generations of Somali women. In January 2011 she completed 15 months of ethnographic fieldwork in London. Julie McBrien is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam. She has taught at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, University College Utrecht, and finished her PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. Her current research looks at the dreams and disillusionments of young women in Kyrgyzstan. She has published articles on ethnic conflict, the anthropology of Islam and post-Soviet religious change in a range of journals, including Anthropology Today, JRAI and Critique of Anthropology.

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Vlad Naumescu is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the Central European University, Hungary. He received his PhD from the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle/Saale, Germany in 2006. His research focuses on Eastern Christianity and religious transmission in the post-socialist context, on which he published a monograph, Modes of Religiosity in Eastern Christianity: Religious Processes and Social Change in Ukraine (2007 Lit Verlag) and a co-edited volume, Churches In-Between: Greek Catholic Churches in Postsocialist Europe (2008: Lit Verlag). Mathijs Pelkmans is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at the London School of Economics. He holds a PhD from the University of Amsterdam and worked as a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology from 2003 to 2006. Over the past 15 years he has carried out extensive fieldwork in Georgia and Kyrgyzstan. He is the author of Defending the Border: Religion, Politics, and Modernity in the Republic of Georgia (2006: Cornell University Press), editor of Conversion after Socialism: Disruptions, Modernisms and Technologies of Faith in the Former Soviet Union (2009: Berghahn Books) and has published many articles on Muslim–Christian relations, territorial borders and post-socialist change. Alpa Shah is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London. She received her PhD in 2003 from the London School of Economics, based on long-term research in Jharkand, India. She is currently heading two major research projects, one focusing on the socio-economic and political transformation of Eastern India, the other on affirmative action in South Asia. She is the author of In the Shadows of the State: Indigenous Politics, Environmentalism, and Insurgency in Jharkhand, India (2010: Duke University Press).

1 OUTLINE

FOR AN OF

ETHNOGRAPHY

DOUBT

Mathijs Pelkmans

If 20 years ago it was fashionable to hypothesize the ‘end of history’ in the sense that (competing) ideologies had lost their relevance (e.g. Fukuyama 1992), this opinion is rarely voiced today. The proliferation of new nationalisms, fundamentalisms, and (neo-)liberal civilizing missions underline that ideas and ideologies continue to play central roles in the collisions and collusions of our globalized world. Precisely because of the conspicuous presence of nationalisms, populisms and fundamentalisms, it is essential not to take their strength for granted, but to examine the dynamics of conviction and doubt through which their efficacy and affective qualities are made and unmade. Religious and secular convictions can have powerful effects, but their foundations are often surprisingly fragile. In fact, the firmer the endorsement of ideas, the weaker the basis of these notions may be. Recent converts are often particularly fervent in acting out their conviction, precisely because of their greater need (and momentary ability) to suspend lingering doubt. And intense ideological movements can only retain their fervour by actively denying ambiguity. This volume’s attention to experienced doubt serves to unravel the ways in which convictions gain and lose their force. Several contributors analyse the dynamics by which loosely 1

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held ideas are propelled into committed action, a process in which doubt and ambiguity are sidelined. Alpa Shah (Chapter 7) demonstrates how doubt and hesitation surface in the daily lives of Maoist revolutionaries in India – that is, among actors who tend to be depicted as insularly committed to an ideological cause. By detailing their daily concerns Shah demonstrates not only that lived reality is messier than it appears from a distance, but also that tremendous energy is required to produce unambiguous conviction. Such painstakingly attained conviction frequently offers no more than a fragile and temporary haven. For example, the Muslim converts to Pentecostalism I studied in Kyrgyzstan appeared to be unwavering and steadfast ‘followers of Jesus’, but in many instances this certainty was fleeting; the flash of conviction giving way to more complacent attitudes or even to complete withdrawal from church life after months of intense engagement (Pelkmans 2009a). Another case in point is the initial enthusiasm for ‘capitalist modernity’ which thrived in Hungary around 1990, but which faded once the disillusioning reality of free market reform made itself known (see Bartha, Chapter 8). Whether or not such instances affirm Wittgenstein’s assertion that ‘Doubt comes after belief ’ (1969: statement 160) requires further discussion, but they do underline the extent to which doubt and belief are intertwined. Therefore, rather than seeing ambivalence and hesitation as indications of ‘imperfect conviction’, the chapters of this volume show that belief and disbelief implicate each other in important ways. Doubt does not exclusively point to ontological and epistemological referents, to the questions ‘what is?’ and ‘what is true?’ Lived doubt points also (and sometimes more pressingly) to pragmatic referents, to the question ‘what to do?’1 Questions of being, of truth and of action should always be seen in relation to each other: both in the banal sense that a sense of ‘what is’ provides direction (but not unilinear direction) to action, and also in the more profound sense that when nothing is worth fighting for (when nothing is deemed to be true) apathy and hopelessness may set in. This aspect is emphasized by David Napier’s discussion (2009) of how the unravelling of bonds of

Outline for an Ethnography of Doubt

trust between governments and citizens in Western Europe may result in apathy, not least because the disappearance of trust has immediate epistemological consequences. After all, the distrusted object is never believed. Such disorienting experiences occur on a grander scale when entire ideological systems collapse. This is true even when scepticism about those grand ideologies had been rampant, such as in the former Soviet Union. The traumatic effect of the collapse of communism was reflected in the 1990s in the widespread complaint that ‘we are not living, we are just surviving’ (my ne zhivem, my tol’ko vyzhivaem). This phrase not only pointed to the radical decline of living standards, but also contrasted purposeful, meaningful living with animalistic, pointless surviving. But such rhetorical assertions of meaningless survival hardly provide closure: as Zigon (2009) aptly titles an essay about the sense of disillusionment in Moscow, ‘Hope Dies Last’. Indeed, even in the direst situations people will find new points of orientation and aspiration. By paying attention to such cycles of hope, belief, doubt and disillusionment, the chapters in this volume explore rather than assume the role of ideas in social and political action. In doing so they produce deeper insight into the complex mechanisms and dynamics by which specific ideas gain and lose their credibility, and show how ambiguous reality is acted upon to produce (temporary) conviction. These introductory reflections prompt the question of definition. I am reluctant to define doubt, precisely because it is not the word as such that is of interest here, but rather a range of social phenomena which, it is hoped, can be better understood with reference to a quality called ‘doubt’. Nevertheless, the constraints of writing in language require reflection on the concept and its position in existing fields of meaning. Doubt connotes an active state of mind which is directed at a questioned object, and is unstable in the sense that it pushes for a resolution (which potentially erases doubt). This associative understanding directs attention to several analytic features that can serve as first points of orientation. (i) The implied agency (directed at the questioned object) sets ‘doubt’ somewhat apart from the associated term,

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uncertainty. That is, uncertainty can be the context in which doubt is activated: doubt cannot be at rest, whereas uncertainty cannot be wilfully employed. (ii) Although often equated with scepticism, doubt has more focus due to the implied presence of an alternative. At least, that is what the presence of the number two in dubitare – the Latin origin of the word – suggests, echoed in the German zweifel and the French doter. Doubt, in this sense, is about ‘being of two minds’, about wavering between one possibility and another. (iii) Instead of being the opposite of belief, doubt is often implicated in it. After all, belief without doubt is the same as ‘knowledge’ (see Toren 2007). (iv) Just as doubt has a complicated relationship with belief, so it does with action: rather than necessarily leading to inaction (although that is certainly a possibility), doubt may also be a facilitator of action by triggering a need for resolution. These suggestions imply that doubt underlies, and may also energize, many aspects of human thought and action, and thus that analytic attention to doubt is not only warranted but in fact long overdue in the social sciences, including anthropology. The argument here is twofold. First, the flip side of what is conventionally called conviction has not received appropriate attention in empirical sciences such as anthropology, sociology and political science. Second, studies of conviction (and its effects) are in need of a more dynamic and relational approach. As intimated above, doubt and belief should not be seen as opposites, but rather as co-constitutive parts. Doubt highlights fragility and instability, but the act of doubting also entails a quest for an ‘essence’. In order to understand this complex relationship it is necessary to capture the doubting moment. The challenge then is to move beyond what Crapanzano (2004: 8) dismissively calls a ‘topographical approach’, one that fixes and categorizes states of mind and that labels actions, to an approach that is able to capture ‘processes’.2 Two moves are necessary here. The first is to acknowledge the relational nature of doubt and (dis)belief, of hesitation and (in)action. The second is to pay attention to the temporal dimension, and explore how hope, belief, doubt and disillusionment may over time feed into and give way to each

Outline for an Ethnography of Doubt

other. In other words, the analysis needs to do justice to relational as well as temporal connections. This indicates that the anthropological exploration of doubt is fraught with difficulties, the most pertinent one being that doubt tends to vanish with articulation. This is both an analytic and an empirical problem. As I will argue in the next section, doubt has the tendency to disappear when analytically engaged, a feature which is particularly evident in the long conversation that philosophy and theology have had with doubt. But the difficulty also has an empirical and methodological component. In order for people to verbally express their ideas they have to order and thereby channel their thoughts, and when people act they have already overcome, or at least temporarily sidelined, whatever hesitation and ambivalence may have existed. Academic disciplines working with a ‘naturalistic’ (in contrast to an experimental) approach tend to register only articulated thought and performed action, and catching doubt in midair is therefore far from a straightforward task. Nevertheless, the ethnographic practice of living for prolonged periods of time in the midst of people who are pondering different options, who are voicing their hopes, frustrations and disillusionments, can reveal important insights into the role of doubt in everyday life. Doubt in projects of truth If doubt has rarely surfaced as an analytic theme in empirical disciplines like anthropology and sociology, it is a different matter in other academic traditions. Non-empirical disciplines such as theology and philosophy have a long-standing interest in the topic. However, they have tended to approach doubt instrumentally. Doubt, especially in its variant of ‘systematic doubt’, has long been considered a helpful tool for gaining epistemological certainty. Alternatively, when failing to produce the craved certainties, doubt has commonly been depicted as an obstacle, especially to faith. For example, the admonitions of ‘doubting Thomas’ by successive early church fathers are illustrative of negative attitudes to doubt and its assumed tendency

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to erode faith (Bonney 2002: 1–2, n. 1).3 Such theologies and philosophies are projects of truth and the participants in these projects can, of course, hardly remain disinterested observers of doubt, caught up as they are in the push for resolution. For them doubt ultimately needs to be left behind. Widespread as this instrumental approach to doubt may be, some key thinkers have realized its limitations: Wittgenstein (1969) demonstrates that radical doubt is ultimately bound to fail in projects of truth, while Kierkegaard ([1843] 1985) asserts that doubt in matters of (religious) faith can never be overcome without making a hazardous leap. That is, even systematic intellectual efforts are unable to put doubt completely to rest, and it is this reappearance of doubt in philosophy (and theology) that is of particular interest to the ethnography of doubt. Starting with some straightforward applications of doubt in projects of truth, I will proceed by showing how the seeming certainties unravel. The instrumental use of doubt in (combined) projects of knowledge and faith goes back to at least the fourth century when Augustine of Hippo wrote about his disagreement with the Academics on the question of whether or not ultimate truth is attainable (1951). His opponents argued that our perception is not sufficiently reliable to serve as the basis for firm knowledge, and that therefore one cannot know truth. Augustine, however, countered that the doubt of the Academics was based on an unstated acknowledgement of truth, and that the truth can be ultimately known through inference of the divine. Augustine’s professed certainty was itself rooted in doubt, and his si fallor, sum (if I am mistaken, I exist) (1950) is an early anticipation of Descartes’ famous cogito, ergo sum.4 Interestingly though, when Augustine writes ‘Seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe [so] that you may understand’ (1988) he implicitly acknowledges the unavoidable need to make a leap of faith, something that Descartes would endeavour to overcome. Thus, if some aspects of Augustine’s writings may be understood as anticipations of Descartes’ cogito, ergo sum, other aspects resonate in Kierkegaard’s important work (see below).

Outline for an Ethnography of Doubt

Descartes is often presented as a solid point of reference in discussions of doubt. Jennifer Hecht, in her recent Doubt: A History (2003), writes that the cogito, ergo sum could have been expressed more accurately as dubito, ergo sum.5 She has a point, because when Descartes reflects on the characteristics of ‘a thinking thing’, the aspect first mentioned is that it is ‘a thing that doubts’, which is then followed by a range of other mental activities (1996: II, 8). However, Descartes proceeds by appropriating this valuable insight for his metaphysical project, which amounts to artificially staging doubt for the sake of constructing a logical argument. Thus, when he questions the reliability of his faculties by positing the possibility that his perceptions are part of a dream, he is considering this possibility intellectually but not intimately. Descartes’ doubt is merely hyperbolic; it is, in Skirry’s words, ‘an entertained doubt that serves to clear the mind of preconceptions that might obscure the truth’ (2005).6 The absence of lived doubt in ‘systematic doubt’ is interestingly revealed in some passages of his Meditations where he reflects on the purpose of his project: [A]nd from that time I was convinced of the necessity of undertaking once in my life to rid myself of all the opinions I had adopted, and of commencing anew the work of building from the foundation, if I desired to establish a firm and abiding superstructure in the sciences. (1996: I, 1)

What is striking here is that Descartes’ words imply the opposite of doubt. That is, he ‘was convinced of the necessity’ of questioning all seeming certainties and he appeared certain about the possibility of finding an abiding superstructure. Descartes did not seem to doubt that his ‘systematic doubt’ was the right approach to arrive at truth, he hardly wrote about uncertainties that may have haunted him when writing his Meditations and he presented his conclusions with the steadfast authority of the academic writer.7 Unavoidably informed by past (but also present) academic stylistic conventions, his written text refuses to hesitate and thereby reinforces the impression of Descartes

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as an unwavering thinker who was able to reach truth through logical reasoning. Thus, even though Descartes dubbed himself a ‘being that doubts’, he was hardly interested in the process of doubting itself or in the occurrence and implications of doubt in others. Instead, doubt was his instrument to reach solid foundations of knowledge, after which doubt ceased to be relevant and could be discarded. Despite its limitations, this systematic or entertained doubt is of key importance to any academic discipline. This is so because without doubt it would be impossible to move beyond one’s own habitual ideas, assumptions and truths, rendering one unable to advance knowledge. Similar to philosophers, anthropologists are trained to question their own assumptions in order to gain new insights (see also Driessen, Chapter 6). But as an empirical discipline anthropology differs from philosophy in that its object is not only ‘the abstract’ (of knowledge, morality, aesthetics, etc.), but also the concrete ideas, beliefs and activities of various subjects. With respect to this double object of inquiry, and the twofold need to understand as well as represent foreign points of view, it is useful to distinguish between two kinds of entertained doubt in anthropology. First, there is a need to question, reveal and suspend one’s own subjective and sensory knowledge (Kapferer 2001). The destabilization of this embodied knowledge allows the anthropologist to establish a connection with other people’s truths and thereby to understand their worlds and worldviews. As Kapferer suggests, anthropologists need to combine ‘radical doubt with the phenomenological recommendation of the willing suspension of disbelief ’ as a way to overcome prejudices and unexamined assumptions while simultaneously taking alternative realities seriously (2001: 342).8 Examples of this abound in ethnography, from Evans-Pritchard’s (1937) flirtations with the logic and rationality of Zande witchcraft, to Harding’s (1987) involuntary thoughts about God. Harding describes how, when driving away from an interview with a Baptist pastor who had used the occasion to witness to her, she almost ran into another car. Understandably shaken by this near accident, she found herself

Outline for an Ethnography of Doubt

involuntarily asking: ‘What is God trying to tell me?’ That is, by opening herself up to the possibility of an alternative truth, as she did by listening attentively and intensely to a pastor trying to convince her of ‘the truth’, Harding found herself on the path to conversion. The experience was discomfiting, but also essential for gaining insight into what Baptist conversion amounts to (1987: 169–70). Harding (presumably) never fully converted; she found herself straddling the boundary between belief and disbelief. This reflects the disciplinary ideal of the anthropologist almost ‘going native’ yet refraining from going all the way.9 Complete identification with one’s research subject tends to be looked at with a mixture of contempt and intrigue, which ultimately converges in the opinion that those who ‘go native’ cease to be anthropologists because in those instances the critical distance necessary for academic thinking and writing has collapsed. Going native in the sense of fully internalizing another system is not the only ‘risk’ of opening oneself up to other truths. Whereas a failure to suspend disbelief leads to a reproduction of assumptions, taking alternative realities too seriously leads to an equally problematic essentialization of ‘the native point of view’, to use Malinowski’s (1922) term. So this is the second kind of doubt that needs to be entertained: retaining a ‘healthy’ dose of scepticism towards the assertions made by interlocutors (for example that spirits exist), not necessarily by challenging their ontological status (do spirits really exist?) but rather by questioning how widely and intensely those ideas are shared (is ‘belief ’ in spirits uniform and stable?). In the past anthropologists have not always fared well in this respect. Half a century ago Firth (1959), for example, intimated that anthropologists too easily assumed uniformity. He quotes the anthropologist Nadel, who stated in one of his ethnographies that ‘There is no doubt in the minds of the Nupe that God, as he created the world, so he can also control it and intervene in its course’ (Nadel 1954, cited in Firth 1959: 139). Firth concedes that such a statement may be acceptable as a classificatory act but adds that it is a ‘bold thing to assert that in the minds of 300,000 people there is “no

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doubt’’ about God’s power’ (1959: 139). Such a claim is unhelpful to say the least if the goal is to understand the intricacies of religious experience. That is, questioning one’s own assumptions and questioning assertions made by others are equally important in revealing the complexity of meaningful life. Uncritical attitudes to ‘belief ’ or any form of knowledge now largely belong in the anthropological dustbin. As Engelke, perhaps too optimistically, asserts, few would still ‘claim, after having worked in, say, a Zulu village for eighteen months, that “the Zulu believe”’ (2008: S14). Indeed, in long-term fieldwork one becomes aware of the contingencies, ambivalences and variations in people’s engagements with truth claims (but I don’t think that this awareness always finds its way into ethnographic texts). The twofold critical stance – towards internal assumptions and external assertions – is not only important for generating analytical and empirical questions, but also for reaching higher levels of reliability. Ethnographic data (like most empirical data in the social sciences) is unavoidably incomplete, limited in scope and influenced by the situated positioning of the researcher and the application of specific research techniques. Rather than trying to cover up these gaps or hiding from them behind the mask of formal methodology (as in scientistic approaches), most anthropologists would argue that deeper understanding is served by explicating them (e.g. DeWalt and DeWalt 2002: 81). In this volume (Chapter 6), Henk Driessen reflects on these issues when writing about the Spanish Civil War and the difficulties in finding out, decades later, what ‘really happened’ at the local level. Because of the tensions and secrecy surrounding this violent past, both the ethnographer and most local residents had only piecemeal knowledge of what had happened. Knowledge remained fragmentary, incomplete and unstable because the sensitivity of the topic prevented the pieces from being shared and the dots from being connected. Driessen points out that this lack of transparency was useful for maintaining ‘peace’ but was also deeply disturbing to the victims’ descendants as it frustrated them in their desire for closure. Only 70 years after the events did some of the long-hidden facts emerge and a public memorial

Outline for an Ethnography of Doubt

ceremony was organized. This memorial provided closure for some, but for others the surfacing of ‘facts’ unsettled an accepted history, triggering a contestation in which Falangist descendants claimed that the representation of the past was unfair and one-sided. What is the position of the ethnographer when ‘the truth’ is so blatantly out of reach? Should topics about which one cannot speak with authority be left out of scholarly work? If so, would that not do injustice to the complexity of lived experience? As Driessen rightly points out, the academic expectation of coherence often results in texts (including ethnographic ones) that are cleansed of fragmentary and ill-fitting evidence, thereby sidelining the hesitations of the researcher and the ambivalence of his or her subjects. That is, anthropologists are not to be absolved of marginalizing doubt. As producers of scholarly texts they are required to put their doubts aside; the imprinting of words on paper (after the last editorial correction) brings an end to the wavering because certain words, rather than others, are chosen to describe, to interpret and to explain the world. The contributors to this book, for example, cannot present their findings without trying to convince the reader that the claims they make are plausible and deserve, at the very least, the benefit of doubt. Likewise, this introduction fails to doubt the relevance of the topic at hand and makes unwavering statements (but no absolutist claims) about the subject. As Hastrup says, ‘in analysis and writing, a sense of closure must be attained’ and this amounts to ‘a temporary objectification of relational knowledge, from which others may then proceed’ (2004: 458). That is, closure is not inherently problematic but it does need to be seen for what it is: a pragmatic and temporary act that facilitates (and enables) scholarly presentation and communication. Temporary objectification is unavoidable, but this does not require all ambivalence, uncertainty and doubt to be erased from writing. Most anthropologists, certainly those writing in the heuristic, interpretive and phenomenological traditions, tend to be less interested in systematically testing hypotheses than in fostering insight and understanding. Hence they do not

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aspire so much to produce works and words that are ‘certain’ but rather ones that offer plausible and convincing accounts of other worlds (see Golden-Biddle and Locke 1993). Such modesty may be seen as reflecting the fragility of ethnographic evidence, but more importantly it is indicative of the kinds of inferences that can be made about the social world when it is approached in all of its complexity. To quote Hastrup again, ‘the point of anthropology is not to tell the world as it is … but to interpret it and to suggest possible (theoretical) connections within it as perceived and inferred from being in touch with a world that cannot be taken for granted’ (2004: 468). The improvisatory qualities of ethnographic research mean that, in principle, it is better endowed than scientistic approaches to accommodate doubt, hesitation and second thoughts within the research process. By allowing analytical questions to emerge from ‘the field’ (rather than fixing them beforehand) and by resisting the strict separation between data collection and analysis so characteristic of mainstream social science (Spradley 1980: 27–8), ethnographic research is amenable to adjustment and finetuning (see also Malkki 2007 on improvisation). This feature is also reflected in the strategic (and sometimes eclectic) adoption of research techniques and the ways they are adjusted to fieldwork circumstances. As Engelke (2008: S12) notices, for some this may spark the ‘depressing conclusion … that in our practicality, we are nothing more than the academy’s bricoleurs’, but a more positive view is that these characteristics point at the potential of ethnography to do justice to the complexity, fluidity and ambiguity of the human experience. I follow here Crapanzano’s plea for the selfconscious amateur, whose fresh perspective and lack of formalism falls short of projecting scientific certainty, but who is able to generate important questions and reveal hidden connections.10 One might be tempted to pose the question of how much doubt is admissible in academic work, or conversely, how determined the quest for certainty should be. But the point is that there is no ultimate answer: complete certainty can only be pretence, while radical doubt is not only stifling but ultimately unsustainable. I have argued that doubt is unstable in the sense

Outline for an Ethnography of Doubt

that it pushes for a resolution, and a similar tendency exists within anthropology. The polarization between realists and relativists (Wilson 2004) that culminated in the 1990s illustrated the fragility of the ethnographic project. But equally interesting is that neither the realists nor the relativists were able to sustain their extreme positions. The relativist critique of positivist faith in scientific knowledge was certainly justified. However, although critics rightly asserted that ethnographic knowledge is contingent rather than absolute (could it be any different?), the resulting scepticism was not only unproductive but also undeserved. In fact, unearthing biases, revealing problematic assumptions and identifying weaknesses in the collection, analysis and representation of data should be an inherent part of the academic enterprise. To respond to the relativists (or postmodernists) in their own terms: the voiced frustrations with anthropology revealed more about unreasonably high expectations regarding knowledge production than about the relation between ethnography and the worlds it aims to describe and understand (see Carrithers 1990 for a similar argument). Far from being confined to anthropology the problem of certainty extends to various disciplines, including philosophy. This can be illustrated by briefly returning to Descartes, who presented his technique as one that was able to move from radical doubt to absolute certainty, but in doing so revealed a rather paradoxical aspect of Cartesian doubt: it strives towards its own abolishment. As Peirce argues: ‘no one who follows the Cartesian method will ever be satisfied until he has formally recovered all those beliefs which in form he has given up’ (1868: 140). Not only was Descartes’ radical doubt feigned doubt (as established above), his assertion to have reached truth was fragile, as attested by the ongoing controversies concerning the so-called Cartesian Circle.11 In academia, doubt cannot be ultimately overcome, nor can it be extended meaningfully to its extreme conclusion. Caught between the impossibilities of reaching absolute truth and knowing nothing, there are at least two ways forward. I reflect on these possible routes using the writings of Wittgenstein, Peirce and Kierkegaard, who not only reveal the impossibility

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of radical doubt and the illusion of absolute certainty, but also point out the role of certainty in doubt, and of doubt in certainty. Wittgenstein demonstrates the impossibility of ultimate ‘radical doubt’ in three steps. The first is that doubt gradually loses its meaning when the alternative becomes too unlikely (1969: 56 and 93). Differently put, when ‘everything speaks in its favour, nothing against it’ (1969: 4), doubt can only survive at the logical level through a sustained cognitive effort. The second is the tendency to mistake logical statements for empirical ones. So even if one is able to doubt all propositions at the logical level, this does not imply that it is possible to do so at the empirical level as well. And this relates to the third and crucial point, namely that the weighing of alternatives must rest on an (often unstated) sense of reality. This last point refers to Wittgenstein’s ‘hinges’, which serve as anchors for doubt (1969: 341 and 343). As he puts it: ‘If you are not certain of any fact, you cannot be certain of the meaning of your words either. If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty’ (1969: 114–15). This statement can not only be used to repudiate scepticism (see for example Moyal-Sharrock 2003), but can also be applied to the study of lived or experienced doubt: attention to doubt simultaneously reveals the implicit certainties on which this doubt is based. For example, if a man has doubts about his love for a woman (does he love her? does he love her more than another?), he reveals that love as such is an unquestioned reality for him. He may subsequently start doubting love itself, but this new doubt is then hinged on an unstated certainty about (the value of ) life. It is possible that he will generalize his doubt even further, but if he does so there will no longer be room for doubting (his) love.12 If it is impossible to doubt everything, it is equally an illusion to think that absolute certainty can be reached (without doubting it). This is less an epistemological than a sociological point. The issue is that truths that are absolutely certain (i.e. truisms) no longer matter, and therefore no longer require evidence or proof. As Peirce writes: ‘[after full agreement] is reached, the question

Outline for an Ethnography of Doubt

of certainty becomes an idle one, because there is no one left who doubts it’ (1868: 140). Absolute certainty fails to trigger reflection (or any other intellectual effort), and therefore tends to go unnoticed. Things that matter cannot be known with absolute certainty. This tension was astutely observed by Kierkegaard in his discussion of subjectivity and objectivity, claiming that objective truth is an ‘indifferent truth’ (1941: 182). Seeing that objectivity and passion do not go together, he stated that ‘all interest, like all decisiveness, is rooted in subjectivity’ (1941: 173). His particular preoccupation was with faith, which he summarized as being ‘precisely the contradiction between the infinite passion of the individual’s inwardness and the objective uncertainty’. On this basis he concludes: ‘If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe’ (Kierkegaard 1941: 182). Although we need to be careful with generalizing the insights of a Danish theologian, the energizing quality of doubt in conviction is one that has wider applicability, as we will see below. I argued that the relevance of studying doubt lies in the fact that doubt connects belief and disbelief, action and inaction, and moreover that these underlying uncertainties may provide the energy needed to produce conviction and decisiveness, just as they can produce scepticism and apathy. Due to its unstable qualities doubt is always on the move, as it were. While one can conceive of belief and disbelief as remaining in position (even if only a fragile one), it is difficult to imagine that doubt can stay put or to think of people resting in their doubt. That is, it would be problematic to speak of untroubled or placid doubt (because the act of doubting presupposes interest). Doubt is about wavering between different options and thus presumes an awareness of, and a (somewhat) active stance towards, the dubious object. This in turn tends to be resolved in, or lead to stances that lean towards, either belief or disbelief. Doubt’s propensity to be resolved in diametrically opposed directions is what makes its relation to action so intriguing. It points to the role of shaky ideas in haphazard action – and most ideas are shaky and most action is haphazard.

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Lived doubt The preceding pages outlined the relevance of doubt for ethnographic research and the scholarly enterprise more generally. However, the ethnography of doubt should not primarily be about methodological issues or the systematic doubt of academics, but rather about lived doubt, doubt as it reveals itself in specific social situations and points to questionable elements. One of the central problems with the empirical study of doubt is that doubt is likely to disappear with articulation. This is partly because we tend to register ideas only in so far as they are externalized, and this externalization is one of the mechanisms by which doubt can be repressed or sidelined. It is thus important to try and catch doubt in midair, something which is difficult but not impossible. Because of their long-term and intensive engagement with the people they study, anthropologists are particularly well placed to explore how people deal with the absence of absolute truths and how they make choices between alternatives. Rather than restricting research to interview settings, to stylized observations, or to one-off questionnaires, the contributors to this volume followed people in their everyday lives and witnessed how they changed their opinions, how they tried to make sense of what appeared meaningless and how they came to terms with not being certain. Such an approach can reveal how doubt emerges when authority structures are eroding, how it becomes imminent when rapid changes in the political and social environment demand reinterpretations of reality and how uncertainties and ambiguities are sidelined to make room for purified convictions and beliefs. This section of the introduction discusses the qualities and effects of such experienced doubt, and will revolve around four theses: (i) Doubt is activated uncertainty. Here I look at how doubt emerges from the background, how it dissipates, but also how it attaches itself to dubious objects, transforming them in the process. Therefore, (ii) the doubted object is both ephemeral and unstable. This means not only that the object of doubt is slippery, but also that the act of doubting is unstable. Moreover,

Outline for an Ethnography of Doubt

(iii) doubt embodies an inherently contradictory energy, positive and negative, and this makes the effects of doubt difficult to predict. Finally, (iv) doubt invokes its opposites, thus implying a relational and temporal dimension in which doubt, certainty, disillusionment and resolution feed into and give way to each other. These analytic themes illuminate some of the tensions and contradictions which both underlie doubt and spur it on as it reveals itself in everyday life. (i) Doubt as activated uncertainty Doubt and uncertainty are related concepts, but uncertainty lacks the agency that is implicit in doubt. People may live in uncertainty because the times are uncertain, but although it is possible to live in doubt, it would be odd to blame this on doubtful circumstances. While uncertainty rests in the situation, doubt is located in the actor.13 Despite such differences between doubt and uncertainty, the concepts are intimately connected: lack of clarity and absence of certainty tend to trigger doubts. This is a central theme running through this volume. The chapters by Bartha, Naumescu and High each discuss instances in which familiar worlds have been thoroughly shaken. Mette High’s contribution (Chapter 3) is a case in point. She describes how the political, economic and social disruptions that swept through Mongolia in the 1990s produced a deep sense of disorientation. The dismantling of the socialist economy left people scrambling for resources, resulting in a retreat to subsistence pastoralism, which was only matched by a boom in small-scale gold mining. But the extraction of this potent, almost sacred, mineral from an animated earth threatened to upset the natural and spiritual world. Rumours circulated that in the mines human flesh was being sacrificed and vicious hailstorms were interpreted as signs of an impending apocalypse. That is, the destabilization of the physical world made spiritual forces even more unpredictable than they always had been. For High’s interlocutors the question was how to deal with these disconcerting unknowns. Many pastoralists avoided and even

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condemned the mining activities, while those who were involved in mining tried to manipulate the unreliable elements (that is, the spirits), by making new and more powerful sacrifices. Despite such attempts to tame danger, the future continued to loom like an unpredictable cloud over the lives of pastoralists and miners alike. This is not to say that all certainties had vanished. In fact, unease with dubious human actions and concern about spirits’ unpredictable reactions reinforced awareness of the spirits’ existence, leaving little room for doubting their potential to act upon the world. A variation on this theme is the situation found in a rapidly ageing village of Old Believers in the Romanian Danube delta (Chapter 4). Vlad Naumescu explores the concerns that beleaguer this community of steadfast believers. In the wake of the economic transformation of the 1990s the younger generations had left the village, which meant that no one was available to replace the village priest after he became incapacitated. Without a priest to decide on religious matters and to properly conduct the rituals, the remaining, mostly elderly, residents were driven to despair. No matter how devout their religious enactments, without a priest they were ‘simply not true’ as one of Naumescu’s interlocutors lamented. The importance of ritual detail and correct practice in Old Believer Christianity meant that villagers faced an ‘incompleteness of their Christian existence’. The external doubts (as Naumescu calls them) that pertain to the question ‘what to do now?’ came to a climax when intersecting with the doubt that is inherent to Christianity – in particular as expressed through the mystery of the resurrection – in the days before Easter. But while intensifying the turmoil, the resonance of internal and external doubt paradoxically also sparked hope for a miracle in these times of decline and fear. These cases thus demonstrate how disruptive societal change triggers doubts about what to do, how to act and what will happen in the future. They also show that some certainties were either left untouched or even gained strength in the process. Indeed, doubt about how spirits would react, or about how to properly

Outline for an Ethnography of Doubt

conduct rituals, projected conviction onto the existence of spirits and Biblical truth respectively. To link this back to Wittgenstein (1969), the act of doubting may strengthen the hinges to which the doubts are attached. Maurice Bloch analyses the mechanisms by which doubt is activated and deactivated at the micro-level (Chapter 2). In the course of a conversation triggered by this anthropologist, a group of Zafimaniry forest dwellers in Madagascar found themselves engaging with the question of whether animals are capable of thinking, and whether or not one is conscious while asleep. The conversation then entered increasingly uncertain territory: can trees think? Are ancestors who appear in dreams alive? Concomitantly the responses became less steady. Instead of pushing for the (always elusive) ultimate truth, those involved acknowledged the limits of their knowledge and thus, Bloch argues, remained in doubt. The momentarily heightened sense of doubt blended into the background, waiting to be triggered again. These insights make an interesting comparison to Heidegger’s complaint that philosophers tend to ‘make things too conspicuous’ – an act with distorting effects because a fundamental feature of being-in-the-world is that people are not always explicitly aware of their surroundings or even of themselves. When this tendency is ignored then ‘being in the world is characterized far too explicitly and sharply’ ([1953] 2010). Applied to the topic at hand this means that systematic intellectual inquiries into doubt run the risk of simultaneously transforming it. When taken out of the setting in which it occurs, doubt loses part of its original meaning and implications.14 The ethnographic materials show that sharpness and blurredness correlate with the extent to which a concern is pressing. In other words, there are situations in which ethnographic subjects (that is, all humans) become philosophers. And, as I claimed above, philosophizing is not without effect. Doubt as activated uncertainty triggers reflection and this mental activity influences the object on which it focuses, a process to be covered in the next section.

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(ii) The ephemeral dubious object (and the restlessness of doubt) Doubt is an awkward topic because it cannot stand the spotlight. Doubt may lurk in the background; it may rise up and then plummet. Once the dubious object is caught in the centre of attention it needs to be acted upon, until it is tamed, sidelined or transformed. The underlying question in this section is whether doubt can be at rest. I have intimated above that this is not possible, and yet Bloch (Chapter 2) argues that the Zafimaniry, being unable to force a resolution concerning the questions that were addressed to them, ‘remain in doubt’, and quite comfortably so. These seemingly contradictory positions can be reconciled, though, by pointing out that there are different ways to deal with the restlessness of doubt. Without presuming to give an exhaustive enumeration I suggest that restlessness can be halted by: (a) diverting one’s attention, so that the object of doubt is no longer in the spotlight; (b) reinterpreting the object of doubt in a way that makes it less ‘dubious’; (c) denying that doubt is doubt; or (d) removing the alternative when confronted with two possibilities. Bloch’s contribution offers an example of the first method. The Zafimaniry accepted the limitations of their knowledge (in that sense they were not Cartesians), but their ability to do so reflected the lack of importance attributed to the doubted object: the topic of conversation was clearly intriguing to those involved, but questions such as whether trees can think did not have immediate practical relevance to their everyday existence. The Zafimaniry did not (need to) overcome their doubts by pushing for a resolution. The abstractness of the questions meant that the object could be sidelined as soon as the conversation ended, as a result of which doubt was deactivated. This sidelining of doubt is not always an option, as Binder’s chapter on spirit-mediums and their clientele in Taiwan illustrates. Binder followed clients who sought fortune, health and other successes in life. Their attitude towards mediums tended to be ambivalent, not least because it was well known locally that many of them were frauds, and distinguishing between fraudulent and genuine mediums was one of the clients’ central preoccupations.

Outline for an Ethnography of Doubt

The result was a dance around the notions of authenticity, rationality and mystery, in which mediums tried to project, and clients detect, truth. The clients’ efforts to detect truth underscored their wish to gain certainty; however, this goal could never be completely reached. In apparent resignation, several of Binder’s interlocutors depicted their stance towards mediums as ‘half belief half doubt’. This seems to suggest, similar to Bloch’s assertion, that it is possible to rest in doubt without needing to push for a resolution. However, Binder also observes that such lukewarm ambivalence becomes impossible when too much is at stake. Clients who had established long-term relationships with one medium or were seeking solutions to particularly pressing problems could not afford to rest in doubt. Longing for clarity yet unable to wholeheartedly accept the mediums’ claims to spiritual power, some resorted to another strategy: they adjusted their expectations of what mediums could achieve. That is, they rendered the object of their doubt less magical and more mundane, by starting to see the mediums as counsellors who were sometimes wrong in their assessments and predictions, but who nevertheless had a special gift or talent that enabled them to provide valuable advice and support. The process of reinterpretation in Liberatore’s contribution (Chapter 9) is of a rather different nature: here the alternative is made less attractive, while the doubts of those involved are denied the status of doubt. Liberatore traces the trajectory of young Somali women in London as they became practising Muslims. Their religious quests were fraught with hesitation. They wondered if there would be shame in heaven, and if heaven would really be worth all the sacrifices demanded in this world. In order to progress on their spiritual journey, the women learned to rationalize their doubts by translating them into another idiom. In conversations with religious authorities their doubtful thoughts were interpreted as the result of insufficient iman (faith) originating from Satan, and were therefore not ‘genuine’ doubt. That is, internal doubt was given an external explanation, which made it liveable. Meanwhile, the allure of the girls’ previous nonpious lives – one in which they went clubbing, listened to R & B music, dressed differently – was diminished in at least two

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distinct ways. It was made less relevant socially as they became part of a relatively tight community of practising Muslims in which those desired elements were absent; and conceptually, by joining in a discourse that interpreted ‘worldly life’ as sinful. That is, the alternative partly shrivelled, not so much because they overcame doubt but because they reinterpreted these doubts and their referents. In this process the alternative became less pressing. However, it did not necessarily completely disappear. What these routes have in common is that they alleviate the tension by ‘domesticating’, rather than overcoming, doubt. However, issues that are (made) irrelevant today may become pressing again in the future. Likewise, the reinterpreted object may resume its previous features. And translating doubt into ‘low faith’ is a useful temporary move, but does not in itself expel various worries and qualms. It is tempting, then, to conclude that doubt can never be completely overcome in cases of subjective truth that truly matter (cf. Kierkegaard 1941; Peirce 1868). Doubt can be domesticated, transferred to an area beyond the horizon of our immediate consciousness, but it resists disappearing entirely. As Crapanzano writes: ‘The beyond is like shadows … It slips away – to appear again just when we have thought, in relief or in despair, that we have finally done away with it’ (2004: 16). This does not mean that there cannot be a permanent escape from doubt. Arguably the most effective way to get rid of doubt has not yet been mentioned – arriving at a situation from which there is no return. This applies particularly to doubts that involve a choice between concrete alternatives – such as jobs, beloveds, or business deals – rather than subjective truths. In the face of indecision, people may accept the advice of friends (or their inner voice) to ‘just do something’, to make a haphazard decision that usefully or tragically ‘destroys’ the alternative. That is, in many practical situations the way back may be blocked because the objects of doubt are temporally restricted: someone else has been hired; the other beloved is no longer in love (or has become a parent); money for a second business deal is unavailable. In such instances doubt becomes irrelevant and gives way to other sentiments: possibly to relief and contentment with the choice that

Outline for an Ethnography of Doubt

was made, perhaps to the acceptance of one’s ‘destiny’, or else resulting in regret and other negative or bittersweet emotions, in the reflection ‘if only I had acted differently’. (iii) Ambivalent energies: stimulators, moderators, obstacles The thoughtless who never doubt Meet the thoughtful who never act (Brecht 1979).15 The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. (Yeats [1921] 2008)

The tensions within and between these lines from two famous poems introduce two aspects related to the energetic quality of doubt. The first is about doubt as either a stimulant to or a detractor from action, with Yeats and Brecht here leaning towards the stance that doubt impedes action (for good or bad). The second aspect is normative, contrasting thoughtless passion with thoughtful inaction. The ambivalence is palpable – leaving the reader wondering which of the alternatives is less detestable. That is, aside from the question of whether doubt stimulates or hinders activity, doubt also influences the quality of action. Berger and Zijderveld draw attention to this when stating that decisions are often made ‘in a state of ignorance’ (2009: 140). Their examples include laws about abortion without knowing ‘when human life emerges’, and it is easy to think of policies whose effects cannot be predicted. In such instances, they advocate ‘a cautious, prudent, indeed doubting approach’ (2009: 141). Such considerations address the potentially debilitating and tempering effects of doubt. In addition, doubt also has an energizing effect, as was already noted with respect to the role of doubt in stimulating the quest for (academic) knowledge. At first glance this realization creates an awkward situation. If doubt is seen as energizing and tempering, as well as debilitating, the disappointing conclusion might be that the role of doubt is, well, ambivalent. But there is no need to halt there. Aiming for more clarity I will argue that in the first instance doubt enables both

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conviction and action. It is only in the second instance, when the need to press beyond doubt emerges, that it may play a tempering or an obstructing role. It is important, then, to focus not only on the role of doubt in building up energy but also on the mechanisms by which this energy is released, as this will reveal the interplay between the energizing, tempering and debilitating effects of doubt. At this point it is helpful to consider the contradiction inherent in the idea of doubtless conviction. This point has already been hinted at in connection with Peirce’s (1868) statement that absolute certainty is idle and therefore dissipates. Put differently, it is pointless to believe things that are self-evident. As Christina Toren suggests, we would misrepresent our informants if we ‘casted as belief what our informants know’, because in contrast to knowledge, belief refers to ‘considering something to be true in the face of the possibility that it might be false’ (2007: 308–9). This juxtaposition of ‘knowledge’ and ‘belief ’ resonates with a distinction made by Bloch in an earlier essay between ‘unexamined intuitive belief ’ and ‘reflexive beliefs’. The second type of beliefs ‘are reflexive because they have to overcome the nagging doubt that perhaps it is not true’, leading to an ‘exaggerated kind of “belief ” act’ (2005: 110). Thus the atheist who exclaims that God does not exist is making an ‘exaggerated act of disbelief ’, which indicates imperfect or challenged knowledge. That is, expressions of conviction or belief are often manifestations of doubt – of suspended doubt – because why else would there be a need to express the thought? This intertwining of (dis) belief and doubt has important consequences. Although in some respects it may be justified to say that doubt is situated between belief and disbelief, such a statement is nonetheless problematic; whereas the first two can be seen as ‘positions’, doubt is both a connector and a precondition of belief and disbelief.16 Examples of this energizing effect are easy to find. The vigour, enthusiasm and intensity of the novice or the convert are almost proverbial. Berger and Zijderveld usefully suggest that this is so because contrary to people who have grown up in a particular religion, class or office, in the case of converts

Outline for an Ethnography of Doubt

‘the taken-for-granted-ness must be laboriously constructed and vigorously maintained. For this reason, converts are typically more fervent than “natives”’ (2009: 80). In line with this thought, several contributors to this volume indicate that it is precisely the lack of certainty that drives the quest for truth. When Liberatore (Chapter 9) writes about her Somali informants’ wavering in becoming practising Muslims, it is clear that their struggle is simultaneously a highly energized quest. The women’s patchy knowledge and their doubts about ‘what is true’ motivate them to seek information and advice from religious authorities, and indeed to incorporate these in their thinking and acting. In these examples the drive that produces conviction and action stems from incompleteness, meaning that the challenge emerges from within. The challenge can certainly also come from without, in which case conviction (as energized ‘knowledge’) is produced through encounters with those who do not share in ‘the truth’. The missionary – as a generic type – is arguably the avatar of such dialogically produced conviction. The Pentecostal missionaries I followed in Kyrgyzstan can serve as an example (Pelkmans 2009a, 2009b, 2010). They operated in a tense environment in which Islamic leaders as well as ordinary Muslims disputed the missionaries’ religious claims. The sometimes heated discussions between missionaries and Muslims were presented in sermons and informal church gatherings as heroic encounters in which the Christian message and its spokesmen ultimately prevailed. Moreover, these defences of ‘truth’ – for example against the allegation that the Trinity indicates polytheism – were simultaneously attempts to try and convince Muslims of the Christian message. The invigorating effects of external challenges were not only noticeable in the missionaries’ speeches and acts, but sometimes expressed by the men themselves. As one Kyrgyz missionary told me in what came across as a particularly frank moment: ‘We pray for [local government] officials to stop hindering us. But this may not be God’s way. Our faith thrives when it is being repressed.’ That is, such external challenges were a means to strengthen conviction while contributing to the intensity of Christian life (the opposite possibility, in which the

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external challenge undermines belief, will be discussed in the last section of this introduction). This example suggests that distinguishing between internal and external challenges may be easier in theory than in practice. As Coleman argues, even when missionaries fail to convince others, their acts are not without effect: ‘they have an audience of at least one, given that the evangelical speaker is also perforce a listener, attending to a message that achieves an important part of its purpose merely by being powerfully and passionately projected out into the world’ (2003: 24). Efforts to convince others of the truth – as in revolutionary and missionary movements – also work (intentionally or not) to convince oneself. In lived experience, external threats and internal doubts and convictions cannot be meaningfully separated. The important point here is that convictions are not simply present, but are rather produced in dialogue with challenges (challenges which may take the form of doubt). It is intriguing and worrying, then, to see that systematic analytical attention to the relation between doubt and conviction, and between doubt and violent action, is rare. Alpa Shah’s contribution (Chapter 7) is an important exception. She illustrates the fragility and the patchiness of political conviction by following a young man who ponders joining the Maoist revolutionary army. His journey is a quest not just for truth, but for ‘clarity in social relationships’, aiming to find out who and what can be trusted. While ontological certainty remained elusive, conviction was produced (to an extent) by testing relationships, which enabled this man to occupy a more committed position. In this process, Shah writes, conviction and certainty was being ‘carved out of uncertainty and ambivalence’. It is difficult to judge how widely Shah’s insights apply; clearly more research needs to be conducted on the fragility of conviction. It is nevertheless worthwhile to reflect on the apparent reluctance to analyse the role of doubt in committed action. A partial (and rather impressionistic) insight can be gained by typing the terms ‘doubt’ and ‘terrorism’ in various search engines. Intriguingly such searches mainly produce results that

Outline for an Ethnography of Doubt

pair terrorism with the absence of doubt,17 which bespeaks not only the wish (or at least tendency) to speak unambiguously about terrorists and terrorism, but also a failure to analyse how committed action is produced. Critical attitudes are perhaps more common in the arts, for example in the work Terrorist by Iranian artist Khosrow Hassanzadeh, which critiques the dominant stereoptypical notion of ‘terrorist’ by displaying the very people in which he has most faith – his mother, sister, himself – as terrorists (see Shatanawi 2006). The artistic quality of this and similar artworks partly derives from the ability to upset dominant discourses of terrorism and the underlying assumptions about committed political action. By challenging such assumptions artists may generate intense controversy. A good example is the film Paradise Now (2005) directed by Abu-Assad. The film follows two young Palestinian men who are recruited to carry out suicide attacks in Israel, and zooms in on their hesitations, contradictory feelings and the ultimate haphazardness of their actions, some of which are left for the viewer to guess. As Gana points out in her discussion of the film, ‘the narrativization of suicide bombing’ seeks to understand an act that is more conveniently seen as being ‘beyond understanding’, while at the same time aiming to leave ‘intact its unthinkability’ (2008: 23). Narrativization unavoidably humanizes actors (terrorists in this case), creating intense discomfort precisely because terrorism! needs its exclamation mark to make sense as a concept. To return to the central point of this section, while doubt plays a relatively straightforward role in building up energy, important variation is found in how this energy is released. The release is only possible by forcing a break, and this is true as much for academic as it is for embodied doubt. By radically sidelining doubt at the moment of its greatest intensity, truly committed action can be produced – constructive as well as destructive. In comparison, a gradual release of doubt tends to have tempering effects. In political decision-making such mechanisms exist in the form of the ‘checklist’ which allows doubts to be systematically eliminated in order to allow for progressive action. Finally, if doubt cannot be sidelined it may either cause an energetic (as

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well as exhausting) wavering between options, or have a debilitating effect, preventing any action from taking place. I started this section by highlighting the ambivalence in the poetry of Yeats and Brecht, yet quoted lines that stressed the negative energy of doubt: ‘the thoughtless who never doubt / Meet the thoughtful who never act’ (Brecht 1979). This is an intriguing and provocative thought, but rather than entertaining the possibility that the thoughtless never pondered, analytically it is more fruitful to think of ‘thoughtless action’ as the result of having broken with doubt. Likewise, do the thoughtful – those who excessively doubt – really never act? Elsewhere in his poem Brecht writes: ‘the most beautiful of all doubts / is when the downtrodden and despondent raise their heads and / stop believing in the strength / of their oppressors’ (1979). Here, Brecht ascribes revolutionary potential to doubt, and I would argue that this potential exists precisely because these doubts extend straight into new certainties – the downtrodden not only becoming conscious of their oppression but moreover convinced that the oppressive forces can be defeated. Brecht’s revolutionary doubt analytically coincides but normatively contrasts with Yeats’ thought that ‘The best lack all conviction, while the worst / are full of passionate intensity.’ That is, while the mechanisms by which energy is released coincide – namely by dismissing doubt – Yeats is not talking about subalterns striving for a fairer world, but about oppressors who seek its destruction. Evaluations of the moderating, debilitating and energizing effects of doubt are, naturally, based on a normative engagement with the object to which doubt is attached. (iv) Relational ties and temporal cycles The Messiah will come only when he is no longer necessary, he will come only one day after his arrival, he will not come on the last day, but on the last day of all. (Kafka 1991)

The cycles in which doubts play a part can no better be illustrated than by this rather mysterious passage from Franz

Outline for an Ethnography of Doubt

Kafka, which appears as an isolated fragment in The Third Notebook (1991).18 The passage can be read in various ways. It can be read to refer to illusion, in the sense that revelation will always be postponed but never delivered, except perhaps ‘on the last day of all’. Equally strong elements are the hope and disillusionment of the actor, who after each realization that the Messiah has not appeared will continue to expect his arrival, destined to be disappointed again. The passage also evokes doubt, related to the uncertainty about if, when and to what end the Messiah should be expected. But perhaps most of all, the fragment suggests that these qualities feed into each other. As such it is a powerful vignette not only for this section, but for the human condition in general. Previous sections reflected on the mechanisms by which doubt and belief, hesitation and action, are linked. Doubt rises from uncertainty and attaches itself to specific objects. It has an agentive force which may provoke conviction, but only by transforming the doubted object. Doubt pushes for resolution, but this resolution may be haphazard or offer only temporary clarity. The relationships are complex, fractured and multifaceted, and yet there appears to be a cyclical patterning to hope, belief, doubt and disillusionment. Such cyclical patterning is central to Eszter Bartha’s discussion of illusion and disillusionment in post-socialist Hungary (Chapter 8). Many of her interlocutors, employees of the Rába car factory, had in the past felt committed to the socialist modernist project and the associated forms of belonging, but had become disenchanted with socialism long before it withered in the late 1980s. As Yurchak (2006) has argued for the Soviet Union, the growing discrepancy between pompous communist rhetoric and everyday reality undermined the efficacy of official ideology, which increasingly failed to produce the affective qualities needed for collective action. In Hungary the workers became similarly disillusioned with the communist project, and shifted their hopes onto the ‘capitalist dream’. This dream promised not only a future of abundance, but also an escape from the constraints of socialist bureaucracy. However, once ‘capitalism’ arrived, the destabilizing effects of the market generated

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widespread uncertainty and denied people the possibility (or illusion of that possibility) of making their mark on larger societal issues. When talking about cycles, disillusionment cannot be the endpoint. Bartha’s ethnography suggests three partly interlinked responses to disillusionment: apathy concerning the present situation coupled with a nostalgia for the socialist past; flirtation with nationalist agendas that promise to domesticate the uncontrollable flux of capitalism; and, first and foremost, a reorientation of hopes and aspirations towards the social microcosm of the family. The ethnography also suggests that cycles of hope, belief, doubt and disillusionment will not continue endlessly with the same intensity. The new populist movements, for example, failed to invoke intense fervour amongst those who had been disappointed with the grand political ideologies of the past. For them the cycles were running out of steam. Most of Bartha’s interlocutors – middle-aged and elderly men and women – had become wary of all grand ideologies and had lost all hope, however illusory it might have been, of being able to influence society at large. Instead, they focused on more concrete, manageable goals like securing a good future for their children. Such distinctive cyclical patterning is absent in the other contributions to this volume. Despite this, there are indications that such patterns might have been found had the research continued over a longer time span. For example, the Somali women featured in Liberatore’s chapter became interested in Islam at moments in which they had become disenchanted with consumerism and ‘worldly life’. Their spiritual quests were fraught with challenges that spurred their conviction along. But other challenges threatened to dissipate their conviction – spending (too much) time with non-practising friends, for example. The chance that firm belief would ebb away was always present, representing a move from belief to doubt. On the other hand, in Naumescu’s chapter, the Old Believer villagers found themselves at a low point in the cycle, a point at which there seemed to be no more hope. But they were nevertheless inspired

Outline for an Ethnography of Doubt

by the mystery of the resurrection and its hopeful message. In these contributions hope, belief, doubt and disillusionment invoke each other, sometimes keeping each other in balance, at other times swinging from one extreme to the other. Even if people become cynical or reticent after one too many disappointments the flow of time implies that this will not be the end of ideology (pace Fukuyama 1992). The next generation creates and holds fast to (its own) new promises, hopes and dreams. The important point is that the future will remain unknown, and it is this uncertainty that provides the stimulus for continuation. Even if in hindsight hopes turn out to have been ‘mere’ illusions, these are ‘necessary fictions’ that not only allow one to attach meaning to a reality that is otherwise too complex to grasp, but function as signposts that provide spatial and temporal direction to action. In his discussion of ‘necessary fictions’ Slavoj Žižek references Rosa Luxemburg’s argument that the first workers’ movements had to be kept in the dark about the unavoidable failure of their endeavours, because knowledge of this would have prevented the initiation of any action; as a result, the road would not have been paved for the subsequent revolutionary waves that would successfully bring down the government (1989: 92). Similarly the subjects in this volume – be they Old Believers in the Danube delta, wavering revolutionaries in India or Somali women in London – need to hold on to ‘fictions’, even if their attachment to them is filled with doubt. A key question in all these examples is: what will happen next? As in all ethnographies, timelines need to be arbitrarily cut. And as in life, the Messiah will only come the day after his arrival. The challenge of doubt It should be clear by now that doubt is a challenging topic. Doubt is analytically challenging because of its ungraspable nature, it is politically challenging due to its potential to undermine action, and it is socially challenging because doubt is both a trigger for and the obstacle to reaching wholeness. This can be rephrased by suggesting that doubt is the embodiment of ‘challenge’. By way of

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ending let me flesh out these aspects a bit more fully, drawing on the previous sections. I have argued that the ungraspable nature of doubt stems from its tendency to disappear with the articulation of thought and the performance of action. When overhearing what people say or observing what they do, we are presented with the outcomes of complex processes of reflection and formulation. When we ask people to give opinions we push them to make conclusions (at least provisional ones). Doubt slips even further away when we register what people do – that is, when we register what they have decided to do. Ethnographic research cannot fully overcome this bias, yet its long-term and intimate engagement with subjects has the potential to register changes of opinion, to document the fluctuating intensity of action, or even to capture ‘states of aphasia’ (Oushakine 2000) when people are left speechless in the face of uncontrollable flux. Doubt is analytically challenging because acknowledging its role means that ‘mapping the world’ is insufficient in explaining why people think and act the way they do (see Crapanzano 2004). Looking for correlations – the preoccupation of much social science research – is a useful pragmatic step to generate questions, but rarely provides satisfying answers: ‘belief ’ cannot be grasped without taking the alternative into consideration; ‘action’ needs to be understood in reference to the emotive forces that push it forward. Belief and action are often best seen as responses to challenges. For the researcher this means that acknowledging the role of doubt adds demands to data collection, as it implies that statements of belief cannot be taken for granted. However, it is a worthwhile investment if, as High points out (Chapter 3), by doing so we are able to ‘portray more comprehensively how our informants understand the world’ and are better positioned to understand their efforts to navigate a reality that is only partly knowable. More often than not, doubt is politically inconvenient. Berger and Zijderveld (2009) are probably right in suggesting that a ‘doubting approach’ has the benefit of enabling better informed judgement, but political actors are generally expected

Outline for an Ethnography of Doubt

to take a stance rather than to sit on the fence. Prolonged reflection is often seen negatively as a sign of indecisiveness and wavering (or ‘flip-flopping’, the label that proved fatal to Senator Kerry’s election bid in 2004). Most contemporary leaders certainly won’t present themselves as doubters. Therefore, we tend to be shocked when learning that, for instance, Joseph Stalin was dramatically indecisive when faced with the German attack, and some of us (myself included) sardonically watched the initial indecisiveness of the self-proclaimed ‘decider’ George W. Bush when news of the 9/11 plane attacks reached him in an elementary school classroom in Florida. The idea of hesitating commanders, doubting terrorists or wavering revolutionaries is confounding, because it shatters confidence in our ability to see things clearly and because it forcefully impresses on us the fragility and complexity of the world. A final reason for why doubt is a challenging topic is that it is not altogether clear what it produces. While an essential ingredient for making people disposed to act and commit, it also has the ability to detract from action and commitment. Doubt therefore appears to have unpredictable effects, and this is amplified by the instability of both the act of doubting and the object of doubt. Moreover, the overcoming, bracketing and eliminating of doubt is, and can only be, at most a temporary and partial ‘solution’. Attention to doubt is essential not only to do justice to complexity, but also for better understanding how people, energized by their doubt, and compelled to overcome it, find themselves making decisions, committing to action or becoming paralysed. Doubt is not only a challenging topic; it is also the embodiment of the challenge. To make this claim requires reflection on how doubt relates to other challenges. Of particular relevance are the connections between internal and external challenges. Doubt, as an active state of mind directed towards a questioned object, is the ultimate internal challenge. The external challenge, by contrast, is commonly understood as threat. That is, while doubt is a challenge that emerges from within, the threat is generally seen as a challenge from without. However, internal and external challenges can morph into one another due to the porosity of

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the boundary between the internal and the external. Moreover, doubts and threats can both strengthen and weaken commitment, depending on the solidity of the ideological structures and the supporting social body. Above I have shown that the external challenge can serve to overcome internal doubts, as in the case of a Pentecostal church in Kyrgyzstan where interactions with a hostile social environment invigorated faith and strengthened the cohesiveness of the congregation (Pelkmans 2009a). External challenges can thus be beneficial to produce shared conviction. Or, as Buck-Morss (2000: 9) argues, ‘To define the enemy is, simultaneously, to define the collective. Indeed: defining the enemy is the act that brings the collective into being.’ However, this is only one side of the story, because otherwise external challenges could not be genuinely seen as threats. As we saw, acts of belief form a mechanism to address the challenge, aimed at domesticating doubts and averting threats. But there is always the possibility that these acts will fail to convince, and that the external threat will morph into uncontrollable doubt which spreads through the social body.19 This is particularly true for revolutionary movements. Stephen Kotkin (1995) refers to this as the ‘enemy within’ and documents how in the first decades of Soviet rule, the most imminent danger for the communist leadership was not necessarily the physical threat posed by the capitalist or the Nazi enemy (at least, before 1941) but rather the possibility that members of the Communist Party would harbour sympathies for these competing ideological systems. The ‘enemy within’ is so dangerous precisely because it undermines, erodes and may bring down the ideological superstructure. As Buck-Morss writes in a chapter inspired by Kotkin’s work, even if the geographical boundary between the Cold War absolute enemies was partly a mere physical bulwark, it also served ‘the unstated purpose of isolating the political imaginaries themselves, protecting each from being undermined by the logic of the other’ (2000: 36).20 In ideologically defined structures – be they communist, nationalist or religious – campaigns against heretics and disbelievers tend to be particularly vicious due to their potential to

Outline for an Ethnography of Doubt

infect the social body from within, undermining its ontological structure. The problematic insider needs to be cleansed as well as expelled. Pitt-Rivers has aptly suggested that the alien and far-removed ‘barbarian’ tends to be less problematic than the ‘stranger’ who moves through the social body, potentially infecting it (1977: 94–112). This can be compared to Mary Douglas’ famous statement that ‘dirt is matter out of place’ (1966: 36). ‘Dirt’, which may take the guise of ideas, people or objects that do not fit the imagined order, prompt attempts to cleanse the social body.21 Challenges are most threatening when they come from what is near (see Blok 2001: 123). Thus when the external challenge impresses itself onto the social body, it usefully strengthens the collective and its ontological structures as long as it remains on the outside, but the challenge becomes truly threatening when it mixes with the social body, infecting it and potentially causing it to disintegrate. To bring these opening thoughts to a close, let me revisit my original line about the early church fathers’ negative attitude towards ‘doubting Thomas’ (Bonney 2002: 1–2, n. 1), by suggesting that they were right after all, at least from their own point of view. It may appear that the church fathers did not realize the energizing quality of doubt and its role in reaching conviction. However, even if this is the case, their admonition of the doubting (or unbelieving) apostle had its own rationale. Doubt’s constructive potential is only maintained as long as it remains relatively isolated, and will ultimately be able to be sidelined. Moreover, from the perspective of church fathers who wish order rather than revolution, subdued faith may be preferred over enthusiastic but unstable conviction. That is, they may well have appreciated the revolutionary potential of doubt, and realized that it was not in their interest. To avoid chaos and to attain temporary closure, people will always attempt to curtail doubt. But this does not mean that doubt will disappear. Even in its ‘absence’ doubt continues to peak through from ‘beyond the horizon’ and exert its influence (see Crapanzano 2004: 16–17). Such hidden doubt, the ‘possibility of alternative’, will continue to destabilize and prohibit complacency.

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Notes 1 In English these questions sound not even half as profound as in Russian, as Lenin realized when naming his famous ([1902] 1945) pamphlet Chto delat’ (translated as What is to be done?) in which questions of action and truth are tightly entwined. 2 Crapanzano invokes William James’ suggestion that traditional psychology has not been able to capture the ‘free water of consciousness’ due to its obsession with labelling and categorizing elements of thought (2004: 18). 3 The story of ‘doubting Thomas’ is that of the apostle who didn’t believe reports about Jesus’ resurrection and was only able to ‘overcome his doubts’ when Jesus provided the requested sensory proof during a subsequent appearance. Intriguingly, Thomas was never really in doubt, he was never ‘of two minds’, but switched over from disbelief to belief. This is reflected in some languages like Dutch in which he is called ‘disbelieving Thomas’, which also underlines his negative status. As the ‘avatar of disbelief’, Thomas has served as a warning that it is ‘wrong to require supernatural evidence as a basis of one’s faith’ (Bonney 2002: 1–2). 4 There are other precursors to the cogito, ergo sum. Socrates and Aristotle, for example, are often cited as making statements that essentially convey the same idea. 5 The idea of a ‘history of doubt’ appears to be a contradiction in terms, because doubt is neither an object nor an idea traceable through history, but rather a relational and temporal aspect of ideas and actions. It is therefore unsurprising that Hecht’s book is not really about doubt or doubting, but rather a history of critical stances towards the ‘doubtful’ idea of God, and would have been more aptly titled (A)theism: A History. 6 This entertained doubt has been criticized by, amongst others, Peirce, who writes: ‘Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts’ (Peirce 1868: 141). 7 Some passages in The Meditations give a different impression, for example: ‘The Meditation of yesterday has filled my mind with so many doubts, that it is no longer in my power to forget them. Nor do I see … any principle on which they can be resolved’ (1996: II, 1). But this is a practical doubt, similar to frustration with being stuck in a (logical) puzzle or not knowing which direction to take when coming to a fork in a road.

Outline for an Ethnography of Doubt

8 It can be argued that anthropological doubt is rarely ‘radical’ and is better described as ‘wonder’, in the sense of opening oneself up to a range of possible truths, a process of moving back and forth between different worlds, without necessarily aiming to resolve their epistemological status. 9 This ideal is tied up with the concept of participant observation. Although sometimes seen as an oxymoron – complete participation and systematic observation exclude each other – an ethnographic approach recognizes the tension, but sees it as analytically productive in the sense that deeper insight is gained by moving back and forth between detached observation and intimate participation (see Tedlock 1991 for a useful discussion on the topic). 10 Crapanzano highlights the limitations of expertise: ‘its narrow purview, its frequent failure to critically evaluate the way in which it frames and categorizes its subject matter, the blinkers it imposes’ (2004: 5). 11 The ‘Cartesian Circle’ refers to the problem that, following Descartes’ logic, it appears that one can only be certain of the validity of one’s perception if God’s existence has been established, but one can only be certain of God’s existence after having established that what one perceives is true. This interesting tension has been hotly debated by generations of philosophers (see van Cleve 1979). 12 Such reflections can be lifted to the level of society. As Berger and Zijderveld point out, a society in which every issue is ‘a matter of individual choice’ and thus a matter of doubt ‘would lapse into chaos’ (2009: 14). 13 Another related term is ‘ambivalence’. Like doubt, ambivalence is located in the actor, but it connotes a more disinterested stance than doubt. That is, doubt forces itself onto its object more than ambivalence does. 14 In the words of Hoffman, a philosopher of doubt influenced by Heidegger: ‘When taken out of this ordinary setting, the concepts of doubt and ignorance lose all their meaning to the man of common sense’ (1986: 20). 15 ‘Den Unbedenklichen, die niemals zweifeln / Begegnen die Bedenklichen, die niemals handeln’ (Brecht 1979). 16 Talking about different issues but similar mechanisms, Slavoj Žižek speaks of the vital importance of ‘the obstacle’, which on the one hand prevents the full deployment of productive forces but is ‘simultaneously its “condition of possibility”’ because a complete realization

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(of love, for example) would remove the mystery and thereby deflate interest (Žižek 2001: 18). 17 Typical phrases are ‘there is no doubt’, ‘without any (shadow of ) doubt’ and ‘doubtlessly’. Likewise, the term ‘unwavering’ is more frequently used than ‘wavering’ in discussions of terrorists and revolutionaries. 18 I am indebted to Anton Blok for drawing my attention to this text of Kafka’s. 19 It is important to note that the traffic between external and internal is lopsided. The question ‘can the external threat become internal doubt?’ may be answered affirmatively; by contrast, internal doubt is unlikely to act as a bulwark against the external challenge, and is even less likely to cause the external threat to erode. 20 ‘It is the absolute political enemy that threatens the existence of the collective not only (and perhaps not mainly) in a physical sense but, rather, in an ontological sense, because it challenges the very notion by which the identity of the collective has been formed’ (BuckMorss 2000: 36). 21 Douglas’ metaphor of dirt has been frequently used to illuminate the horrendous logic of genocidal regimes, obsessed as they may become with their ideal of homogeneity, setting in motion destructive acts of purification (see Appadurai 2006: 44; Hayden 1996: 784; Wolf 1999: 246).

References Appadurai, Arjun (2006) Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Augustine, St (1950) The City of God [De civitate Dei]. London: Faber & Faber. ——— (1951) Against the Academics [Contra Academicos]. New York: Paulus Press. ——— (1988) ‘Tractate 29 on John 7.14–18’, in Tractates on the Gospel of John 1–10, trans. J. W. Rettig. Washington DC: The Catholic University of America Press. Berger, Peter and Anton Zijderveld (2009) In Praise of Doubt: How to Have Convictions without Becoming a Fanatic. New York: Harper One.

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Bloch, Maurice (2005) Essays on Cultural Transmission. Oxford: Berg. Blok, Anton (2001) Honour and Violence. Cambridge: Polity. Bonney, William (2002) Caused to Believe: The Doubting Thomas Story at the Climax of John’s Christological Narrative. Leiden: Brill. Brecht, Bertolt (1979) ‘In Praise of Doubt’, in J. Willett and R. Manheim (eds), Poems, 1913–1956. London: Routledge. Buck-Morss, Susan (2000) Dreamworld and Catastrophe: The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Carrithers, Michael (1990) ‘Is Anthropology Art or Science?’. Current Anthropology 31(3): 263–82. Coleman, Simon (2003) ‘Continuous Conversion? The Rhetoric, Practice, and Rhetorical Practice of Charismatic Protestant Conversion’, in A. Buckser and S. Glazier (eds), The Anthropology of Religious Conversion. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Crapanzano, Vincent (2004) Imaginative Horizons: An Essay in Literary–Philosophical Anthropology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Descartes, René (1996) Meditations on the First Philosophy: With Selections from the Objections and Replies, ed. John Cottingham. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DeWalt, K. and B. DeWalt (2002) Participant Observation: A Guide for Fieldworkers. Oxford: Alta Mira Press. Douglas, Mary (1966) Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. New York: Frederick A. Praeger. Engelke, Matthew (2008) ‘The Objects of Evidence’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.): S1–S21. Evans-Pritchard, E. P. (1937) Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Firth, Raymond (1959) ‘Problem and Assumption in an Anthropological Study of Religion’. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 89(2): 129–48.

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Fukuyama, Francis (1992) The End of History and the Last Man. London: Penguin. Gana, Nouri (2008) ‘Reel Violence: Paradise Now and the Collapse of the Spectacle’. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 28(1): 20–37. Golden-Biddle, Karen and Karen Locke (1993) ‘Appealing Work: An Investigation of How Ethnographic Texts Convince’. Organization Science 4(4): 595–616. Harding, Susan (1987) ‘Convicted by the Holy Spirit: The Rhetoric of Fundamental Baptist Conversion’. American Ethnologist 14(1): 167–81. Hastrup, Kirsten (2004) ‘Getting it Right: Knowledge and Evidence in Anthropology’. Anthropological Theory 4(4): 455–72. Hayden, Robert (1996) ‘Imagined Communities and Real Victims: Self-determination and Ethnic Cleansing in Yugoslavia’. American Ethnologist 23(4): 783–801. Hecht, Jennifer Michael (2003) Doubt: A History. New York: Harper San Francisco. Heidegger, Martin ([1953] 2010) Being and Time, trans. J. Stambaugh. New York: State University of New York Press. Hoffman, Piotr (1986) Doubt, Time, Violence. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kafka, Franz (1991) ‘The Third Notebook, December 19, 1917’, in M. Brod (ed.), The Blue Octavo Notebooks, trans. E. Kaiser and E. Wilkins. Cambridge, MA: Exact Change. Kapferer, Bruce (2001) ‘Anthropology: The Paradox of the Secular’. Social Anthropology 9: 341–44. Kierkegaard, Søren ([1843] 1985) Fear and Trembling: Dialectical Lyric by Johannes de Silentio, trans. Alastair Hannay. London: Penguin Books. ——— (1941) Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. D. Swenson and W. Lowrie. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kotkin, Stephen (1995) Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Lenin, Vladimir Illich ([1902] 1945) Chto delat’? Nobolevshie voprosy nashego dvizhenia. Leningrad: Gos.izd-vo polit. lit-ry. Malinowski, Bronislaw (1922) Argonauts of the Western Pacific. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Malkki, Liisa (2007) ‘Tradition and Improvisation in Ethnographic Field Research’, in A. Cerwonka and L. Malkki, Improvising Theory: Process and Temporality in Ethnographic Fieldwork. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Moyal-Sharrock, Daniele (2003) ‘Logic in Action: Wittgenstein’s Logical Pragmatism and the Impotence of Skepticism’. Philosophical Investigations 26(2): 125–47. Nadel, Siegfried Frederick (1954) Nupe Religion. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Napier, David (2009) ‘Betrayal and its Modern Consequences’, paper presented at the workshop ‘Ethnographies of Doubt’, Centro Incontri Umani Incontra, Ascona, Switzerland, 8–10 May. Oushakine, Serguei (2000) ‘In the State of Post-Soviet Aphasia: Symbolic Development in Contemporary Russia’. EuropeAsia Studies 52(6): 991–1,016. Peirce, Charles S. (1868) ‘Some Consequences of Four Incapacities’. Journal of Speculative Philosophy 2: 140–57. Pelkmans, Mathijs (2009a) ‘Temporary Conversions: Encounters with Pentecostalism in Muslim Kyrgyzstan’, in M. Pelkmans (ed.), Conversion after Socialism: Disruptions, Modernisms and Technologies of Faith in the Former Soviet Union. Oxford: Berghahn Books. ——— (2009b) ‘The “Transparency” of Christian Proselytizing in Kyrgyzstan’. Anthropological Quarterly 82(2): 423–45. ——— (2010) ‘Religious Crossings and Conversions on the Muslim–Christian Frontier in Georgia and Kyrgyzstan’. Anthropological Journal of European Cultures 19(2): 109–29. Pitt-Rivers, Julian (1977) The Fate of Shechem or the Politics of Sex: Essays in the Anthropology of the Mediterranean. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shatanawi, Mirjam (2006) ‘The Disquieting Art of Khosrow Hassanzadeh’. ISIM Review 18: 54–5.

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Skirry, Justin (2005) Descartes and the Metaphysics of Human Nature. London: Continuum. Spradley, James (1980) Participant Observation. New York: Holt, Rhinehart and Winston. Tedlock, Barbara (1991) ‘From Participant Observation to the Observation of Participation: The Emergence of Narrative Ethnography’. Journal of Anthropological Research 41(1): 69–94. Toren, Christina (2007) ‘How Do We Know What Is True?’, in R. Astuti, J. Parry and C. Stafford (eds), Questions of Anthropology. Oxford: Berg. Van Cleve, James (1979) ‘Foundationalism, Epistemic Principles, and the Cartesian Circle’. The Philosophical Review 88(1): 55–91. Wilson, R. (2004) ‘The Trouble with Truth: Anthropology’s Epistemological Hypochondria’. Anthropology Today 20(5): 14–17. Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1969) On Certainty [Über Gewissheit]. Oxford: Blackwell. Wolf, Eric (1999) Envisioning Power: Ideologies of Dominance and Crisis. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Yeats, W. B. ([1921] 2008) ‘The Second Coming’, in The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats. Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth. Yurchak, Alexei (2006) Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Zigon, Jarrett (2009) ‘Hope Dies Last: Two Aspects of Hope in Contemporary Moscow’. Anthropological Theory 9(3): 253–71. Žižek, Slavoj (1989) The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso. ——— (2001) On Belief. London: Verso.

2 TYPES OF SHARED DOUBT IN FLOW OF A DISCUSSION

THE

Maurice Bloch

Arguments about the place and appropriateness of doubt have traditionally occurred when people talk about religion or science, and examination of such discourses has been a standard topic in philosophy. Usually, as in Kant’s case, a contrast is drawn between the scepticism of science which makes scientific knowledge always provisional and open to revision and the transcendental truths of religion which are categorical, cannot be fully explained and cannot be accounted for naturally. In this way methodological doubt has often been seen as the cornerstone of science. On the other hand, religious doubt is represented in quite a different light; typically, as for Pascal and Saint Augustine, it is a torture which the believer needs to endure so as to get over it and accept – without question, on the basis of authority – the truth of revealed religion. Scholarly philosophy thus has a very long tradition of examining the respective doubts of religion and of science, yet in this chapter I want to propose a different way of going about things; an anthropological way, based on the observation of people in a natural setting thinking and acting within the flow of life. In this particular case, I concentrate on doubt occurring within the flow of a discussion involving a number of people. Such an approach leads me to propose different conclusions to those of traditional 43

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philosophy, though such a departure is not out of line with the direction that certain modern philosophers have taken. Doubt, as a philosophical subject, has traditionally been studied as a tool for the establishment of truth. This type of discussion involves controversies in which anthropologists find themselves out of their depth. More recently, however, many philosophers have abandoned such ultimate questionings, taking instead a naturalist approach to matters of truth and therefore, also, to matters of doubt. They have wanted to know what kind of psychological states are involved in knowing and doubting. They have also sought to analyse the basis of truth claims that are actually used as they occur naturally. This has then led them to ask in what settings claims to truth are made. Do these different settings, especially different cultural settings, affect what is considered as true? And what are the ways truth can be claimed and validated? Similar questions can be asked of doubt. This naturalist turn has thus, in the first instance, made philosophers into psychologists, but it would seem that it should also lead them to becoming ethnographers and anthropologists, or, at least, to consult ethnographers and anthropologists about what they have found and the conclusions they have reached. The reason is that mental states are not independent of the environment in which individuals live, especially the social environment. Doubt may often be a solitary mental state but it is also often shared and it is probable that when this is so, a dialectic is established between the public manifestation of this shared doubt and private internal states. A naturalist philosophy of doubt therefore needs an ethnography of shared doubt to be complete. To a certain extent a dialogue between philosophers, psychologists and anthropologists has begun to happen regarding the ethnography of truth, though, for various reasons, it has also proved to be frustrating to the different parties.1 However, as far as I am aware, no such exchange has occurred regarding doubt. This is probably because, at present, the ethnography and the anthropology of doubt hardly seem to exist. The absence of an ethnography of doubt is not an accident but seems to be due to a fundamental difficulty. Unlike knowing

Types of Shared Doubt in the Flow of a Discussion

and truth, the nature of doubt is rarely a subject of explicit argument or reflection for ordinary people. This difficulty can, however, be turned into an advantage. The ethnography of truth has for the most part concentrated on folk epistemic theories while it should have concentrated equally, if not more, on epistemic practice occurring in the flow of social life. With the absence of folk theories of doubt, anthropologists have no alternative but to extricate doubt from what is naturally occurring in ongoing processes. This is what I shall do here by examining a couple of shared, public manifestations of doubt, while leaving to one side the difficult issue of the relation of these public manifestations to internal states. The setting My main aim in this section is to distinguish between two different types of shared public manifestations of doubt. For this I turn to a number of group discussions concerning Zafimaniry psychological theories, which I organized in a small village in 2003. The Zafimaniry are a group of forest dwellers in Madagascar who, for historical reasons, are fairly distinct and relatively isolated from other Malagasy. A good deal of information about them has already been published (e.g. Bloch 1995; Coulaud 1973). Of significance here is the fact that, in spite of the presence of a church school, the villagers can be considered either unschooled or very little exposed to formal education since the actual school has hardly ever been in proper functioning order. Only very few villagers, if any, are able to read and write efficiently. This lack of formal education led me to ask what the villagers would make of a very academic psychological experiment which has been considered of great significance for our understanding of the cognitive development of young children. I wanted to place these unschooled villagers in the position in which academic psychologists place themselves when drawing inferences from experimental work, and compare the interpretation they made of the same phenomena (Bloch 2005). The experiment in question is usually called the false belief task and takes

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many forms. It is often interpreted as showing that young children do not understand that other people can hold false beliefs and that they therefore act honestly but mistakenly in terms of these beliefs. Since I have already discussed the findings of this research in Madagascar elsewhere (Bloch 2006) and intend to do so more fully in the future, I shall only consider here what are, in many ways, only small by-products of the main enterprise. I was primarily interested in the villagers’ interpretation of the false belief task, but I also used the discussions that followed the experiment as bases from which I could lead my interlocutors towards much more general reflections and speculations about mind, language, memory, dreams, ancestors and so on. Here I am only concerned with some parts of these extensions of the basic research and the unplanned speculative directions in which they, and I, were led by the dynamics of the dialogue. This part of the ethnography is therefore typical of participant observation where the informants, together with the researcher, explore unplanned paths and are free to go in any direction they please. These intellectual journeys did, at several points, lead us to topics regarding which the participants expressed doubt; though, as we shall see, not always the same type of doubt. Two types of doubt in a Malagasy village I did a number of experimental sessions in the village and although several of these led to much longer discussions than others, all were surprisingly consistent. Therefore I use only one such journey towards doubt as an example here, which can be considered typical. We had been discussing the relation of language to thought in people and I had discovered, somewhat to my surprise, that the Zafimaniry villagers shared a clear theoretical position concerning the question. The more vocal among them told me that thought and language were very different matters and that language was not necessary for thought. It seemed from the general approval with which some statements were greeted that everybody agreed about this and there was no air of doubt that

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I could detect among the small crowd that had gathered in the house where the experiment took place. The only discordant voice came from me as I expressed a certain amount of disingenuous surprise bordering on scepticism. This attitude caused my interlocutors to want to convince me of their point of view; for this they used the example of the deaf and dumb man who lives in the village and who, argued my interlocutors, was clearly capable of thought while at the same time being deprived of language. Indeed, people had often expressed great admiration for this man’s ability to communicate. I was genuinely impressed by this example and the rhetorical use that was being made of it, but I nonetheless continued the discussion by raising a further question. I asked if animals, who obviously also could not speak, were capable of thought. Again, the answer was loud and clear: Yes they were! In order to convince me of this my interlocutors used another example. Pigs, they said, when they see someone come out of a house with a basket full of taro come rushing to the spot because they think that there will soon be peelings that they will then be able to eat as these fall to the ground. At this stage I encouraged the joint intellectual journey to progress yet further by asking if this was the case for other animals such as chickens. The answer I was given was the same as that for pigs and similar examples were also used to convince me that all animals could think. By then, however, the whole dialogue was becoming something of a joke as the question was being considered for ever more lowly animals. In the boisterous linguistic mêlée that was developing, some of my interlocutors adopted my part in the dialogue, not by taking my side of the argument, but by forecasting my next question only to answer it as soon as they had formulated it. ‘What about fleas?’ they asked and their answer was ‘clearly fleas thought since they hid in the seams of garments so as not to get caught’. This thought experiment delighted everybody and so I played my last card. ‘Do trees think?’ I asked. The assembly went thoughtfully quieter, partly because trees are of central importance for the Zafimaniry and therefore not an appropriate subject for a joke. Most people said that trees could not think but they did not argue the point.

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However, the participant who had most clearly enjoyed the intellectual game, an old friend of mine, ingeniously proposed the opposite of what seemed the general opinion and he argued his point. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘trees think and this is shown by the fact that their roots, when finding themselves on rock, seek out the wet soil by growing towards it.’ Did he believe that trees thought? This was not how I interpreted his intentional meaning. Based on the multitude of pragmatic and contextual clues that framed this speech act as, indeed, they frame any and all speech acts, I believe he was saying: ‘this is an intriguing possibility and the line of argument we have been following could well lead to this conclusion, but here we have reached a pretty ridiculous level of talk and I am not really committed to what I am saying’. We had entered doubt and I believe this mood of doubting was shared. However, this conclusion of mine is only based on interpreted micro clues, too impermanent to take in consciously and analyse, let alone to describe. Such clues are the only evidence possible for the existence of this type of doubt in such a context. This is probably why the ethnography of doubt is so rare in the published record. The ephemeral and inexplicit character of the phenomenon does not, however, mean that it is not worthwhile reflecting on what is involved. The best way to do this is to consider that this sort of doubt exists within a dialogic movement from certainty towards the unknown. This is what was happening in the discussion outlined above. During the early part of the interchange, the villagers seemed, as a group, certain of what was being asserted. Their certainty was based on a combination of two factors. Firstly, it was based on their trust in the testimony of other people who had assured them in the past that things were so. Because of this and because of their trust in the opinion of others who were present in the room, people who either did not know this before or more probably had never thought about the matter were now certain that pigs are capable of thought. Secondly, those who had been clear about the matter used empirical evidence, either from their own observations or from the reports and interpretations of others, to support the received wisdom and thus made

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its propositions more convincing. This use of evidence from the senses, above all sight, is characteristic of Malagasy reasoning – as it is probably characteristic of reasoning in most places in the world (Bloch 2008). In this case, the empirical support provided by the reference to pigs expecting their food clearly did its rhetorical job successfully. The empirical evidence was not, however, just left to speak for itself; instead it became a tool in a process of induction and deduction that led ultimately to more dangerous and uncertain ground, ground that was more remote from the certain truth of the testimony that had been relied on and from the truth guarantee that had been provided by relevant empirical evidence. This distance from certainty had moved the discussion to the territory of doubt, even though the question of whether trees thought was not something people had said in the past and this was being asserted only by one person in a somewhat tentative tone of voice. It is essential for understanding the occurrence of this type of doubt to place it in the developmental movement of shared thought. This is crucial for realizing not only where this doubt has come from but where it might be going. The villagers clearly enjoyed the perilous nature of the assertions they or others were proposing as they moved ever forward in their joint reasoning towards less secure territory. Their attitude, however, made it quite clear that at the same time as they were moving in this direction, they were quite prepared for, almost expecting, their doubt to be dispelled in the future, either because of new testimony from others or through the use of new empirical evidence. This type of doubt was thus seen as merely a necessary moment in the exciting and, in this case at least, jolly progression towards firmer truth. This moment of doubt was thus not all that dissimilar to the use of doubt as a key scientific tool advocated by a whole line of philosophers, Popper being perhaps the most obvious example. The processual character of the type of doubt just discussed is particularly revealing in that it offers an instructive contrast to the second, very different, type of doubt that I now go on to describe. From the type of discussion I have considered above it had emerged that for the Zafimaniry, and probably for most other Malagasy, thought is very much a matter of aligning intention

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and action. They have a very pragmatic and down-to-earth approach to mind. I was intrigued by how this could connect to other aspects of their culture, especially their relations to dead ancestors, which had always seemed to me contradictory. Would I be able to smoothly move our discussions about questions of mind, which had been of a scientific character, to these matters, which many anthropologists characterize as religious or mystical (Tambiah 1990)? For a number of theoretical reasons which are not the subject of this chapter I doubted whether this could be done. At first, however, there seemed to be few difficulties. I repeatedly tried to move the discussions towards such matters by asking about the mind in sleep. The reason was that the Zafimaniry often declare propositions, and act in ways, which anthropological literature would normally label as ‘ancestor worship’. People make offerings to the dead in order to obtain their blessing. They fear the ancestors’ displeasure. When it is believed that this displeasure has been incurred, the dead are thought to manifest themselves to the living by asking for certain rituals to be performed for them. These demands are most usually made in dreams but the practices to which they lead are central to social order and organization. Here I only use the continuation of the same conversation that illustrated the first type of doubt to exemplify the second type. What was said on this occasion was, however, once again very similar to what occurred on other occasions. My discussion about the relationship of sleep and mind started with my being told with great certainty and unanimity that in sleep one was ‘as if dead’. After death all activity stopped and one was certainly not able to think. Similarly in sleep the mind switched off and that was it. It seemed as if nobody present had any doubt about these matters. Although I had heard this sort of thing before, it was, nonetheless, surprising in relation to both death and sleep since such statements seemed inconsistent with the beliefs and practices just alluded to. Rita Astuti, working in another part of Madagascar, has examined with great precision a similar apparently contradictory situation (Astuti 2007).

Types of Shared Doubt in the Flow of a Discussion

Because of the prima facie contradiction between the propositions just expressed and my knowledge of Zafimaniry ideas concerning ancestors, I then asked about dreams and how, for example, it was possible for ancestors to come in dreams to ask to have a ritual performed for them if one was then ‘as if dead’. The mood changed in a way that I cannot fully document empirically but am certain of nonetheless. In any case the rather boisterous atmosphere which had characterized the discussion up to that point disappeared and people became much quieter. I believe that the contradiction that lay behind my questions was sufficiently salient that a good number of people understood what I was driving at and this partly explained the change of mood. Several people had already said at this point that, when talking about dreams, we were moving to an area that was ‘difficult’.2 However, I also got an intriguing answer from two or three senior people. The most vocal of these put the matter in this way: ‘Although people who are asleep are like dead, the spirit of other people could come and be active in the sleeper’s head.’ This answer does indeed remove the apparent contradiction which I had been exploring. I could not tell with what degree of certainty this proposition was expressed but the reaction of several other people was particularly interesting. They approved of what was being said with one of the several Malagasy equivalents of the English yeah, a vocalization which was also accompanied by several semantically significant movements of the head. In this case what I assumed was meant was something like ‘thank you, this matter is now clear now that you have explained it’. The explicit meaning of the nodding was, therefore, that doubt has been removed, but it also implied a modification in the relation of discourse to fact which I interpret as meaning that by this point in the dialogic process, we had reached such a very ‘difficult’ area that neither evidence from the senses nor induction or deduction were safe and that as a consequence it was best to turn for information to authority figures who can be trusted. What made this clear was the contrast between, on the one hand, this particular stage in the discussion and, on the other,

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what had gone immediately before as well as the mood of the earlier discussion about the mental capacity of animals. Then all kinds of people had joined in: women and men, old and young (with the possible exception of young newly married women). Indeed, in these more matter-of-fact exchanges older women dominated. By the time we had moved to the discussion about dreams, however, only senior male authority figures spoke and, as we have seen, the other people present expressed their deferral to their opinion. I pushed the discussion further and as a good rationalist kept on asking more and more tricky questions about the spirits of the living and of the dead and the way these manifested themselves in dreams. For example, I said, untruthfully, that I had dreamt of my son the night before, who everybody knew was alive, and asked whether that meant that he had somehow come to me from England. The mood caused by this type of question was totally different to the enthusiastic and somewhat amused explorations about such things as the minds of pigs. People were uncomfortable and I was told somewhat sententiously that these were very difficult matters and that one could not be sure. We were back with doubt, but a very different type of doubt. Another revealing event occurred while this discussion about dreams and spirits was going on when, unexpectedly, a respected older man from a nearby village who was on his way to somewhere else came and joined us, probably intrigued by the gathering. People told him what was going on and asked him his opinion on the questions we had been discussing. On many points he contradicted what had been said but nobody pointed this out and he was heard with respect. It is not possible to discuss here many of the issues he raised. I suspected at the time, and still do, that he was making up theories on the spot in order to impress. In particular, he asserted that the spirits which came in dreams were not fanahy – the word normally used, and which we had employed up to now – but ambiroa. I was not clear then, and am not to this day, whether what he meant was that a different kind of entity was involved or that the proper name for the same entity was ambiroa. What is sure, however, is that his views on

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this, and on other matters were either esoteric or at least heterodox since the word fanahy is the one normally used in the village as indeed in other parts of Madagascar, although people also sometimes talk of ambiroa.3 In spite of the oddity of what he was saying and the fact that he was contradicting what had been said and approved shortly before, the reaction to his views was very similar to the way the views of the other elders had been received. Again people nodded and said yeah, implying that they had learned something new and of great value. The flat contradiction with what had been said before was just left in suspension. It was not that the new actor in the discussion had imposed his view since, in spite of the expressed approval, as far as I could see everybody carried on talking about fanahy after his intervention. What I believe had happened is that we had reached a type of discourse and a topic which was in doubt. This doubt, however, is of a fundamentally different type to the doubt expressed about the question of whether trees could think. There was nothing to be done about removing it. The approval that had been expressed following what the senior men had said turns out, on reflection, to be much less straightforward than I had, at first, taken it to be. It was not a matter of believing that after their intervention we now knew what things were really like. If that had been the case, the contradictions between the elder of the village and the passing incomer would have caused confusion. What I now think was being expressed was something like this. ‘We are in an area in which we are in doubt and where we shall remain in doubt. Those in authority are expressing an opinion but we cannot pass judgement on their views as we are in an area beyond our competence. We listen to them with respect but that does not remove our doubt nor should it.’ Conclusion In this chapter I have contrasted two types of doubt. My focus has been on doubt as a stage in a discussion. Such a focus is a product of the way anthropologists obtain their data. Typically we do not invent examples as philosophers or linguists do; instead

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we study doubt as it occurs in natural situations. Unlike psychologists we usually simply listen and observe people as they go about their normal business, rather than asking them to answer pre-set questions. Of course, going about our research in this way creates problems, which is why some anthropologists, such as myself and Astuti (2007), have combined methods from different disciplines. The overall research discussed here is an example of such work. However, the part that is considered in detail in this chapter is typical anthropological material in that it concerns talk which was undirected, with people joining in or not, coming and going, in unplanned ways. The discussion was free to go in any direction the participants chose. Here I want to stress what this type of work can tell us and how it might modify a general approach to the study of doubt. The first point is that doubt is not simply a lonely internal state. It is also a stage in the shared process of the exchange of words and actions which occurs between people. The contrast in the types of doubt illustrated here is above all a contrast in the character of dialogic movements that lead to the emergence of different types of sharing of doubt between people. This, then, inevitably leads to further different types of interactive developments which, in their turn, lead to different shared reflections and actions in the future. My first point is that doubt can also be seen as part of the process of social life. The second point concerns the identification of doubts or beliefs in terms of their analytical characteristics. The two cases discussed here both evoke the word ‘doubt’ as it is normally understood in English and perhaps both involve similar internal states. But if we put these cases in the context of the social and linguistic flow within which they occurred and were shared, they have little in common. In the first case, the sharing of doubt was part of a dialogic process which encouraged movement in a joint quest for truth. Doubt here is a tool to stimulate a forward movement. In the second case we seemed to be dealing with a growing shared agreement not to resolve doubt but to stay bathing in it and to delegate the active search for truth to authority, perhaps

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because of fears about where this quest might lead. Doubt in the second case is not a matter of forward movement; rather it is a device for stopping it. In one of the rare anthropological discussions of doubt Dan Sperber criticizes those writers who remove this element of their informants’ doubt from their ethnography (Sperber 1982). There is indeed a tendency to try to misleadingly push informants to explain things until these are clear and categorical, thereby obscuring the equally important ethnographic fact of the presence of uncertainty. Sperber quite rightly shows how misleading this can be with an example from his own field experience concerning a request made to him by an old man that he kill a dragon. Sperber argues that it would be tempting to conclude from such a request that the Dorze of Ethiopia believe straightforwardly in the existence of dragons, while instead he suggests that the reality was that the old man was in doubt about the existence of dragons and was merely ‘floating’ the possibility. Sperber calls this state of affairs ‘semi-propositions’ to contrast with propositions where a greater degree of certainty is present. In a later (1997) article Sperber also distinguishes between two mental attitudes towards beliefs: intuitive beliefs and reflexive beliefs, the former being accepted in a straightforward way, the latter for conscious reasons. This discussion is extremely useful but I am not sure that trying to specify the character of the propositions or the attitudes towards them is necessarily the best approach. In the ethnographic examples given in the previous section I would not know exactly which statements should be qualified by Sperber’s term ‘semi-propositions’ or which are held intuitively or reflexively. What I find is a seamless process of continual transformation from certainty to uncertainty and back again, from phenomenological intuitivity to reflexivity, from certainty to doubt. The belief in the ability of ancestors to come to ask things of the living is, here and in my wider experience, held by my Malagasy informants quite straightforwardly and intuitively in usual circumstances, but as things move forward, the belief smoothly becomes a subject

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of reflection and discomfort, requiring reliance on testimony from trusted sources. The fact that pigs thought seems to me to have been presented as straightforward and phenomenologically intuitive but as its implications were extended to fleas and trees a retroactive revision of attitude towards the belief took place even as it applied to pigs. When the question of whether trees could think was raised, we moved gradually to doubt and reflection. The point I am making is that with an anthropological approach we concentrate on situated processes, which shows that the static characterizations of traditional philosophy tend to miss the very natural phenomenon that we seek to understand. The two types of doubts I have distinguished concern different types of movements. Furthermore, these movements are not just intellectual but also social. The similarity between the two doubts discussed is that both were leading to challenging reflections. The difference was that doubt about the mental capacity of trees was not socially threatening, while doubt about the status of ancestors could ultimately lead along the primrose path towards challenging the fundamental social and political order. Finally, by way of a conclusion to a conclusion, let me return to the contrast between the nature of scientific and religious belief that has such a long history in anthropology and other disciplines. In many ways one could be tempted to characterize the first type of doubt as scientific in that it seems to encourage the forward movement of knowledge, which is represented as provisional; while the second type of doubt is reminiscent of many characterizations of religion, whether hostile or friendly, where religion is seen as a matter of acceptance of what cannot be justified by formal rationality. There is, no doubt, much that is true in the contrast. But it seems to me it also fails in that it confounds the institutions a particular culture labels as religious or scientific with the type of discursive process that occurs within these institutions. ‘Religion’ and ‘science’ may be categories suitable for classifying specific institutions that exist in certain cultural and historical contexts but not for modes of reasoning. Two ethnographies illustrate this

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point well. Keller demonstrates the use of the first type of doubt in the organized practice of Seventh-Day Adventists, people who would normally be thought of as engaging in ‘religion’ (Keller 2005). Conversely, Latour demonstrates the presence of the second type of doubt in ‘scientific’ institutions (Latour and Woolgar 1988). Thus, when discussing ways of thinking, it is more fruitful to examine the epistemic basis of ongoing discourses as they occur without allowing arbitrary labelling borrowed from our own institutional system to obscure what we find. Acknowledgements I would like to thank the following for useful comments on earlier drafts of this chapter: Rita Astuti, Eva Keller, Olivier Morin, Dan Sperber, Joelle Proust. Notes 1 See for example the discussions that have followed the publication of the books edited by Wilson (1977) and Hollis and Lukes (1982). 2 The word used was sarotra. The semantic field of this word extends to take in the meanings of the English word ‘difficult’ but it also has overtones of ‘dangerous’. 3 Although several anthropologists and others, including myself, have learnedly attempted to distinguish between fanahy and ambiroa, as well as several other terms, I now believe that the proper thing would have been for us to say simply that these words and the notions to which they allude are simply not clear, either to us or to our informants.

References Astuti, Rita (2007) ‘Ancestors and the Afterlife’, in H. Whitehouse and J. Laidlaw (eds), Religion, Anthropology, and Cognitive Science. Chapel Hill: Carolina Academic. Bloch, Maurice (1995) ‘People into Places: Zafimaniry Concepts of Clarity’, in E. Hirsch and M. O’Hanlon (eds), The Anthropology of Landscape. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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——— (2005) ‘Where did Anthropology Go?’, in M. Bloch, Essays on Cultural Transmission. Oxford: Berg. ——— (2006) L’anthropologie cognitive à l’épreuve du terrain. Paris: Fayard. ——— (2008) ‘Truth and Sight: Generalising without Universalising’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 14(S1): S22–S32. Coulaud, D. (1973) Les Zafimaniry: Un Groupe Ethnique de Madagascar à la Poursuite de la Forêt. Tananarive: FanatanBoky Malagasy. Hollis, Martin and Steven Lukes (eds) (1982) Rationality and Relativism. Oxford: Blackwell. Keller, Eva (2005) The Road to Clarity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Latour, Bruno and S. Woolgar (1988) La vie de Laboratoire, La Production des Faits Scientifiques, 2nd edn. Paris: La Decouverte. Sperber, Dan (1982) ‘Apparently Irrational Beliefs’, in M. Hollis and S. Lukes (eds), Rationality and Relativism. Oxford: Blackwell. ——— (1997) ‘Intuitive and Reflective Beliefs’. Mind and Language 12(1): 67–83. Tambiah, Stanley Jeyaraja (1990) Magic, Science, Religion and the Scope of Rationality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wilson, Bryan R. (ed.) (1977) Rationality. Oxford: Blackwell.

3 BELIEVING IN SPIRITS, DOUBTING THE COSMOS: RELIGIOUS REFLEXIVITY IN THE MONGOLIAN GOLD MINES Mette M. High

In the late 1990s a gold rush broke out on the Mongolian steppe.1 Equipped with washing pans reminiscent of the classical American gold rushes, thousands of men and women defied the harsh working conditions in search of gold. Mongolian newspapers and TV stations soon began to report on the immense wealth uncovered in the countryside, estimating that the illegal production of gold equalled the total production output of the entire formal mining sector (UB Post 2002). While government officials and international development organizations debated the country’s newly recognized economic potential and envisioned a rosy future, the Mongolian public, however, did not seem as interested in the impressive gold rush production figures. Instead, people appeared enthralled by rumours about human sacrifice that circulated at the time. In the capital as well as in the countryside, these rumours flourished and eventually, as people recounted them with great personal conviction and substantiated them with anecdotal evidence, they acquired a lasting and chilling presence. Although the rumours varied with regard to their exact content, they all dealt with human bodies that were sacrificed 59

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to spirits. A girl in her early twenties, whose boyfriend Davaa had just returned from the gold rush areas, gave the following account: When Davaa was in the mines, he heard that some people there are crazy. Apparently in the early evenings, when it starts to get dark, groups of miners scavenge the camps, searching for an able-bodied person who is alone. The miners carry knives, never guns, and when they find what they are looking for, they quickly surround the person. They first cover his or her head with a bag, so that no one can hear the person’s screams. No one will notice what the miners are doing. They are quick and quiet. They then throw the person over their backs and carry him or her through the darkness up to the mountain where people make the usual offerings to spirits. But instead of offering milk or tea, the miners offer blood. Milk and tea is no longer strong enough for the spirits. They want more. They are not satisfied with dairy, they require human blood. Once the miners arrive at the mountain, they carefully put their victim on the ground. They pull out their knives and stab the person again and again until streams of blood flow down the mountainside. That’s why they have knives and not guns. Guns don’t make as much blood, right? Have you ever heard of anyone who got shot in the mines? No? Well, that’s why.

Although such rumours might be seen as fleeting responses to initial upheaval and societal transformations, the rumours still circulate today. People are still said to return to the capital city with mysterious slashes across their bodies. Knives covered in blood are found on the edges of mines. Friends and relatives, who have joined the rush, disappear and are never heard from again. As the gold rush miners produce what is seen by the World Bank and others as a ‘viable income’ (World Bank 2004: ii), the miners are involved in what some would call an ‘occult economy’ (Comaroff and Comaroff 1999) where blood offerings have become the currency, mediating human desires and hungry spirits.

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In anthropology, the occult has been approached as the cultural domain par excellence, evidencing the immense diversity and relativity in religious practices. Pursuing crosscultural exegesis of these practices, the discipline has sought to avoid analytical categories of judgement that are premised on universal notions of truth and fallacy. Rather than drawing on charlatans and crooks for our analytical categories, an array of local ethno-specialists has become part of our vocabulary, aiding in our understanding of the emic logic of the occult. Given the long-standing anthropological interest in explicating religious practices, this chapter could approach the Mongolian rumours about human sacrifice as yet another example of how people relate to drastic political economic changes in terms of new magical practices. Indeed, as Evans-Pritchard famously stated: ‘New situations demand new magic’ (1937: 513). As such, this article could argue that the largely Africanist literature on child witches (De Boeck 2005), sorcery lions (West 2007) and witch doctors (Geschiere 1997) bears interesting ethnographic parallels far beyond the post-colonial African realities. Defined as ‘the deployment of magical means for material ends’ (Comaroff and Comaroff 1999: 284), ‘occult economies’ are often presented as magico-religious practices that provide quasi-refuges of order, meaning and agency in response to distressing political economic realities. Although such a bifurcation, if not opposition, between ‘religion’ and ‘political economy’ may reflect particular ethnographic circumstances, the analytical presuppositions can be problematic. Whether people call upon the occult in an act of resistance (Comaroff 1985; Ong 1987; Taussig 1980) or as a means of agency (De Boeck 1999; Geschiere 1997; Kapferer 1997), these writings endow the occult with systematic instrumentalities and strategic calculations that are reminiscent of classical anthropological concerns with emic logic and rationale.2 And when local sceptics of the occult are mentioned, they remain marginal ethnographic curiosities that merely add force to the prevailing belief system.3 The

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fascination with people’s beliefs, rather than their doubts, still seems to reign supreme (see also Kapferer 2003; Lewis 1994; Shanafelt 2004). I therefore suggest we should incorporate doubt into our analytical approach to religious beliefs and allow ‘occult economies’ to escape the straitjacket of instrumentality and order.4 By recognizing ambiguity and coherence, doubt and conviction, this chapter proposes that we can begin questioning the implications of our long-held fascination with people’s beliefs. In this chapter I will attempt to make sense of people’s doubts about how the cosmos can sustain the human desires involved in today’s gold mining. By examining Mongolian ideas about spirits and land, I will show that the Mongolian ‘occult economy’ not only deals with broader questions about wealth production and socio-economic transformations, but also entails profound doubts about the cosmos. More specifically, I aim to demonstrate that the Mongolian gold rush raises pressing questions about how humans and spirits can coexist when human desires threaten to disrupt the fragile cosmological balance. As spirits now demand human blood in return for precious gold, how much longer can the cosmological order, as people know it, persist? The gold rush Mongolia is a large, landlocked country with a population of less than three million people. Between 1921 and 1991, a Soviet-supported socialist regime established industries throughout the country. However, following the political transition to a market economy in 1991, collective farms, dairy cooperatives and other industries soon closed. Alongside the collapse of the country’s economy, the state provision of health care and education began to falter. As people lost their jobs in the few urban centres, the countryside became the destination for many city dwellers in search of a new subsistence income (Rossabi 2005: 45–62). Whilst

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the extreme continental climate and rural way of life posed a challenge to many newcomers from urban areas, nomadic pastoralism was heralded as the saviour of the Mongolian economy in the tough transition years. Thousands of people who lost their jobs in the capital were absorbed into the large herding sector, assisting with the production of the main cash crop: cashmere. With sky-high inflation, a stagnant GDP and no substantial industrial sectors, nomadic pastoralism became the backbone of the country’s economy, just as it had been prior to the socialist regime. Today, many of these urbanites have returned to the capital or migrated to China, South Korea or elsewhere. Industries have been resurrected, NGOs established and foreign investment increased. New Western-style houses have been built in gated compounds and private schools opened. Incredible amounts of wealth flow through the city, enriching the few whilst excluding the many. However, what seems to unite all strata of Mongolian society is a strong appreciation of the countryside (hödöö), not necessarily as an actual place one might visit, but as an imagined space of romanticized belonging, of nostalgic rootedness. The countryside and its hard-working herdsmen have carried the country through its many political and economic upheavals. It is the ‘homeland’ (nutag); it is where people trace their genealogical connections. People belong to the land, or as a Mongolian proverb states: ‘we and the land are one body’ (see also Yenhu 1996: 20). This proverb not only highlights a common nationalist discourse of belonging, but also articulates an intense mutual constitution of people and places.5 ‘The land’ is not merely a geographical territory, a necessary backdrop for human activity, or an enabling ecology. It is also a dynamic constituent in what makes people human. And as such, it might not be surprising that I was told the following when talking to an elderly gold miner about the gold rush: ‘In the old days people wouldn’t dig for gold. It was seen as bad. If you mined for gold, bad things would happen. But now many people mine for gold.’

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The land is seen as demanding respect (hündetgeh) and many taboos inform people’s engagement with the land. Digging into the ground is one such prohibited activity. Although Mongolia is a country with abundant mineral wealth, historical sources evidence a long-standing aversion towards digging into the ground and pursuing its mineral riches (High and Schlesinger 2010). While gold was a highly desired metal for political rulers, it was mainly acquired through long-distance trade, primarily with Tibet, rather than mined in their own territory (Allsen 1997). Indeed, when one of the first mining companies began its operations in Mongolia in the 1920s, it was ‘obliged to import Chinese labourers from 1,000 miles away because Mongolians refused at any price to work in the mines’ (Montagu 1956: 77). Today, more than 30 per cent of Mongolia has been formally licensed for mining purposes and more than 20 per cent of the total rural workforce is estimated to be directly involved in the gold rush (see ILO 2004: 1). Given the sheer magnitude of the formal and informal mining sectors, the countryside has now become a territory of hidden treasures and disputed claims. Multiple and diverse players have been brought into proximity with each other, exposing new definitions of wealth as well as various modes of production, exchange and consumption. This situation raises questions about how Mongolians experience the recent land and mineral reforms, which have enabled the licensing of land and the mining of minerals. It also raises questions about how people have experienced the introduction of ‘free market’ principles, welcoming individuals to pursue profit in a competitive market environment. In a country where land could not be held as an exclusive private property until 1994 (Sneath 2002; Upton 2005), the mining industry stands as a prominent symbol of radical change. However, the mining industry is more than that: it also constitutes and effects a new human engagement with the land.

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Figure 1 Ninja mining in Uyanga, Mongolia, 2006.

Given these political and economic processes, the rumours about human sacrifice can be seen as comments on contemporary Mongolian experiences of the ‘free market’ (zah zeel ) and the emerging capitalist economy. As ‘millennial capitalism’, with its alluring promises of economic salvation, encourages new forms of money magic ranging from elaborate pyramid schemes to prosperity gospels (Comaroff and Comaroff 1999, 2002), the Mongolian rumours can be viewed as yet another pertinent example. Although such cross-cultural resonance can be fascinating and seductive, I suggest that we instead approach the rumours as particular Mongolian doubts about the future; about a cosmos that might not be able to sustain current human desires. Spiritual landscapes In 1990 a Mongolian gold mining company received government approval to begin mining activities in a valley near the

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administrative village centre in Uyanga, 500 kilometres west of the capital city. The first informal sector miners soon followed suit, panning the company’s tailings for leftover gold. These informal sector gold miners are colloquially called ‘ninjas’ (ninja) and since they do not possess licences to the areas where they mine, their activities are consequently regarded as officially illegal.6 Whereas there used to be frequent clashes between company security guards and ninjas, the ninja population in Uyanga is today so large that the mining company appears to have accepted their presence and has relinquished the lower part of the valley to them. As long as the territorial divisions are mutually recognized, the formal and informal mining activities thrive peacefully side by side. The mining areas stand out starkly from the surrounding steppe. In the moon-like landscape of deep mining holes and muddy banks, more than 8,000 people (almost half of whom are female) live side by side in gers (round white felt tents) and makeshift tents (Figure 1). Most of the miners come from the local area and have left their herding households temporarily to try their luck in the mines during the warmer summer months. Based on observations among both ninjas and illegal gold traders, I estimate that miners on average find enough gold to earn them a minimum income equivalent to five dollars per day.7 Compared to national salaries, this is a very attractive income, similar to white-collar workers such as legislators, senior officials, managers and other professionals (National Statistical Office of Mongolia 2006). As people move between areas, demonstrating a shifting involvement in herding and mining, the steppe and the mines are brought into intense social and cosmological proximity, as the following event shows. One day during the summer of 2006, a heavy hailstorm broke out on the steppe and many herders became worried about the safety of their animals. I was staying with a herding family at the time and my host mother expressed her immediate concern. She whispered to herself: ‘How long will this hailstorm last? What about our lambs? And Tömörchödör [her son], he is still out herding the sheep … Why hasn’t he come back yet?’ She got up, filled the ladle with fresh milk and hurried outside. She threw the milk

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towards the sky, mumbled some words and hurried back in. She did this twice before the hailstorm finally began to subside and my oldest host brother eventually appeared, bruised badly by the hail. When I asked my host father about the bad weather, he said: ‘It was tenger (the Sky) who wanted to wash the ground, the animals, everything. All the garbage has been pushed away, leaving the ground clean and peaceful. Basically tenger was just cleaning up everything. It is very good once or twice a year.’ A couple of days later I went to the mining areas to sell milk with one of my host brothers. I noticed how the outer fabric of most gers was torn to pieces and many of the plastic tents were gone. I was told that the hailstorm had hit the mines severely with terrible consequences. A female ninja exclaimed: ‘Hail the size of eggs came down here! It destroyed our gers and even shattered the windshields of several cars! Can you imagine that?! It was awful!’ Several people agreed: ‘Tenger was very angry!’ In the weeks following the hailstorm, both herders and miners referred to the hailstorm as a warning sign of tenger’s anger against mining activities in the area. As an elder herder remarked: ‘That’s why the hail was much bigger in the mines! Tenger took its anger out on the miners because they refuse to show respect (hündetgehgüi).’ In Mongolian language there is no single word that carries a similar meaning to the English word ‘spirit’. Invisible, yet localized agents are seen to occupy specific domains, such as forests, rivers or mountaintops (cf. Humphrey with Onon 1996). As people go about their daily lives, they interact with many different spirit beings. These spirits are considered a distinct category of being – not only because they have no body, gender or colour, but also due to their lack of a ‘soul’ (süns). Whereas humans have individual souls that require attention and care during lifetime and are passed on to others at death through reincarnation, spirits do not have such an individualizing and temporalizing aspect. Instead spirits are omnipresent and immortal, capable of seeing and hearing everything that humans do. The peaceful coexistence of spirits and humans is premised on the willingness to respect others, which humans

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demonstrate through the observance of taboos. Recognizing the physical environment as having life, feelings and agency, these taboos instruct people to avoid activities that deny the presence of other ‘existences’ in their own right. If taboos are not adhered to, water spirits become upset and masters of the land cause illnesses and other misfortunes.8 Intentionality is thus not considered a human monopoly, but rather a shared capacity of the human and non-human beings that collectively constitute baigal. The term baigal derives from the verb baih (to be) and refers to the existence of ‘nature’, commonly translated as ‘environment’. This verb form is used to describe characteristics of humans and animals as well as material objects, and it conveys the multiplicity and diversity of the ‘existences’ that make up the all-encompassing ‘system’ of baigal (High 2008). As long as each ‘existence’ suppresses its potential autonomy, a balance between beings is achieved and human life becomes ‘peaceful’ and ‘wonderful’. Disregarding other ‘existences’, for example by digging into the ground, is inimical and even antithetical to such a peaceful life. Thus, ‘if one part of nature denies the existence of another, then eventually it will be denying its own’ (Tseren 1996: 147).

Figure 2 Household altar in Uyanga, Mongolia, 2005.

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Spirits are described as ‘moody’ and ‘temperamental’, and it is difficult to predict the timing of their anger or the form they will take. Since the original transgression and the subsequent repercussions may be separated by days, weeks or months, people frequently contemplate whether a particular unfortunate occurrence really was due to angered spirits, or if further misfortune is still to come. Faced with such unpredictable forces, doubts about the implications of human actions abound. By consulting the lunar calendar, divinatory coins and Buddhist lamas, people seek advice about which days may prove benign to carry out certain actions. If permission is not granted, people are likely to either postpone the desired action or try another, hopefully more favourable, divinatory technique. This observance is far from shared by everybody living in the area, as one of my informants explained: We can see in our calendar when to carry out certain acts. If we don’t pay attention, the masters of the land will become angry. For example, miners dig many holes but don’t care about the masters of the land.

This statement left his wife speechless and visibly taken aback in disagreement with his portrayal of miners. But he continued: They don’t look at the calendar every day, they don’t stop working when it is an inauspicious day for digging. So, if miners come by here, having earlier ignored the taboos and upset the masters of the land, and we serve them vodka or the like, the masters of the land may get upset at us instead of them. That’s because the miners are bringing their bad acts to our ger, even if we don’t know what they’ve been doing before coming here. Also, wood thieves may first go to the forest, cut down fresh trees, and then stop at somebody’s ger on their way back. The masters of the land may then get upset not at the actual wood thieves but at the household where they stopped.

This statement was narrated by the oldest son in a family who had a large herd and appeared to be exclusively involved in the local pastoral economy. At the time of narration, I heard the

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statement as a reiteration of what is considered right and wrong in an area that has now become the destination for thousands of unknown miners. A tension between compliant herders and disrespectful miners seemed to map onto the physical divide between the steppe and the mines. But I soon learnt that whilst the steppe and the mines are distinct physical places, a similar circumscription does not apply to the people. Prior to my arrival in the family, the oldest son had lived in the mines for a short while with his wife and earned a good living as a ninja. Having overstrained his back, they had only just returned to the family and were settling back into pastoral life. Rather than depicting a rigid moral map with atemporal human referents, the above statement thus highlights the dynamic flow of misfortune and people’s constantly shifting positions. As people move through the landscape and engage in different activities, their actions become intertwined and misfortune a looming mutual implication. Although the upset spirits are often feared to be aggressive, they are also seen as highly generous and cooperative. When talking about the different rewards spirits give, people generally use the word hishig (‘fortune’). Hishig can be understood as a ‘life-force’ or ‘animating essence’, which is not located in an individual but rather flourishes in the broader landscape (Chabros 1992: 155; Empson 2007: 114). On the steppe, hishig encompasses all aspects of the physical environment that generate the basis for a pastoral livelihood, such as clean water or lush grasslands. Hishig also exists in the mines. One day when I was talking with a group of miners, a young female ninja said: ‘We never find more than just enough gold to pay for our daily meals. The hishig of our district doesn’t seem to be able to reach far enough.’ When I asked her what she meant by hishig, she elaborated: Gold! We never find any gold. This area has no gold anymore. Also trees! People come and cut down all the trees so there’s no firewood left for us. And berries! People pick all the berries so we have nothing. We can’t eat berries in August like we used to. We can’t make berry-wine for the lunar New Year

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anymore. There’s nothing left for us. There is no longer any hishig to be found!

In referring to gold as hishig, the ninja underscored that the precious mineral, just like berries and trees, is part of the physical environment and thus the basis of human livelihood. Since the land has its masters who decide how much hishig people will attract, finding gold is not simply a practical matter of digging deep holes and panning the gravel for gold. The amount of gold ninjas find is instead perceived as dependent on the generosity of the spirits. Whereas knowledge of mining techniques and local geology enhances the likelihood of striking a gold vein, these insights alone are not seen as sufficient. Maintaining a good relationship with local spirits is paramount to the mining successes of ninjas. However, many ninjas recognize that local spirits do not approve of their mining activities and as a result refuse to bestow hishig. When ninjas complain about finding only small amounts of gold, they describe it as a matter of ‘withholding hishig’. When ninjas repeatedly ignore taboos related to the land, spirits not only withhold hishig but also wreak havoc by inflicting illnesses, accidents and even death. Whenever a ninja suffers such misfortune, it is usually attributed to the anger of the spirits. Given the constant presence of angry spirits in the mines, rumours circulate that at least one ninja dies every day. Whilst I have fortunately not witnessed any actual deaths, discourses of suffering and fatality thrive. Deep mining holes that are no longer being explored, for example, are reputed to contain rotting corpses lying at the bottom. These corpses are considered particularly dangerous since they turn into ‘evil souls’ (chötgör), hungry for the human life in which they once partook. These ‘evil souls’ are not only markers of human disregard for taboos in the present, but are also manifestations of the unsuccessful reincarnation of human souls. The ‘soul’, which is necessary for human existence, leaves the cycle of rebirths, thus affecting humans in this life and in those to come. Living between fear and fortune, ninjas often request that Buddhist lamas appease the spirits and cajole them into

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bestowing hishig. Like many other lamas at the monastery of Uyanga, a local lama with whom I stayed seemed frustrated by the people who have now become his most frequent and loyal clients. One day, when ninjas had constantly come to his house to request that he do personal readings (unshlaga), he leaned back on the chair, sighed and commented: Oh, so many of these ninjas have a wrong understanding of life and religion. They come here to ask for hishig or they ask me to go to the mines. Maybe the ninjas are starting to find less gold or are falling ill. But they always seem to think that by giving offerings and by asking for lus savdag’s protection they will find more gold. This is wrong. They don’t understand that it is their own greediness that causes their misery. Gold is very dangerous; they should leave it alone. They don’t need it because it always leads to problems. Gold is not like silver or other metals. Gold is heavy and potent. People can’t protect themselves against the power of gold (altny chadvar) and it ends up making them see nothing but gold. All they think about is gold. All their lives are about is money. Giving offerings doesn’t make the lus savdag blind to their disrespect for nature (baigal). They have a wrong understanding of the teachings. Greediness is one of the principal paths to misery.

This statement identifies lamas as religious specialists who are uniquely positioned between spirits and humans. Local lamas complain about the intense attachment of ninjas to the phenomenal world, where they willingly pursue momentary prosperity at the cost of upsetting local spirits and fellow humans and thereby accumulate bad karma. This disregard for other ‘existences’, combined with their fixation on finding gold, turns ninjas into servants of their own greed. Yet, despite their concerns about mining, lamas essentially facilitate gold mining since their help is considered necessary to appease the angry spirits. Whilst lamas may disapprove of the ninjas’ actions, they mitigate impending calamities and coax spirits into bestowing hishig. Without the protection miners receive from lamas, it is difficult to see how ninjas could continue their pursuit for gold.

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By describing gold as ‘dangerous’ and ‘heavy’, the lama mentioned above emphasizes that the greed driving ninjas to mine for gold is not simply rooted in self-governing, autonomous individuals. Rather, the personal greed for money is reinforced by what the lama calls the ‘power of gold’ itself (see also Biersack 1999: 78; Clark 1993). When ninjas dig into the ground and turn streams into stagnant muddy pools, they are not only punished by angry spirits, but also exposed to gold’s dangerous power. Driven to find more gold, ninjas momentarily disregard the presence of other ‘existences’ and willingly transgress taboos related to the land. By repeatedly ignoring taboos, ninjas are described as eventually becoming incapable of directing and controlling their own actions. They become mere vessels, giving bodily form to evil spirit forces.9 From this perspective, the idea that ninjas would end up actually sacrificing humans to the demanding spirits seems perhaps less far-fetched. Is this then the Mongolian version of miners making contracts with devilish forces (cf. Taussig 1980) of labourers whose work requires human compensation? Privately, many Mongolians have confided in me their agreement with this view. As Johnny Parry (2008) comments in his work on rumours of human sacrifice in an Indian steel town, rumours are often recounted by those who do not receive a share in the profits. In the Mongolian gold rush, however, there is neither a simple nor constant demarcation between those who search for gold and those who do not. Herders and miners, city dwellers and countrymen are all likely to be implicated in mining, either directly or indirectly. Rather than constituting a resistance narrative using common tropes, the rumours are narrated by people who are variously positioned in relation to the gold rush. If we approach the Mongolian rumours not in terms of fact or fiction (cf. Scheper-Hughes 1996) but rather in terms of the cosmology within which they are narrated, they can allow us important insights into the ways in which our informants make sense of and take part in the world. With thousands of people refusing to recognize others and display appropriate respect, many have begun to doubt the extent to which spirits will continue supporting human existence. The liberalization of the economy and political system

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has contributed to a way of life which international development organizations cite as indicative of Mongolia’s successful ‘development’ and steady incorporation into a ‘global economy’. However, not everybody is so sure about this success story. To many Mongolians, it appears that ‘development’ has come at a cost, which the most vulnerable in society have to pay. When hearing how gold miners obsessed with the precious metal capture and sacrifice humans, people say that it shows just how contradictory society has become: post-socialism was meant to bring about a social order of freedom and prosperity, but has instead produced ever-growing inequalities and harmful disregard for others. Many fear that the new political order could entail its own doom, having given rise to individuals who care little about baigal, spirits and even other humans. As such, the rumours can be seen as political elaborations on people’s worries about what will happen when humans disregard fundamental principles of existence; when taboos are ignored to such an extent that the world might undergo a profound metamorphosis (see also Biersack 1999). When in the mines, however, people merely shake their heads in disbelief and laugh at the absurdity of this view.10 Although they also talk about ‘the power of gold’, it is usually in radically different ways. Ninjas emphasize how they can protect themselves against such dangerous power and even become its master. They describe how it is important to carry out specific rituals since the local spirits in the mines differ significantly from those in the herding areas. An elderly female ninja gave me a rare opportunity to better understand the relationship between spirits, local interaction with the landscape and ritual practices.11 She told me the following: Oh, you mustn’t sprinkle dairy products (tsagaan idee) here. Only vodka. You know, there are black and white lus, and if people don’t show enough respect for them, the good white lus will leave. So when people dig deep holes and destroy the river, the white lus leaves and only the powerful (hütchtei) black lus remains. The black lus is the one that can make people fall ill

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and cause other bad things to happen. To appease the black lus you must give vodka; milk or tea is for the white lus. That’s also why you must only give offerings at night.

Ritual practices in the mines are circumscribed by ideas that highlight the marginalization of largely benevolent white lus and the emerging dominance of dangerous black lus. It is generally agreed throughout the mining and herding areas that such black spirits did not previously exist in the area and have only arrived with the onset of the gold rush. By performing rituals in these ways, ninjas specifically address the spirits of the mines – spirits that are described locally as new, ‘black’ and very dangerous. During these rituals, ninjas come into contact with the ‘power of gold’; a substance which they can redirect against human victims through rites of black magic. This substance is highly potent and can cause illness. If ninjas are not careful in their interaction with it, they themselves risk suffering from its potency, which is said to be manifest in rare obsessive greed. Ninjas interact primarily with those invisible forces that congregate around the deep mining holes with rotting corpses and near the places of offering. These invisible beings accumulate their potency from precisely those areas where ideas of communal living cherished by herders are negated. These beings do not reside in mountains, rivers or trees, but thrive in what Mongolians describe as ‘areas of flow’ ( güideltei gazar) or ‘areas with no master’ (ezengüi gazar).12 By attracting and addressing all of the uncontrollable forces that roam the landscape, ninjas are seen to hold powers that surpass those of other people (cf. Humphrey 1995). Neither lamas nor older patriarchs claim such powers. Rotting corpses and altered ritual practices thus convey not only an altered interaction with the landscape and its taboos, but also a different engagement with spiritual ‘existences’. Instead of minimizing harmful interactions with the spiritual landscape, ninjas accumulate and indeed manage the anger of spirits. I suggest that by challenging the expected positions of respect and humility vis-à-vis the forces of baigal, ninjas position themselves beyond the hierarchies of local spirits and kinsmen. Ignoring the

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masters of the land and of the household, they seek their own autonomy by pursuing their desire for gold. Rather than becoming ‘possessed’ and sacrificing humans, ninjas are thus crafting new ways of living in the Mongolian gold mines – ways that are not based on hierarchical relations of respect and humility familiar to most Mongolians. Conclusion As Mongolia is becoming an internationally recognized mining nation, engagements with the land emerge as increasingly dissonant. Rather than giving rise to imminent processes of disenchantment and secularization, Mongolia’s emerging industrialization highlights the intense convergence of conflicting beliefs about humans, spirits and the land. As pastureland is transformed into lucrative mining pits, rumours about scavenging ninjas, disappearing people and knives smothered in human blood encapsulate the profoundly troubling presence of the gold rush in many people’s imagination. Specifically, the search for gold has given rise to grave concerns about the cosmological implications of current human desires. As human blood has become the spirits’ currency, will fear and enmity eventually become the future for humanity? If relations between kinsmen and spirits are rarely peaceful, what will they become? Doubts about the future are implicated in collective actions carried out in the present and, as such, transcend by far the attitudes and conducts of any individual. Living amidst such uncertainty, the rumours express that which seems certain to many: spirits exist and they are still relevant for human life. As people doubt the longevity of the cosmos, as they know it today, they simultaneously insist on the perpetuity of spirits. Without necessarily seeking a resolution, doubts can in this context be seen to constitute an active and creative irresolution between several propositions.13 By thus exposing both the fragility and the strength of beliefs, people’s doubts create spaces for sceptical contemplation of what the future might bring. Given the enduring interest in belief and the frequently noted Judeo-Christian roots of anthropology, it might be

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surprising that we have not paid more explicit attention to issues of doubt.14 However, my intention is not to suggest a return to religious convictions as a guide for our anthropological endeavours. Instead, I propose that we recognize how our informants’ understandings of the world include both propositional assertions and a questioning scepticism. Acknowledging the unstable and fragmented conditions of knowledge production, a focus on doubt (and in turn belief ) might be able to portray more comprehensively how our informants understand the world – a world which is at once immediate yet distant, familiar yet foreign, tangible yet elusive.15 This is a world that is about so much more than the systematic instrumentalities and strategic calculations that the ‘occult economies’ literature would make us believe, a world that is less guided by seductive cross-cultural similarities and explanatory short-cuts. It is a world that for both informants and anthropologists is not always known or even knowable. Far from reflecting a state of agentive paralysis, the dynamic dialectic between doubts and beliefs not only leads to efficacious attempts to navigate this reality, but also invites us to take seriously our informants’ pressing concerns. Notes 1 This chapter is based on ethnographic data collected during 28 months of fieldwork carried out between 2001 and 2006. The research and writing has been supported primarily by an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Postgraduate Studentship (PTA-030-200300784), a Wenner-Gren Dissertation Fieldwork Grant (Gr. 7376) and a British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellowship (PDF/2009/423). 2 According to Tambiah (1990), this analytical focus on emic logic and rationale in religious practice can be seen in the light of the rationality debate scholars’ early interest in and objectification of comparative ‘modes of thought’. 3 Most well-known examples of local scepticism include EvansPritchard’s (1937) discussion of the concern among the Azande regarding the efficacy of their oracles and Lévi-Strauss’s (1963) discussion of a Kwakiutl shaman questioning shamanic abilities. Rather than casting doubt on the practices in general, these local sceptics question

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individual practitioners or specific aspects of the practice, ultimately emerging with greater conviction in the occult. For more recent and detailed examples, see Pigg (1996) and Buyandelgeriyn (2008). 4 I recognize that doubts might not always form an accessible part of our ethnographic data (see also Last 1992: 393). Indeed, as noted by Graeber (2001: 247), most people in the world probably see little reason why they should embark on a journey of profound questioning. By calling for attention to our informants’ sceptical engagements with propositional knowledge, I am highlighting a potential route for broadening our understanding of people’s beliefs. 5 For further discussion of the multiple ways in which people and the land are mutually constituted in the Mongolian cultural region, see Humphrey (1995, 2001), Pedersen (2001) and Williams (2000). 6 The term ninja apparently arose from the miners’ appearance when carrying the customary green plastic pan tied to their back, reminiscent of the television cartoon series called the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Grayson 2006: 37). 7 The income levels referred to in this article are based on data collected in 2005 and 2006. Calculations in US dollars use the rounded average exchange rate of 2005 and 2006, where 1 USD = 1,200 tügrüg. 8 One of my informants described ‘masters of the land’ (gazryn ezed ) in the following way: ‘They can see everything you do, they know everything you do. They are like politicians, where the governors of bags, sums and aimags all talk with the politicians in Ulaanbaatar. In this way politicians know everything. That’s also how it is with the masters of the land.’ The italicized terms refer to the classification of administrative units of government. Bag corresponds to county, sum to district and aimag to region. Correlating the secular ranking of power with spiritual entities is not unique to the Mongolian cultural region. In his analyses of Amerindian mythology, Lévi-Strauss (in particular 1995) shows the widespread tendency of peoples to explain the world in terms of dynamic dualisms that encompass social and mythological organization. For a striking ethnographic parallel, see Sallnow (1989). 9 Lamas’ descriptions of ninjas as bodily vessels for evil spirit forces bear detailed cross-cultural parallels with many descriptions of spirit possession, which refers to ‘the hold exerted over a human being by external forces or entities more powerful than she’ (Boddy 1994: 407). In the Mongolian cultural region, however, spirits descending into human vessels are most commonly found in shamanic practices. In

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contrast to the lamas’ descriptions of ninjas, such shamans can call on specific spirits (onggod ) that take their seat momentarily (for a detailed discussion of the relationship between shaman and spirit, see Humphrey and Onon 1996, and Swancutt 2008). 10 On some occasions the same people have offered different interpretations of the rumours, dependent on whether or not the conversation took place in or outside the mines. I have therefore emphasized the place of conversation rather than the temporary occupation of the informant. 11 A male ninja once said to me: ‘We don’t talk about them [spirits] here, but when we had the awful hailstorm I knew they were upset.’ Whilst ideas about ‘dangerous speech’ may generally discourage people from talking about local spirits (High 2008: ch. 6; Højer 2003), the physically and spiritually dangerous work environment in the mines may also partly explain such reluctance to verbalize the presence and anger of spirits. 12 Graveyards in both urban and rural areas are referred to in similar ways (Delaplace and Kaplonski, personal communication). Referring to güidel as the invisible ‘running-tracks’ of demons and ghosts, Humphrey (2001: 64) argues that these known devil haunts inform Mongolian understandings of how to navigate through the landscape in a proper and auspicious manner. The intersections of human and non-human running-tracks thus give rise to a moral map of the landscape that denotes certain paths as ‘right’ and ‘safe’ whilst others are considered ‘erroneous’ and ‘dangerous’. 13 See also MacGregor’s (1987) discussion of doubt and scepticism as inseparable from propositional knowledge. 14 This is all the more surprising given the broader critical interest in anthropology’s fascination with ‘knowledge’ (Barth 2002; Crick 1982) and the renewed attention to issues of non-knowing and ignorance (Chua 2009; Dilley 2010; Gershon and Raj 2000; Hobart 1993; Last 1992). 15 Giving analytical attention to both doubts and beliefs should not be seen as equivalent to what Henrietta Moore (2006) views as anthropology’s recent obsession with ‘hybridity’ and ‘discontinuity’ as cherished tropes for representation. Whilst she identifies a general trend of unintentional glorification of difference, what this chapter proposes is an analytical open-mindedness that allows for our informants to not always ‘be in the know’. Instead of endorsing a meta-cosmology that presumes difference (Scott 2005), attention to both doubt and belief entails no particular claims to prescriptive representation.

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References Allsen, Thomas T. (1997) Commodity and Exchange in the Mongol Empire: A Cultural History of Islamic Textiles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Barth, Fredrik (2002) ‘An Anthropology of Knowledge’. Current Anthropology 43(1): 1–18. Biersack, Aletta (1999) ‘The Mount Kare Python and His Gold: Totemism and Ecology in the Papua New Guinea Highlands’. American Anthropologist 101(1): 68–87. Boddy, Janice (1994) ‘Spirit Possession Revisited: Beyond Instrumentality’. Annual Review of Anthropology 23: 407–34. Buyandelgeriyn, Manduhai (2008) ‘Dealing with Uncertainty: Shamans, Marginal Capitalism, and the Remaking of History in Postsocialist Mongolia’. American Ethnologist 34(1): 127–47. Chabros, Krystyna (1992) Beckoning Fortune: A Study of the Mongol Dalalga Ritual. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. Chua, Liana (2009) ‘To Know or Not to Know? Practices of Knowledge and Ignorance among Bidayuhs in an “Impurely” Christian World’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute ns 15: 332–48. Clark, Jeffrey (1993) ‘Gold, Sex, and Pollution: Male Illness and Myth at Mt. Kare, Papua New Guinea’. American Ethnologist 20(4): 742–57. Comaroff, Jean (1985) Body of Power, Spirits of Resistance: The History and Society of a South African People. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ——— (1999) ‘Occult Economies and the Violence of Abstraction: Notes from the South African Postcolony’. American Ethnologist 26(2): 279–303. ——— (2002) ‘Alien-Nation: Zombies, Immigrants, and Millenial Capitalism’. South Atlantic Quarterly 101(4): 779–805. Crick, Malcolm R. (1982) ‘The Anthropology of Knowledge’. Annual Review of Anthropology 11: 287–313.

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De Boeck, Filip (1999) ‘Domesticating Diamonds and Dollars: Identity, Expenditure and Sharing in Southwestern Zaire (1984–1997)’, in Birgit Meyer and Peter Geschiere (eds), Globalization and Identity: Dialectics of Flow and Closure. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. ——— (2005) ‘The Divine Seed: Children, Gift and Witchcraft in the Democratic Republic of Congo’, in Alcinda Honwana and Filip De Boeck (eds), Makers and Breakers: Children and Youth in Postcolonial Africa. Oxford: James Currey. Dilley, Roy (2010) ‘Reflections on Knowledge Practices and the Problem of Ignorance. Special Issue: Making Knowledge’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute ns 16: 176–92. Empson, Rebecca (2007) ‘Separating and Containing People and Things in Mongolia’, in Amiria Henare, Martin Holbraad and Sari Wastell (eds), Thinking Through Things: Theorising Artefacts Ethnographically. London: Routledge. Evans-Pritchard, E. E. (1937) Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Gershon, Ilana and Dhoolcka S. Raj (2000) ‘Introduction: The Social Capital of Ignorance’. Social Analysis 44(2): 3–14. Geschiere, Peter (1997) Modernity of Witchcraft: Politics and the Occult in Post-Colonial Africa. London: University Press of Virginia. Graeber, David (2001) Towards an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Grayson, Robin (2006) The Gold Miners Book – Manual for Miners, Investors, Regulators and Environmentalists: Best Available Techniques for Placer Gold Miners. Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia: Eco-Minex International. High, Mette (2008) ‘Dangerous Fortunes: Wealth and Patriarchy in the Mongolian Informal Gold Mining Economy’. PhD dissertation, Cambridge University. High, Mette and Jonathan Schlesinger (2010) ‘Rulers and Rascals: The Politics of Gold in Mongolian Qing History’. Central Asian Survey 29(3): 289–304.

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Hobart, Mark (1993) ‘Introduction: The Growth of Ignorance?’ in Mark Hobart (ed.), An Anthropological Critique of Development: The Growth of Ignorance. London: Routledge. Højer, Lars (2003) ‘Dangerous Communications: Enmity, Suspense and Integration in Postsocialist Northern Mongolia’. PhD dissertation, Cambridge University. Humphrey, Caroline (1995) ‘Chiefly and Shamanist Landscapes in Mongolia’, in Eric Hirsch and Michael O’Hanlon (eds), The Anthropology of Landscape: Perspectives on Place and Space. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ——— (2001) ‘Contested Landscapes in Inner Mongolia: Walls and Cairns’, in Barbara Bender and Margot Winer (eds), Contested Landscapes: Movement, Exile and Place. Oxford: Berg. ——— with Urgunge Onon (1996) Shamans and Elders: Experience, Knowledge and Power among the Daur Mongols. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ILO (International Labour Organization) (2004) Baseline Survey on Informal Gold Mining in Bornuur and Zaamar Soums of Tuv Aimag. Ulaanbaatar: International Labour Organization, Mongolian Employers’ Federation, and Population Teaching and Research Center. Kapferer, Bruce (1997) The Feast of the Sorcerer: Practices of Consciousness and Power. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ——— (2003) ‘Introduction. Special Issue: Outside All Reason: Magic, Sorcery, and Epistemology in Anthropology’. Social Analysis 46(3): 1–30. Last, Murray (1992) ‘The Importance of Knowing about Not Knowing: Observations from Hausaland’, in Steven Feierman and John M. Janzen (eds), The Social Basis for Health and Healing in Africa. Oxford: University of California Press. Lévi-Strauss, Claude (1963) ‘The Sorcerer and His Magic’, in Claude Lévi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology. New York: Basic Books. ——— (1995) The Story of Lynx. London: University of Chicago Press.

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Lewis, Gilbert (1994) ‘Magic, Religion and the Rationality of Belief ’, in Tim Ingold (ed.), Companion Encyclopedia of Anthropology. London: Routledge. MacGregor, Geddes (1987) ‘Doubt and Belief ’, in Mircea Eliade (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Religion, vol. 4. New York: Macmillan. Montagu, Igor (1956) Land of Blue Sky: A Portrait of Modern Mongolia. London: Dennis Dobson. Moore, Henrietta L. (2006) ‘The Future of Gender or the End of a Brilliant Career?’ in Pamela L. Geller and Miranda K. Stockett (eds), Feminist Anthropology: Past, Present and Future. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. National Statistical Office of Mongolia (2006) Mongolian Statistical Yearbook 2005. Ulaanbaatar (Mongolia): National Statistical Office of Mongolia. Ong, Aiwa (1987) Spirits of Resistance and Capitalist Discipline: Factory Women in Malaysia. New York: State University of New York Press. Parry, Johnny (2008) ‘The Sacrifices of Modernity in a SovietBuilt Steel Town in Central India’, in Frances Pine and João de Pina-Cabral (eds), On the Margins of Religion. Oxford: Berghahn Books. Pedersen, Morten A. (2001) ‘Totemism, Animism and North Asian Indigenous Ontologies’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 7(3): 411–27. Pigg, Stacey L. (1996) ‘The Credible and the Credulous: The Question of “Villagers’ Beliefs” in Nepal’. Cultural Anthropology 11(2): 160–201. Rossabi, Morris (2005) Modern Mongolia: From Khans to Commissars to Capitalists. London: University of California Press. Sallnow, M. J. (1989) ‘Precious Metals in the Andean Moral Economy’, in J. P. Parry and M. Bloch (eds), Money and the Morality of Exchange. Cambridge: Cambridge University Scheper-Hughes, Nancy (1996) ‘Theft of Life: Globalization of Organ Stealing Rumours’. Anthropology Today 12(3): 1–11.

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Scott, Michael W. (2008) ‘Hybridity, Vacuity, and Blockage: Visions of Chaos from Anthropological Theory, Island Melanesia, and Central Africa’. Comparative Study of Society and History 47(1): 190–216. Shanafelt, Robert (2004) ‘Magic, Miracle, and Marvels in Anthropology’. Ethnos 69(3): 317–40. Sneath, David (2002) ‘Mongolia in the “Age of the Market”: Pastoral Land-Use and the Development Discourse’, in Ruth Mandel and Caroline Humphrey (eds), Markets and Moralities: Ethnographies of Postsocialism. Oxford: Berg. Swancutt, Katherine (2005) ‘The Undead Genealogy: Omnipresence, Spirit Perspectives, and a Case of Mongolian Vampirism’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute ns 14: 843–64. Tambiah, Stanley J. (1990) Magic, Science, Religion, and the Scope of Rationality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Taussig, Michael (1980) The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Tseren, P. B. (1996) ‘Traditional Pastoral Practice of the Oirat Mongols and their Relationship with the Environment’. Inner Asia 2: 147–57. UB Post (2002) ‘Ninja Nation: 100,000 Illegal Miners’ (24 October) No. 43 (336). Upton, Caroline (2005) ‘Institutions in a Pastoral Society: Processes of Formation and Transformation in Postsocialist Mongolia’. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 25(3): 584–99. West, Harry G. (2007) Ethnographic Sorcery. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Williams, Dee Mack (2000) ‘Representations of Nature on the Mongolian Steppe: An Investigation of Scientific Knowledge Construction’. American Anthropologist 102(2): 503–19. World Bank (2004) Mongolia: Mining Sector Sources of Growth Study. World Bank, East Asia and Pacific Region. Yenhu, T. (1996) ‘A Comparative Study of the Attitudes of the Peoples of Pastoral Areas of Inner Asia towards their Environments’. Inner Asia 2: 3–24.

4 OLD BELIEVERS’ PASSION PLAY: THE MEANING OF DOUBT IN AN ORTHODOX RITUALIST MOVEMENT Vlad Naumescu

One could hear the bells ringing, an elaborate, melodious sound that totally embraced the still village, resonating across fields and waters. During the last days before Easter they rang several times a day announcing every prayer and reminding people to repent in expectation of the great event, Christ’s death and resurrection. A few old men and women emerged from their houses, as though anticipating a sign to return to the church they had left a few hours ago. The lengthy, arduous liturgical services during the fasting period were conducted by the deacon and the old psalm readers in the absence of a priest. During the service, the altar doors remained closed while people occupied themselves with singing and reciting the Old Slavonic rite. Every move seemed to follow an unwritten script, an economy of gestures that connected the visible and invisible worlds through the manipulation of the old books, touching the icons, lighting candles, and innumerable kneelings on the embroidered pillows. No voice raised above the others, no gesture in excess – it was an exercise of collective devotion become routine through years of practice. Once outside the church, however, blunt questions emerged: are we going to have a priest for the big celebration on Easter 85

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Sunday? Who is going to bury the sick man who just died? What are we to become without a priest? This uncertainty undermined the ritual that had been just performed, exposing a moment of crisis in this community of Russian Old Believers in the Romanian Danube delta. Such moments of crisis expose the uncertainties that mark everyday life in times of radical transformation, when institutions fail, new orders emerge and people navigate between them trying to survive and make sense of those changes. They offer excellent occasions for anthropologists to observe people ‘in doubt’ who reflect on experienced disruptions in search of new certainties. While processes of doubting are in this (initial) sense contingent to particular disruptive events, doubt as a condition of scepticism or disbelief is an essential dimension of Christian belief and ritual, a form of religious reflexivity intrinsic to ritual practice (Højbjerg 2002). These two conditions of doubt seem at first to be very different, articulating different relationships between certainty and uncertainty within different temporalities (post-socialist and Christian time). This chapter addresses precisely this relationship between external and internal doubt in Orthodox ritual and belief, arguing that Orthodoxy developed a particular configuration of doubt (and hope) in the language of mysteries articulated through specific material and ritual forms. In doing so it brings together two lines of inquiry that have proved extremely fruitful in recent anthropological thinking on Christian ritual and belief. The first approach considers doubt ‘as a condition that sustains the existence of religious ideas and practice … and as an essential element in the process of acquisition of religious ideas’ (Højbjerg, Rubow and Sjorslev 1999). It dwells on the theologies of doubt developed within religious traditions, and on the interplay of belief and disbelief that marks processes of religious transmission. The second line of inquiry I am pursuing here focuses on the relation between belief and ritual action in terms of the ‘efficacy’ of ritual transmission. This approach moves the focus from ritual as communication or medium of symbolic meaning to ritual as skilled performance – apt performance or bodily competence in Mauss’s terms (Mauss

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[1950] 1979). To use Talal Asad’s formulation, it inquires into ‘the ways in which embodied practices (including language) form a precondition for varieties of religious experience’ (1993: 77). Following this line of thought one would argue that becoming Christian is a condition of skilled practice rather than belief. Several contributors to the anthropology of religion have criticized the centrality of belief in anthropological investigation, considering it a feature inherited from Christianity (Asad 1993; Ruel 2002). The Christian preoccupation with meaning seems to be reproduced by anthropology’s compulsion to find meaning in every culture, what Vassos Argyrou calls anthropology’s ‘will to meaning’ (Robbins 2006). In his Genealogies of Religion, Asad (1993) provides a critical analysis of the construction of religion and ritual as anthropological categories and the excessive emphasis on ‘meaning’ in both. He shows how, in contrast to contemporary understanding of ritual as a symbolic, communicative act representing a theological ‘belief ’, liturgical practice in medieval Christianity was the very action through which people cultivated their Christian vocation. Taking the example of the Benedictine rule, he argues that ritual was ‘a script for regulating practice’, a disciplinary practice that aided the cultivation of Christian values. In medieval Christianity, Asad contends, there was no separation between ‘outer behavior and inner motivate, between social rituals and individual sentiments, between activities that are expressive and those that are technical’ (1993: 63). One’s correct practice of the rite was the precondition for religious experience and for the acquisition of Christian virtues; in this sense it also prevented failure or disbelief as correct ritual practice would guard one against doubt. The transformation that brought about the separation between inner belief and outer behaviour was a result of the Protestant Reformation, which also put the two in a hierarchal relation since it ‘privileged belief, associated with immaterial meaning, over practices that threatened to subordinate belief to material forms’ (Keane 2007: 67). In Calvinism, as Webb Keane shows with the example of the Protestant debate on transubstantiation, belief comes to be abstracted from material

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entanglements – what he calls ‘the purification of agency’ following Latour (2007: 61–2). Wine and bread do not become the blood and body of Christ as pre-Reformation theology would have it, but only represent them. Since ritual comes to have only symbolic meaning but no efficacy in and of itself, faith becomes the a priori condition for the efficacy of ritual. Therefore in postReformation Christianity doubt becomes a matter of faith and not of ritual practice. But faith itself must take material form, since ultimately the very idea of transcendence in Christianity is mediated by the historical presence of Christ (Engelke 2007: 13).1 Thus even the inner-worldly asceticism of Protestantism must materialize in certain forms, a body, a language and the means for salvation and ‘these materializations bear the marks of their temporality’ (Keane 2008: S124).2 For Keane the materiality of religion is an outcome of historical formation, accumulation and purification, as objects and practices constantly find themselves in new meaningful configurations (semiotic ideologies). This call to attend to the materiality of religion in itself and not as evidence for something immaterial, like inner faith or belief, would come as no surprise to any researcher of Eastern Christianity. Unlike Protestantism’s constant attempt to disentangle from material forms, Eastern Christians are completely immersed in the materiality and historicity of their religion, articulated in the concept of tradition. The value of religious materialities in Eastern Christian tradition derives from its understanding of human nature, the anthropos being made in the image and likeness of God, and the transcendent God made visible through the incarnation of Christ (Hann and Goltz 2010: 12). Following this particular understanding of materiality and personhood, Eastern Christianity makes God accessible to every believer in innumerable material ways. The veneration of icons is the best illustration of how a relationship with the divine world is made possible through material mediation and ritual action. Icons connect the realm of the transcendent with the material world in what David Freedberg (1989) has called an ‘aesthetics of presence’ in which the direct sensorial relationship prompted by the divine image

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(prototype) is associated with specific bodily and material devotional practices. Icons are venerated because of their ontological relation to the divine prototype and their own historicity and agency emerges at the intersection of materiality, sociality and transcendence (Hanganu 2010). Eastern Christians’ heightened attention to icons, books, food and ritual may seem problematic from a post-Reformation Western perspective focused on inner belief as the ultimate expression of faith but it determines their ‘being in the world’ in a fundamental manner. It binds the divine to particular material forms, thus making it accessible and present in the everyday life of Orthodox believers. The relationship between immateriality and materiality or the ambiguous presence–absence of God in the world is translated in Christianity into a problem of presence: the tension between the distance and the proximity of the divine (Engelke 2007: 11–16). This tension is maintained through a semiotic ideology which maintains that only ‘certain words and certain things … become privileged channels of divine apprehension’ (2007: 16; see also Morgan 1999).3 Eastern Christian theology and practice has offered its own reflection on the problem of presence, articulating this tension between distance and proximity in the language of mysteries. Kallistos Ware, a contemporary Orthodox theologian, offers a reflection on the theology of mysteries pointing out that ‘mystery’ (tainstvo in Slavonic) is to be preferred to the more common word ‘sacraments’ because it implies ‘something revealed to our understanding, yet never totally and exhaustively revealed’ (Ware 1991: 281). The sacraments are ‘both visible and invisible … there is a combination of an outward visible sign with an inward spiritual grace’ (1991: 281). Mysteries mediate God’s presence absence in the world by making God present in material substance (the holy sacraments) and allowing believers to draw closer to Him in the light of deification or theosis, the mystical union of man with God. The practice of mysteries is determined by a complex movement between revelation and concealment, what Michael Taussig calls very elegantly ‘the skilled revelation of skilled concealment’ (Taussig 2006: 123).4 This technique reaches perfection in Orthodox liturgy, itself a

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highly complex product shaped throughout centuries of religious practice, where the precise tempo of exposure and concealment marks the relationship with God and the position of the believer between sacred and worldly times. The fundamental mystery that is also the source of all mysteries at the heart of Orthodox theology is the incarnation and death of Christ. The mystery of the cross emerges at a particular historical moment, Christ’s crucifixion and His ‘cry of dereliction on the cross in the words from the psalm, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”’ (Pelikan 1999: 104). Jaroslav Pelikan considers that this moment represents the birth of theology, since ‘the beginning of wisdom, therefore, was the acceptance of that mystery: the one whom they believed to be “one in being with the Father” had been … forsaken by his Father on the cross’ (1999: 104). It is worth to reflect for a moment on the implications of this statement for our discussion of doubt as a theological matter. The centrality of the mystery of the cross for Christian soteriology implies the necessity of doubt as a way to salvation.5 Christianity has loaded this mystery with two attitudes that are necessarily intertwined: despair facing Christ’s death and the hope of His resurrection. Both Eastern and Western Christian theology and mysticism took the ‘exemplary suffering of Christ’ on the cross as the essence of Christian being but each tradition emphasized at times one or the other of these attitudes. The West developed Imitatio Christi, a devotion emphasizing Christ’s humanity, his suffering and crucifixion, which emerged as a model of Christian life around the end of the first millennium (Fulton 2002; Pelikan 1999).6 Within this tradition the body became a privileged site of mystical knowledge and ‘the medium for identifying oneself with Christ by virtue of Incarnation and the Passion of Christ’ (Morgan 1999: 61–73). After the Reformation the faithful imitation of the human Christ as a means of askesis (strict discipline) has been discouraged by the Church but the empathic response to Christ’s Passion was cultivated in various forms until today. In spite of this, the idea of human suffering as the basis of intimacy with the Christ of the Passion continued to be associated with asceticism and sainthood, especially

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in Western mystical and monastic traditions.7 Aside from shaping hagiographies of great mystics, imitatio Christi also remained part of Western religious culture, popularized through various performances like passion plays or via crucis, Franciscan devotions enacted during Lent, in preparation for Easter. In Eastern Christianity, with its particular understanding of anthropos, the mystery of the cross laid out in Christ’s passion received a different meaning. Since man is made in the image and likeness of God he has the capacity to know God and enter into communion with him while preserving his own individuality (Ware 1991: 224–5). The aim of Christian life, theosis or deification, is the mystical union with God in which man fulfils his inherited ‘image’ by acquiring divine ‘likeness’. This is made possible by Christ’s dual nature, human and divine, who showed what ‘the true “likeness of God” is and through his redeeming and victorious sacrifice He set that likeness once again within man’s reach’ (1991: 230). Unlike other theologies of Christ’s passion, Orthodoxy, especially in its more specific form of Russian kenoticism, proposes an ideal of Christian life modelled on the humility of Christ on the cross.8 Stressing that Christ was emptied of divine attributes when taking a human nature, and his acceptance of the suffering on the cross, kenoticism takes Christ as the true measure of humanity (see Fedotov 1960: 94–110). The kenotic tradition has been embraced and cultivated by Old Believers, a conservative Orthodox movement originating in seventeenth-century Russia. The term itself describes a diverse number of groups that resulted as a rejection of the Orthodox Church reforms at the time. Even before they could organize themselves into a movement, Old Believers split again into priestly and priestless communities because of disagreements about canonical authority. Priestly Old Believers continued to recognize and attempted to recreate the apostolic lineage of the Church. The others, priestless Old Believers, considered that the Church itself and its priests are servants of the Antichrist and did away with priesthood all together (Robson 1995; Scheffel 1991: 47–9). After the official Russian Orthodox Church excommunicated all followers of the old rite in 1666–67, it initiated, with the

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help of an increasingly authoritarian state, a brutal persecution of Old Believers. Their responses were different, as some believed that they actually lived in apocalyptic times and chose to die by self-immolation or fight against the servants of the Antichrist – embodied by church and state officials (Cherniavsky 1966: 20–21). Others, starting with Avvakum, their most important leader executed in 1682, adopted a different stance, spiritualizing their apocalypticism by means of the kenotic tradition. They translated a traumatic collective experience into kenotic language, taking Christ’s crucifixion as the central mystery of life and their path to salvation (Hunt 1991). Their understanding of the world took the form of a deferred apocalyptic expectation that not only fed their resistance to change but strengthened their hope of salvation. This strong awareness of the end of time was translated into the struggle to preserve the old Orthodox rite in everyday practice, which led to a unique fusion of religious and social experience. Old Believers’ liturgical life became a comment on their preferred social organization, and religious practice the main mnemonic device for religious transmission: ‘It was this community, hoped the faithful, that would guide them through a changing world’ (Robson 1995: 52). After the schism, Old Believers’ groups that followed in Avvakum’s footsteps chose a self-imposed exile in Russia and abroad, first resettling in remote areas in neighbouring countries and later spreading throughout the world. A large number of Old Believers settled in the eighteenth century in the Danube delta, in today’s Romania and Ukraine, where they continued to practise the old Orthodox rite following the priestly tradition. This area became a major spiritual centre for Old Believers in the mid-nineteenth century (1846) when a new church hierarchy was established in Belaia Krinitsa with the installation of Amvrosii (1791–1863), the former Greek Orthodox bishop of Sarajevo. The geopolitical transformations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries led to various reconfigurations of the Old Believers’ religious and social structures, severing the ties between Romanian and Soviet, and later post-Soviet (Ukrainian) communities. Periprava, the community described in this chapter, belongs to

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the priestly Old Believers concord, the Belokrinitskaya hierarchy with its centre in Braila, Romania. Their community, like most Old Believers (here also known as Russian Lipovan) villages in the Danube delta, used to be ethnically homogenous and comprised over 250–300 large families. However, socialist and post-socialist transformations significantly altered the ethnic and demographic make-up, leading to a constant decline and ageing of the local population.9 Old Believers’ passion play The story of the Easter 2007 celebrations in Periprava unfolds entirely like a passion play, a dramatic performance of the last days of Christ, taking place during Lent and culminating with the death of Christ on the cross. While the dramatic content of the passion play alludes to resurrection, it does not refer to it explicitly. Instead, it builds on the tension surrounding Good Friday, ‘the only day in the year when the original sacrifice of the cross on Calvary was to be commemorated’ (Pelikan 1999: 101). The passion play offers thus a reflection on the mystery of the cross and articulates the original doubt within the ritual commemoration of Christ’s last moments. The play magnifies human suffering, which takes a cosmic dimension through its main protagonist, and alerts one to the tension between unconditional acceptance and the limits of human comprehension. Still enacted today in various parts of the world, passion plays originate in a religious ritual that has been secularized and altered to become a dramatic story for large audiences (Trexler 2003: 9–23). However, even with such ritual-cum-play events it is hard to separate the emotions it instills from its Christian meaning. The play is meant to educate and at the same time to affect the audience. In preparation for the Easter celebrations the community in Periprava was concerned about the absence of a priest. Their last priest, Fr. Serghei, who served as parish priest for 12 years, had been immobilized at home after an accident and their twoyear-long search for a replacement had not proven successful.

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Among Old Believers priesthood is a communal institution as the priest is usually selected from the respectable male members of the community, someone of high moral status, well versed in churchly matters and literate in Church Slavonic.10 After making a choice, the community turns to the bishop to consecrate the new priest. Today, with the depopulation of the area it is harder to find candidates for priesthood not just in one’s own community but in the entire region. A good candidate, a married man in his late thirties who was favoured by church elders, refused the priesthood in favour of more lucrative business. The hopes of the entire community then shifted to an orphan whose grandfather used to be a respected priest in the village. A young man in his twenties, their new candidate has studied with the former priest and also undertook some training at the Metropolitan office in Braila. In spite of that, he did not feel ready for priesthood because of the restrictions and asceticism a priest’s life requires. Besides his hesitations, villagers were also aware that he was too young and had to get married to become a priest. Marriage is a prerequisite for Old Believer priests, but since many youngsters leave the village for bigger cities it becomes increasingly hard to find a partner from one own’s community or nearby villages. The prolonged absence of the priest was a matter of concern for the entire community, and especially for the older generation, which was more preoccupied with religious matters. The provisory solution was to continue performing liturgical services without the priest, with the help of the deacon and the two readers of the village. This was not uncommon in the history of priestly Old Believers; because of the scarcity of priests communities had tended to focus their religious practice on reader services, performing abbreviated services and incomplete sacraments that did not require the presence of a priest (Scheffel 1991: 49). Basically any Old Believer community could function provided that they had the old liturgical books and a reader (chital’nik), a person (male or female) who could read Church Slavonic. Rituals in the village were thus shortened as the parts belonging to the priest were left out. Moreover, the liturgy was also incomplete because the mystery of the Eucharist could not be completed

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without a priest. In fact in Periprava every church ritual was performed with certain hesitations because of the absence of the priest. Referring to this pervasive sense of confusion or uncertainty in church matters, one of the readers, a man in his eighties, acknowledged: ‘Our whole life is centered around the priest. This is what we were taught: that we are [one of the] Lipovan communities that left Russia in 1712–13 with the priests and came this way … Without him we can do the liturgy but it is not the way it should be … it is simply not true.’ The absence of a priest and the constant concern with the correctness of the ritual shaped villagers’ lives to a great extent. Their search for a priest was motivated by the recurring anxiety of having the most important liturgical celebrations such as Easter, but also pressing events like funerals, properly performed. The uncertainties related to particular moments of crisis were aggravated by the more general feeling of despair about being part of a dying community. Significant urban migration during socialism and after, together with labour migration to Europe in recent years, led to a significant decrease in village population, mostly inhabited now by old people and their grandchildren. This generational gap was not uncommon in Old Believer communities prior to socialist times, when the middle generation would do seasonal work, nor during socialism when they would be legally engaged in the economic system. However, nowadays the middle generation do not expect to return. Old people have the option to remain alone or follow their children to town, but this rarely happens due to the financial burden it involves. Most elderly remain in the village, occupying themselves with churchly matters and lamenting the imminent end of the community. And they had plenty of reasons for that: they could not find a priest, the old readers could not find replacements and the tradition seemed to die off since no one was able to teach children anymore. The frequent deaths in this ageing community added to their feeling of loss. Funerals and services for the dead marking the departure of relatives occupied a significant amount of villagers’ time, sometimes joined by preparations for major religious feasts, such as Easter.

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Figure 3 A Sunday liturgy with a visiting priest. When the priest is absent the altar doors remain closed.

As Easter was approaching in spring 2007, the community in Periprava became more anxious about finding a priest to perform the Easter liturgy and bless the Easter food. The blessing is especially important since most old people observe a strict fast for 40 days and anxiously await the Easter feast. This time rumours circulated that since there was no priest available in the region, the bishop would tour all parishes without a priest and would arrive for a brief visit in Periprava on Sunday morning. However, no concrete information about his arrival existed and the psalm readers were preparing for an Easter night vigil without a priest. Expectations were high but people knew how difficult it was to travel to this isolated place if no boat was available or private transportation prearranged. In this atmosphere of heightened expectation, on the evening of Maundy Thursday, two days before Easter, a man passed away. He had been ill for a long time without any

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prospect of recovery. Because of the lack of a priest funerals are very complicated affairs: families have to find a priest and bring him to the funeral at their own cost. This means either six hours by boat from the regional capital (Tulcea) or three hours by car from the nearby town (Sulina), which is no less complicated because of the lack of roads and cars. The deceased did not have children and since he and his wife had been very poor they had not saved money for the funeral. The widow asked for money in the village and several people contributed small amounts; but since this was not enough to arrange transportation and priests would not be available during Easter the deacon together with the two psalm readers decided to bury the man. A few neighbours helped with preparations and the funeral took place hastily around noon on Good Friday. ‘Good death’ is a serious concern among Old Believers and complex rituals mark the passing of a person from this life (Warner 2000a, 2000b). A lot of attention is paid to the dead who retain their humanity up to the internment: he or she can still ‘feel’ until everybody throws handfuls of earth into the grave. The dead body is cared for, washed, dressed, touched, kissed but also placed with the face towards the icon corner so that he can ‘see’ them. The whole community is involved as the dead must be seen off (provodit’ ) through a very lengthy ritual that starts at home and finishes in the cemetery. On the day and night preceding the burial psalm readers take turns reciting burial psalms for the dead. On this occasion time was too short and the two old readers were too feeble to pray throughout the night. Usually, the priest comes to the home in the morning of the burial in order to perform the funeral service and subsequently leads the procession to the cemetery. But since there was no priest this time, the deacon and the two readers recited the burial service and moved on with the rest of the people to see him off to the grave. Even if the village had not had a priest for two years, this was the first time that a funeral was performed without a priest. This stirred a lot of discussion, with several people remarking that the man should have had a ‘proper burial’, performed by a priest who could ‘give him back

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to the earth’. One of the most active persons in the church, a well-respected old widow, chose not to attend the funeral because it was not ‘proper’. Additionally, she pointed out that by disregarding the normal procedure and burying the man themselves, the deacon and readers had jeopardized the already precarious future of the community: The bishop already knows that the deacon buried the dead and [he’s asking] why he was not informed about it. You must have [his] blessing (blagoslovliat’sia) to do that, you understand? If you don’t have priest here you must tell [him]: ‘Prosty, blagoslovy mene pohoronyty chilovekom!’ [Forgive,[and] bless me so I can bury that man] But the deacon didn’t tell the bishop anything [about the funeral]. Had vladyka [the bishop] given his blessing, God would have given the dead to the earth. God forbid that they expel the deacon now, and then we’ll be completely abandoned!

The deacon and readers defended their position on the hasty funeral arguing that they were perfectly aware that the burial was ‘improper’, but in absence of a priest they had no other choice but to bury the dead man.11 However, they also mentioned that ‘the dead must still be returned to the earth [properly]’, something that only the priest can do. Their statement implied that they expected that a priest would eventually come to complete the burial, even though it was not clear when that would happen. The controversy over the funeral continued on Holy Saturday, the day following the burial. It was a day of silent expectation, filled with worries about the still unconfirmed visit of the bishop and the consequences of the incomplete burial performed the previous day. The story of the funeral naturally merged with worries about Easter given that the burial had taken place on Good Friday. In people’s view Good Friday was the day when ‘we bury Christ’, a special moment surrounded by mystery and anxious expectation. In the spirit of the kenotic tradition their concern resonated with the words of the famous nineteenth-century Old

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Believer bishop Mikhail Semenov (1874–1916), who argued that ‘every Christian must undergo his own Golgotha’ (Dixon 2008: 715). The parallel between the man’s death and burial and Christ’s own death and burial marked their Easter celebration that year. A moment of crisis and the doubt within The funeral on Easter eve proved to be particularly disturbing for Old Believers in Periprava because it exposed a crisis of religious transmission and the obvious decline of the community. Their hesitations and feelings of uncertainty related to the coinciding incomplete funerary and Easter rituals were proof of the community’s failure to sustain religious practice: ‘Tradition is dying’, lamented the elders. The temporary absence of priestly authority could only reinforce their already strong doubts about the future of the community. The unsuccessful search for a priest resonated with millenarian concerns but also with a deeper anxiety that marked Old Believer history since the end of the seventeenth century. Facing the extinction of the pre-Reformation generation of Old Believers priests, many Old Believer communities decided to accept reformed priests ‘converted’ from the official Orthodox church. Through this compromise they could temporarily preserve the institution of priesthood but a long-term solution was still needed. In the meantime they started an endless search for an Orthodox bishop who would agree to join them and thus recreate the canonical lineage by consecrating new Old Believer bishops.12 It took them almost two centuries to find this bishop, in the person of Amvrosii (1791–1863), the former Greek Orthodox bishop of Sarajevo, who accepted the invitation to become the first Metropolitan of Old Believers, thus establishing the new hierarchy of the priestly Old Believers’ denomination in Belaia Krinitsa to which the community in Periprava belongs. The current Metropolitan, Leontii, now seated in Braila, was the person whom the community

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in Periprava was waiting for on Easter morning to bless the Easter food. He was also the one supposed to grant them permission to bury the dead without a priest, or at least to acknowledge that the burial had been proper. The element of doubt in the funeral ritual could be associated to the absence of formal authority. Historically, however, the hard-earned presence of an Old Believer bishop offered symbolic legitimacy at least in dealing with the Orthodox Church, but it did not significantly affect the autonomy of Old Believer communities and their decentralized, communal structures of authority (Robson 1995: 25; Rogers 2009: 43–4, 74).13 Priesthood was organized as a communal institution, since priests were chosen from and trained within the community. Old Believers’ communalist spirit was reflected in their writings and liturgical practice (Robson 1995: 46–52), and a priest’s role in the community seemed to be more collegial than authoritative.14 Any church-related issue used to be decided by elders, among whom one finds the deacon, readers and other older (male and female) members of the community. Priests’ religious authority was based initially on their authoritative interpretation of religious texts but the diminution of intergenerational transmission led to a shift in religious education, now focused on precise repetition and passive literacy instead of sustained exegetical exercise. Old Believers in Periprava were training children to become skilled readers, to correctly and rapidly recite Church Slavonic texts without a basic understanding of the content. The shift from active reading to textualism happened gradually and led to reading practices turning into a form of religious devotion. As a consequence, Church Slavonic literacy became the very basis of religious authority and the written tradition, as preserved in Old Believers’ books, the authoritative reference in religious matters.15 This strengthened the position of literate elders as preservers of the Old Believer tradition.

Old Believers’ Passion Play

Figure 4 Artiom, the last reader of the community, reading from the Book of Psalms.

The villagers’ concern with the incomplete rituals was driven by a heightened attention to the present crisis of transmission rather than being a short-lived outcome of the missing priest. The deacon and psalm readers responsible for ritual correctness acknowledged

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that the ritual was incomplete even if they performed the funeral service according to the trebnyk (the book of needs containing the most important liturgical services). The difficulty of finding a priest was evidence of the absence of literate people in the community, mostly due to urban migration but also because of young men’s disinterest in priesthood. The young man chosen by the village to be their future priest had received some religious education and he was capable of correct reading. But due to his age he had little authority, and moreover had many doubts about his engagement with the church. Most people from his generation had already left this remote, impoverished village in search of economic opportunities and even if priesthood would secure him a (basic) living, the religious restrictions were uninviting. Literate elders, responsible for religious transmission in Old Believer communities, did not teach children nor did they educate young men into priesthood anymore. The generational specialization which allowed elders to ‘withdraw from the world behind a set of elaborate taboos and rituals based on the ascetic ideals of old Russian Orthodoxy’ (Rogers 2008: 119) while the middle generation became mirskie (worldly or secular) functioned before and during socialism but seemed to have failed now. The two psalm readers in Periprava, now in their eighties, were the best example of this generational differentiation: they had contributed their share to the socialist system and upon retirement dedicated themselves to the church (Figure 4).16 As readers, they trained children and undertook all the lengthy, arduous rituals conscientiously until they became too feeble. During those times in the village the question of who was going to ‘read the books’ after the last psalm reader died was on everybody’s lips. In fact, the possible break of the referential link to the written tradition was perceived as a more serious danger than the temporary absence of the priest, because it entailed their exclusion from the textual community that comprised the Old Believers’ faith. The meaning of doubt in Old Believers’ ritualism The uncertainties surrounding the funeral, and incomplete rituals more generally, do not address ritual per se but rather reflect

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the reconfiguration of social relations in the village, the church and Romanian society in general. This ‘experienced doubt’, as pointed out in the introduction to this volume, is all-pervasive in the post-socialist context in which new and old ideologies are proclaimed, debated and constantly negotiated in everyday life. In fact ‘being in doubt’ seems to be a necessary condition of such major transformations, and coincides with attempts to regain certainty through conversion (Pelkmans 2009; Steinberg and Wanner 2008) or ethical action and moral reshaping (Wanner 2003, 2007; Zigon 2007, 2009). The prolific literature on postsocialist moralities translates the experienced doubt characteristic of times of social unrest into ethical dilemmas (Rogers 2009) and moral breakdowns (Zigon 2007). This approach, informed by the burgeoning anthropology of moralities, draws on ethnographies of moral questioning (Robbins 2004) to expose individuals’ moral reasoning in cases of conflict or confrontation between different moral frameworks (Heintz 2009) or ethical regimes (Rogers 2009). Scrutinizing the process of doubting rather than the nature of doubt tells us more about the ways in which people navigate between certainty and uncertainty in everyday life. It exposes the experienced or episodic doubt driven by specific events or social transformations and the search for certainties in response. But it also emphasizes (individual or social) rupture as the primary locus of moral reasoning, something that according to anthropologists of Christianity pertains to the very nature of Christian belief and ritual (Cannell 2006; Robbins 2007).17 It becomes necessary then to provide a more nuanced view of doubt, one that can account for the different layers of the relationship between certainty and uncertainty in religious life. Much like Old Believers’ worries about incomplete rituals and their uncertainties about the future, experienced or episodic doubts run parallel to ritual action, as an external reflection on the ritual and its efficacy. However, as Carlo Severi argues, this doubt is not always exterior to ritual but it can be seen as a ‘constitutive part of ritual itself ’ (Severi 2002: 27). People’s reflections on ritual action are not just objectified commentary outside of

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ritual action but they are part of the ritual context which establishes the effectiveness of ritual performance. But one may dig one level deeper to discover doubt as an implicit dimension of the ritual, sometimes the central dimension, which captures that particular tension between distance and proximity of the divine. In an introduction to a special issue on religious reflexivity Christian Højbjerg (2002) reminds us that ritual is reflexive in nature, where ‘the term reflexive points, minimally to the effects of an action upon an actor’ (Rappaport 1999: 187). Moreover, ‘the reflexive act of subordination also establishes that to which there is subordination’ (Højbjerg 2002: 2) which means that ritual performance establishes the liturgical order. This understanding of ritual suggests that meaning is produced within the ritual action. If considering the centrality of meaning in Christianity, the moments of uncertainty or moral questioning in religious life are provoked by the failure of meaning or meaninglessness as Tomlinson and Engelke (2006) convincingly show in their volume on the ‘limits of meaning’. This, however, tends to bring our analysis back to the level of reflexivity as a dimension of the ritual context. But the question of ritual failure could be explored differently, by relating the production of meaning in particular instances of religious practice (as the cases in Tomlinson and Engelke’s volume do) to the nature of ritual in a religious tradition. This approach, as I will argue in the remainder of the chapter, could account for doubt being constitutive of ritual. What then does ritual failure mean in such a ritualistic tradition as Old Belief? In the light of the post-Reformation emphasis on inner faith, Old Believer ritualism has been often seen by church, state and scholars as meaningless, an excessive formalism which only covered for the absence of educated elites and theological substance (cf. Scheffel 1991: 207). Such a view is based on theologically informed dichotomies like ‘religion as practice’ vs. ‘religion as doctrine’, or orthodoxy and orthopraxy (thought and action), which are still pervasive in the anthropology of religion. And yet, as Asad (1993) and others have suggested, the distinction between ritual and belief is a more recent outcome of a particular (Western) historical development. Other religious

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traditions maintained ritual as the fundamental action through which believers cultivated their pious selves. Old Believers’ view of ritual had been elaborated long before and it was strongly defended during the seventeenth-century Russian Orthodox schism. Claiming the spirit of the early Church tradition, they defended a semiotic ideology formulated around a particular conception of the symbol as a means to God and an end in itself, ‘the symbol being not only the way to perceive and understand reality, a means of cognition, but also a means of participation’ (Schmemann 1973: 139). Understanding the world as ‘symbolic . . . in virtue of its being created by God’ (1973: 141), the patristic tradition perceived the relationship between the sign in the symbol (A) and that which it signifies (B) as epiphanic. This means that the symbol was both knowledge about and experience of God (theosis).18 The progressive dissolution of the symbol in post-patristic theology led to the differentiation between form and content, participation and knowledge or what is more commonly known as ritual and belief. This differentiation became constitutive of Western Christian theology and also influenced Western thought on religion more generally. The Russian Orthodox Church has followed suit when deciding on the radical reform of Russian Orthodoxy in 1654, arguing that symbols should be changed to represent God more truthfully. Fighting against any change, Old Believers referred to the patristic understanding of symbols, arguing that a change in form equalled a change in meaning (Robson 1995: 135, n. 4). They argued that the smallest modifications in liturgical text and ritual will alter their relationship to the divine and thus have critical consequences for their salvation. Keeping faithfully to the old rite (hence their other name, Old Ritualists or staroobriadtsy), they contended that only the verbatim reproduction of the old texts and correct ritual practice could secure the referential link between material and immaterial worlds, and the efficacy and doctrinal coherence of Orthodoxy. The increasing ritualization of liturgical practice and everyday life in Old Believer communities was an outcome of this conception of immanence, which offered the possibility of salvation through ritual participation.

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In Periprava, the difficulty of performing a proper ritual was perceived by the community as a moment of crisis because it revealed the incompleteness of their Christian existence. Since Old Believers trusted that only through correct ritual practice and ascetic behaviour did they become true Christians, they developed a strong awareness of their continual becoming through ritual and ritualized everyday life.19 The incomplete rituals and especially their denied access to the Orthodox liturgy as a way to theosis was perceived as a direct threat to their Christian being. The essence of this reasoning was grasped by the nineteenthcentury Old Believer bishop Mikhail (Semenov) in one sentence: ‘Without liturgy there is no Christianity’ (Robson 1995: 41). In Orthodox Christianity the Divine Liturgy is the ritual per se, the ‘royal door to enter and grasp the very spirit of Orthodoxy’ (Evdokimov 1996: 18)20. It is the perfect model of prayer which encompasses all prayers because it brings the particular to the universal, ‘uniting the people with the priesthood in a single Divine people, searching for salvation together’ (Bishop Mikhail, quoted in Dixon 2008: 711). The central aspect of the liturgy is that it serves both as a means to pious conduct and as an end, the experience of God (theosis). It also represents the central process of religious transmission since in each enactment of the liturgy multiple temporalities interact, thereby generating the historicity of Orthodoxy (Naumescu 2010). The apparent immutability of liturgical form and language maintained through Old Believer textualism generates a sense of continuity, of an uninterrupted tradition of faith.21 The liturgy is the inherent medium for the transmission of mysteries, and the most elaborate expression of an Orthodox semiotic ideology in which icons, books, reading and singing practices, prayers, prostrations and gestures are brought together in a collective experience of the divine. It consists of three well-defined parts, of which the second and the third are an invitation to participate in the great mysteries of Christian faith (the first part, Proskomedia, does not involve the faithful). The second part, the liturgy of the Word, culminates in the revelation of the ‘Word of God’, as the Bible, brought out from the altar, is revealed to the people and

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then read aloud (the ‘Small Entrance’). The sacredness of the Bible brought out in this liturgical moment can be seen as the epitome of Old Believers’ textualism as practised in everyday life. The third part, the liturgy of the Eucharist, is an invitation to participate in the whole Christian cycle from Passion through Resurrection, Ascension, Second Coming and the Kingdom of God, in fact a ‘reiteration of the economy of salvation’ (Evdokimov 1996: 109). Its culmination, the Eucharistic celebration, reveals the mystery of the Eucharist, the coincidence of transcendence and immanence or the ideal fusion of materiality and immateriality. For all the Church Fathers the miracle of the Eucharist remains a mystery which should not be interrogated or analysed (Evdokimov 1996: 85). For them the realization of the union in the Eucharist is the authentic proof of the presence of God in the world, the absolute affirmation of the Christian faith. Through this practice, liturgical ritual offers both the means of experiencing God (made visible in the Eucharist) and the knowledge of God (the acceptance of mystery). But the liturgy of the Eucharist is also the affirmation of the Eucharistic community which makes the ‘church’, and the means for every Christian community to join the universal church (Louth 2009: 10). This exploration of the nature of Orthodox ritual in its historical-theological dimension then offers another interpretation of Old Believers’ moment of doubt: the incomplete liturgical rituals denied them the possibility of participation in the Church and closed their path to becoming true Christians. The ethnographic exercise of hope I will end this chapter with a brief reflection on the role of doubt and hope in the production of anthropological knowledge. This ‘ethnography of doubt’ centred on a particular event that could reveal the different temporalities within which doubt and hope are articulated. The incomplete funeral on Good Friday exposed the general uncertainty and scepticism that marked Old Believers’ lives and made them question the efficacy of ritual in a moment of crisis. In the first part I discussed this ‘meaningful

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event’ in relation to recent social changes in the community, placing the ‘experienced doubt’ in a temporal frame marked by post-socialist transformations. A similar approach was recently proposed by ethnographers of post-socialist moralities, who analysed individuals’ uncertainties and their moral questioning in situations of confrontation between different systems of values or moral frames. While acknowledging the scope of this approach to doubting, my aim here has been to connect the experienced doubt to the way doubt is intrinsic to Christian thought and ritual. Compared to what one could call an ‘internal doubt’, which pertains to the very nature of ritual and Orthodoxy’s semiotic ideology, the ‘external doubt’ in the case of the improper burial is an outcome of a particular moment of crisis, an episodic reflection on the ritual performance and its outcomes. One could see these two levels, internal and external, as two frames of analysis (see Geertz 1973) or, as I suggested here, as different temporal frames in which doubt and hope are articulated. By pointing out the coincidental association between the unexpected death of a villager and the commemoration of Christ’s passion on Easter eve, the ethnography already showed how different temporalities intersect in Old Believers’ everyday lives. Following the concern with temporality and materiality in recent ethnographies of Christianity, I have looked at the ways in which the tension between doubt and hope, certainty and uncertainty, shapes Christian doctrines of salvation and is made explicit in Orthodoxy through the language of mysteries. While in Western theology the soteriology of Christianity has shifted from the concrete hope for the second coming to a more abstract faith in the afterlife (see Miyazaki 2004: 12), Christian fundamentalists maintain the concrete hope for Christ’ second coming through a moral tension articulated in their ‘everyday millenarianism’ (Robbins 2001). Similar to Robbins’ born-again Christians, Old Believers live their everyday lives with a millennial expectation, which has been formulated in their writings following the seventeenth-century schism. But unlike born-again Christians, Old Believers’ deferred (or spiritualized) apocalypticism is grounded in

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the kenotic tradition, which makes Christ’s passion available to and reproducible in every Christian life. In seventeenth-century Russia, when due to strong persecutions and their massive exodus Old Believers were giving up hope, they turned to kenoticism as a way of reinserting their experience of suffering into Christian time. Christ’s crucifixion became for them the key to reading their historical experience and at the same time the means to transcend it. It offered them a theology of hope, which by uniting Christ’s death with his resurrection fused despair and hope into the mystery of the cross. This relationship is best articulated in the Orthodox liturgy, the essential means to shape oneself as a better Christian. It is the most complex formulation of the relationship between doubt and hope within Christian temporality, which, through its numerous enactments, becomes ‘a performative inheritance of hope’ (Miyazaki 2004: 128) in everyday life. Old Believer ritualism has safely maintained the reproduction of hope without any need for further objectification or doctrinal expression. The incomplete rituals which I witnessed during my stay in this community seemed to have broken this chain of transmission as Old Believers’ common uncertainties were suddenly amplified by the difficulty to enact hope in ritual. How to account then for the commitment of the few who were still enacting the passion play in spite of their own doubts? How to answer any question about the fate of the community, without falling into the trope of a ‘disappearing culture’? The sceptical tradition in which anthropologists are trained and the temporal incongruity of anthropologists and people (Fabian 1983) make us doubt methodically from outside religion and ritual, rarely engaging with them ‘on their own terms’. I have attempted here to offer an alternative reading by looking at the nature of Old Belief, its doctrine of salvation and how it is enacted in historically determined configurations of materiality, language and ritual action. In doing this I thought to replicate the method of hope (Miyazaki 2004) by showing how hope emerges from the tension within the mystery of the cross, how this turns into a mode of Christian being (and knowing) in the kenotic tradition and how it is constantly reproduced yet always actualized

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in Orthodox liturgy. This modality of transmission always references a past while maintaining a prospective momentum in the present. By adopting this method in my own analysis I hope to have produced the moment of hope in this particular interpretation of the Old Believers’ crisis of transmission. Notes 1 Post-Reformation Christianity developed a theology of transcendence determined by the tension between God’s abstraction from the world and the materiality of human condition. Theologically, this tension comes from the dual nature of Christ, ‘the nature of God as uncreated divinity and that of the God-man as incarnate humanity’ (Fulton 2005: 195) as discussed further in this chapter. 2 Keane sees language (especially the creed) as the principal semiotic form of religion because it ‘encourages a distinction between the abstraction of thought and the materiality of its expressions mediated by the norm of sincerity’ (2008: S123). For Protestant missionaries among the Sumbanese (Keane 2007: 215–21) or American Pentecostal preachers (see Harding 2000) sincerity is the evidence of their inner faith. As a consequence, becoming Christian means becoming ‘sincere speakers of the language of truth’ (Keane 2007: 216). 3 In Engelke’s ethnography, what makes Masowe apostolics refuse the evidence of the Bible is precisely its materiality, which seizes the Word of God and distances one from God, in stark contrast to the direct experience of God they cultivate in religious practice. The rejection of scriptural authority poses a new problem of presence, of how apostolics construct a relationship with the divine in the absence of the Word. Engelke takes this as a starting point for an ethnographic exploration of the ways in which believers articulate and maintain a particular relationship with the divine through language, ritual actions and objects (Engelke 2007, 2009). 4 Taussig uses the phrase in a very different context referring to magic and the ‘shaman’s trick’ as a form of technology which reaches art: ‘the supreme level of technique, so rarified, so skilled, that it passes from mere technique to something we might dignify as magical or sacred …’ (Taussig 2006: 155). 5 Some have argued that in the logic of Christian thought uncertainty comes in the very beginning since ‘the root of uncertainty – as necessary separation from God – stems from the fall’ (Crapanzano 2000: 91,

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165). Historically, however, Christianity had first to understand the implications of Christ’s sacrifice before ‘a mature understanding of the human predicament’ could emerge (Pelikan 1991: 72) and therefore the doubt on the cross would come first. 6 The most famous spiritual book of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, The Imitation of Christ [De imitatione Christi], by Thomas à Kempis, is only the culmination of several centuries’ devotion to Christ crucified. 7 For example, the frequent experience of ‘stigmata’ among saints, seen as bodily evidence of their mystical relation to Christ, is a central model of sainthood in Western Christianity, at least since Saint Francis of Assisi (Klaniczay 2009). 8 Russian kenoticism has a special position within the broader Orthodox tradition, which tends to see crucifixion and resurrection together, emphasizing the suffering of the human Christ together with His divine glory in resurrection (Ware 1991: 232–4). 9 According to the last census data from 2002 Periprava has only 141 inhabitants. 10 Church or Old Slavonic, the language of the pre-reform liturgical books, had been the sacred language of Slavic Orthodoxy prior to the schism and remained so for Old Believers and many autocephalous Orthodox churches to the present day. In Old Believer communities children are raised from the age of five to learn Church Slavonic and the correct recitation of liturgical texts. 11 They did contact a priest in the nearby town who could not make it at such short notice but they did not feel compelled to ask for the bishop’s approval in this situation. 12 Like many of the Old Believers’ leaders, their last bishop, Pavel of Kolomna, was burned at the stake in 1656. 13 Rogers (2009) refers to priestless communities as decentralized in comparison to priestly Old Believers, but I see strong similarities in terms of structures of authority between priestless and priestly Old Believer communities. 14 This was also because Old Believer priests were financially dependent on their communities. However, in post-1990 Romania priests of recognized religious cults, including Old Believers, started receiving a salary from the state (cf. Law 142/1999), which gave them more autonomy in relation to local communities. 15 Old Believers’ bibliophily was an outcome of the 1666 ban on pre-reformation church books in Russia and their struggle to save the original liturgical texts. For the next three centuries they hid the old

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books, preserving them carefully and transmitting them within families; they also copied them when possible and distributed them secretly. Church books as well as pastoral letters and various treatises circulated continuously among Old Believer communities fostering the constitution of a ‘textual community’ centred around particular literacy practices (Crummey 1993; Scheffel 1991: 104–16; Rogers 2009: 77). 16 Most of these Old Believers took jobs in the army or on collective farms and upon retirement they often returned to the village and became active in the local church. 17 In Robbins’s view, Christianity, at least in its revivalist Protestant tradition, has the tendency to set up a moral conflict in situations of cultural change, generating radical discontinuities in Urapmin society (Robbins 2004: 320). The insistence on ‘rupture’ in the anthropology of Christianity has been criticized for its limited view, which does not take into consideration Christian traditions emphasizing continuity rather than discontinuity (Hann 2007). I argue elsewhere against the continuity–discontinuity debate, proposing instead an ethnography of religious transmission that investigates the different temporalities which inform indigenous perceptions of continuity and change and anthropologists’ own models of transmission (Naumescu 2010). 18 This section draws on Alexander Schmemann’s discussion of sacraments and symbols in patristic and post-patristic and Western Christian theology (Schmemann 1973: 135–51). Patristic theology refers more commonly to the writings of the Church Fathers until the Synod of Calcedon (451), while post-patristic refers to Byzantine theology developed after this Synod (cf. Louth 2001). Since there is hardly any sustained engagement with Old Believers’ views in Orthodox theology, one has to recreate it from historical accounts of Old Believer debates. 19 The ideal of Old Believers’ communalism was a total merging of ritual and everyday life (Robson 1993). 20 I refer to the most common mass in Byzantine Orthodoxy, the Divine Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom, which is also very similar to the Divine Liturgy of Saint Basil the Great, performed on special occasions (including Lent). Evdokimov (1996) provides an excellent introduction to liturgy in Eastern Christianity. 21 Here language and ritual sustain the continuity of Orthodox tradition, the opposite of how (Protestant) Christianity generates discontinuity in postcolonial contexts (Robbins 2001; Schieffelin 2002).

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References Asad, Talal (1993) Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Cannell, Fenella (2006) The Anthropology of Christianity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Cherniavsky, Michael (1966) ‘The Old Believers and the New Religion’. Slavic Review 25(1): 1–39. Crapanzano, Vincent (2000) Serving the World: Literalism in America from the Pulpit to the Bench. New York: New Press. Crummey, Robert (1993) ‘Old Belief as Popular Religion: New Approaches’. Slavic Review 52(4): 700–11. Dixon, Simon (2008) ‘Archimandrite Mikhail (Semenov) and Russian Christian Socialism’. The Historical Journal 51(3): 689–718. Engelke, Matthew (2007) A Problem of Presence: Beyond Scripture in an African Church. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. ——— (2009) ‘Reading and Time: Two Approaches to the Materiality of Scripture’. Ethnos 74 (2): 151–74. Evdokimov, Paul (1996) Rugaciunea in Biserica de Rasarit [Prayer in the Eastern Church]. Iaşi, Romania: Polirom. Fabian, Johannes (1983) Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object. New York: Columbia University Press. Fedotov, George P. (1960) The Russian Religious Mind. Kievan Christianity: The 10th to the 13th Centuries, vol. 2. New York: Harper Torchbooks. Freedberg, David (1989) The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Fulton, Rachel (2005) From Judgment to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary, 800–1200. New York: Columbia University Press. Geertz, Clifford (1973) ‘Ritual and Social Change: A Javanese Example’, in The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books.

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Hanganu, Gabriel (2010) ‘Eastern Christians and Religious Objects: Personal and Material Biographies Entangled’, in C. Hann and H. Goltz (eds), Eastern Christians in Anthropological Perspective. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Hann, Chris (2007) ‘The Anthropology of Christianity per se’. Archives Européennes de Sociologie 48(3): 383–410. ——— and Hermann Goltz (2010) ‘Introduction: The Other Christianity?’ in C. Hann and H. Goltz (eds), Eastern Christians in Anthropological Perspective. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Harding, Susan Friend (2000). The Book of Jerry Falwell: Fundamentalist Language and Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Heintz, Monica (ed.) (2009) The Anthropology of Moralities. Oxford: Berghahn Books. Højbjerg, Christian Kordt (2002) ‘Religious Reflexivity: Essays on Attitudes to Religious Ideas and Practice’. Social Anthropology 10(1): 1–10. Højbjerg, Christian Kordt, Cecilie Rubow and Inger Sjørslev (1999) ‘Introductory Paper’, paper presented at ‘Anthropological Approaches to Ambivalent Attitudes to Religious Ideas and Practic’, Institute of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen, 15–17 September. Hunt, Priscilla (1991) ‘A Penitential Journey: The Life of the Archpriest Avvakum and the Kenotic Tradition’. CanadianAmerican Slavic Studies 25(1–4): 201–24. Keane, Webb (2007) Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. ——— (2008) ‘The Evidence of the Senses and the Materiality of Religion’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 14: S110–S127. Klaniczay, Gabor (2009) ‘Bodily Effects of Visions’, paper presented at ‘Visions and Emotions’, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, July. Louth, Andrew (2001) ‘Postpatristic Byzantine Theologians’, in H. R. Evans (ed.), The Medieval Theologians: An Introduction to Theology in the Medieval Period. Oxford: Blackwell.

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——— (2009) ‘Ignatios or Eusebius: Two Models of Patristic Ecclesiology’, paper presented at ‘Eastern Christianity in Post-imperial Societies’, CEU, Budapest, 27–8 March. Mauss, Marcel ([1950] 1979) ‘Body Techniques’, in M. Mauss (ed.), Sociology and Psychology: Essays. London: Routledge. Miyazaki, Hirokazu (2004) The Method of Hope: Anthropology, Philosophy, and Fijian Knowledge. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Morgan, David (1999) Visual Piety: A History and Theory of Popular Religious Images. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Naumescu, Vlad (2010) ‘Le vieil homme et le livre. La crise de la transmission chez les vieux-croyants (Roumanie)’. Terrain 55: 72–89. Pelikan, Jaroslav (1999) Jesus through the Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Pelkmans, Mathijs (ed.) (2009) Conversion after Socialism: Disruptions, Modernisms, and the Technologies of Faith. Oxford: Berghahn Books. Rappaport, Roy A. (1999) Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Robbins, Joel (2001) ‘Secrecy and the Sense of an Ending: Narrative, Time, and Everyday Millenarianism in Papua New Guinea and in Christian Fundamentalism’. Comparative Studies in Society and History 43(3): 525–51. ——— (2004) Becoming Sinners: Christianity and Moral Torment in a Papua New Guinea Society. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. ——— (2006) ‘Afterword: On Limits, Ruptures, Meaning and Meaninglessness’, in M. Engelke and M. Tomlinson (eds), The Limits of Meaning: Case Studies in the Anthropology of Christianity. New York: Berghahn Books. ——— (2007) ‘Continuity Thinking and the Problem of Christian Culture’. Current Anthropology 48(1): 5–38. Robson, Roy (1993) ‘Liturgy and Community Among Old Believers, 1905-1917’. Slavic Review 52: 713–24.

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——— (1995) Old Believers in Modern Russia. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press. Rogers, Douglas (2008) ‘Old Belief Between “Society” and “Culture”: Remaking Moral Communities and Inequalities on a Former State Farm’, in M. Steinberg and C. Wanner (eds), Religion, Morality, and Community in Post-Soviet Societies. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press; Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. ——— (2009) The Old Faith and the Russian Land. A Historical Ethnography of Ethics in the Urals: Culture and Society after Socialism. New York: Cornell University Press. Ruel, Malcolm (2002). ‘Christians as Believers’, in M. Lambek (ed.), A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Scheffel, David (1991) In the Shadow of Antichrist: The Old Believers of Alberta. Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press. Schieffelin, Bambi (2002) ‘Marking Time: The Dichotomizing Discourse of Multiple Temporalities’. Current Anthropology 43(S): 5–17. Schmemann, Alexander (1973) ‘Sacrament and Symbol’, in For the Life of the World. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press. Severi, Carlo (2002) ‘Memory, Reflexivity and Belief. Reflections on the Ritual Use of Language’. Social Anthropology 10(1): 23–40. Steinberg, Mark and Catherine Wanner (eds) (2008) Religion, Morality, and Community in Post-Soviet Societies. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press; Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Taussig, Michael (2006) ‘Viscerality, Faith, and Skepticism: Another Theory of Magic’, in M. Taussig (ed.), Walter Benjamin’s Grave. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Tomlinson, Matt and Matthew Engelke (eds) (2006) The Limits of Meaning: Case Studies in the Anthropology of Christianity. New York: Berghahn Books. Trexler, Richard C. (2003) Reliving Golgotha: The Passion Play of Iztapalapa. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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Wanner, Catherine (2003) ‘Advocating New Moralities: Conversion to Evangelicalism in Ukraine’. Religion, State & Society 31(3): 273–87. ——— (2007) Communities of the Converted: Ukrainians and Global Evangelism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Ware, Kallistos (1991) The Orthodox Church. London: Penguin Books. Warner, Elizabeth A. (2000a) ‘Russian Peasant Beliefs and Practices Concerning Death and the Supernatural Collected in Novosokol’niki Region, Pskov Province, Russia, 1995. Part I: The Restless Dead, Wizards and Spirit Beings’. Folklore 111: 67–90. ——— (2000b) ‘Russian Peasant Beliefs and Practices Concerning Death and the Supernatural Collected in Novosokol’niki Region, Pskov Province, Russia 1995. Part II: Death in Natural Circumstances’. Folklore 111: 255–81. Zigon, Jarrett (2007) ‘Moral Breakdown and the Ethical Demand: A Theoretical Framework for an Anthropology of Moralities’. Anthropological Theory 7(2): 131–50. ——— (2009) ‘Morality and Personal Experience: The Moral Conceptions of a Muscovite Man’. Ethos 37(1): 78–101.

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5 ‘BELIEVE BUT DON’T BE SUPERSTITIOUS!’ DISCOURSES OF AUTHORITY AND AUTHENTICITY IN A TAIWANESE SPIRIT-MEDIUM SHRINE Friedrich Binder

One day when I arrived at my field site, one of countless private spirit-medium shrines in the Taiwanese city of Hualian (pop. 110,000), a young woman I had never seen before was sitting with Sister Cinnamon, the medium’s wife, inside the shrine. The young woman was clearly distressed. Sister Cinnamon comforted her and encouraged her to share her thoughts: ‘Come on, talk to Sister Cinnamon. It will be fine, everything will be fine.’ But the young woman just shook her head and kept silent. It took several cups of tea before she regained her composure and started to tell her story. It had begun when she was having breakfast at a little restaurant before heading to work: While eating she was approached by a stranger who told her that she was being followed by two infant ghosts1 (yīnglíng).2 The stranger then offered to take her to a place – presumably another private shrine – where they could help her get rid of the infant ghosts for the sum of 40,000 Taiwanese dollars. The young woman immediately left the place and called a friend of hers – who regularly visited the shrine 119

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where I conducted research – who encouraged her to go to the shrine immediately to seek advice from the gods. As it turned out, the gods’ help was not deemed necessary. When the offer to solve the problem at another shrine came up in the woman’s narrative, Sister Cinnamon interrupted her: ‘You are feeling really bad, right? When somebody intimidates you like that, you are scared to death! Sister Cinnamon can also scare people!’ With that she turned to me and, to prove her point, looked me straight in the eye and in her version of a dark and sinister voice said: ‘A Bin [my Chinese nickname], there are two infant ghosts following you!’ Pleased with her intentionally comical performance and not waiting for my reaction she turned back to the young woman and exclaimed triumphantly: ‘Now he is scared!’ Sister Cinnamon then offered her advice on how to deal with ‘crazies’ like that. ‘If it was me,’ she announced, ‘I would have told that person: “Please be so kind and let those two ‘ghosts’ appear to me in a dream and tell me what they want from me and I’ll give it to them. But don’t give me crap about something I can’t see. Don’t go around scaring people! … Otherwise I’ll think you just want my money!”’ She continued to tell the woman that she had to toughen up, otherwise people would take advantage of her naïveté. According to Sister Cinnamon, ‘kind people are bullied just as kind horses are ridden’. She ended her lecture by advising the woman: ‘Believe but don’t be superstitious.’ That last bit of advice came as a surprise to me but the woman seemed to have heard it before because she nodded emphatically, thanked Sister Cinnamon for her help and left. These same dichotomies of belief/superstition and real/fake possession came up over and over again in conversations with mediums as well as laypersons. In fact, mediums frequently encouraged their clients to remain sceptical when dealing with both gods and other mediums, and they often employed the same vocabulary used by those criticizing them. Describing the attitude one should have when visiting a shrine, Sister Cinnamon explained:

‘Believe But Don’t Be Superstitious!’

My husband and I tell people who come here to worship, that they should never get confused … that … they must not be superstitious. [Supernatural agencies] certainly exist. We tell the believers that when they ask the deities for help that they have to be logical.3 When the deity tells you to die, do you go and die? Is that logical? [laughs] Many people believe 100 per cent of what the deities say.

The medium’s wife at another shrine informed me that ‘whenever you talk to a medium you should accurately judge whether what he/she says accords with logic’. Even if some of the mediums refrained from criticizing other mediums, giving their ‘professional morals’ as a reason, there were generally no major difficulties in getting mediums to talk about the issue of ‘faking it’. On the contrary, many mediums enjoyed talking about ‘the tricks of the trade’. In fact, by talking about others who were ‘faking it’ and generally badmouthing the competition, mediums effectively underlined their own authenticity. At the same time, though, they also risked instigating their clients’ doubts. How, after all, could clients be sure that they had found a real medium? Doubt and Chinese/Taiwanese popular religion This chapter is concerned with ‘doubt’ in the context of the contemporary practice of spirit-mediumship in Taiwan. More specifically it deals with Shéntán, which I have translated as ‘shrine’ or ‘private shrine’. Since the late 1960s Taiwan has seen a continued proliferation of privately operated urban entrepreneurial shrines which commonly offer seances with a spiritmedium among other services and which operate on a fee-forservice basis (cf. Chen Chung-min 2001; Li Yiyuan 1998). Through these shrines and their practitioners the practice and content of spirit-mediumship has become increasingly diverse, so that my informants joked that the only thing private shrines had in common was that they were all different.4 Doubt in the context of these shrines is directed at supernatural agents and,

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to a much stronger degree, the religious practitioner’s claims of embodying these agents. In the introduction to this volume Mathijs Pelkmans writes: Doubt is about wavering between different options and thus presumes an awareness of, and a (somewhat) active stance towards, the dubious object. This in turn tends to be resolved in, or lead to stances that lean towards, either belief or disbelief.

Many Taiwanese, including those who are very active in ritual activities, describe their general attitude towards supernatural agents as ‘half belief and half doubt’ without feeling any need to decide in favour of one or the other – they seem to be happy ‘resting in their doubt’, to borrow a phrase from Pelkmans, instead of struggling to resolve it in either direction. The aforementioned proverb, which seems counter-intuitive precisely because it leaves doubt suspended instead of resolving it, highlights the pragmatic or problem-oriented aspect of Chinese popular religion. It is based on the assumption that in Chinese religion ritual practice is more important to its practitioners than any underlying coherent system. Thus, in an article about Chinese ‘modes of religiosity’ based on fieldwork in Taiwan, Stevan Harrell concludes that […] it is important not to confuse those who create, sustain, and elaborate religion with those who merely practice it. These latter use religion to explain particular events, in order that they may deal effectively with the situation. They do not usually go further but leave the systematization to those of a more speculative bent. (1977: 65)

In a similar vein, Robert Weller writes that The general lack of popular interest in interpretation ties closely to the existence of experts. It is enough to feel confident that an explanation exists somewhere, even if expert

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knowledge follows the same kind of infinite recession into unresolved detail as temple decoration. (1994: 123)

For Harrell’s ‘practical believers’ it was entirely acceptable to believe in some of the tenets of Chinese popular religion while remaining sceptical of or even outright denying others. These attitudes clearly existed in my own field site. The spiritmedium’s wife Sister Cinnamon, for example, said that she was certain that one of the deities at their shrine would dispatch an army of spirit soldiers led by the ‘Tiger Marshall’ to protect clients from evil influences, but simultaneously she denied the idea that gods would have the ability to change the sex of an unborn child, because that was determined as soon as sperm and egg merged (the shrine nonetheless provided written charms to do just that). Another acquaintance dismissed the legend of a goddess who supposedly caught rockets fired at Taiwan from the People’s Republic of China with her clothes as ‘nonsense’ and ‘purely mythical’, while he credited the same goddess for his success in a recent business adventure. When I asked him what the difference was he simply stated that the rocket story was ‘over-exaggerated’. Drawing mainly on Pierre Bourdieu, Weller argues that social actors are disinterested in interpretation not only because they are more concerned with the pragmatic value of rituals but because leaving ambiguities unresolved serves an important function: ‘explicit interpretation in fact limits significance, while leaving ritual or any other behavior uninterpreted keeps all the possibilities open’ (Weller 1994: 20). These possibilities refer to the ability to resist attempts by powerful actors to control interpretation in Chinese religion. These, says Weller, have largely failed because ‘indeterminate meaning creates a free space that places powerful limits on any form of cultural domination’ (1994: 168, n. 21). Even though the problematic nature of ‘belief ’ as an analytic tool has been widely recognized, I think the problem remains during the ethnographic research process. The reason, as Pelkmans (Chapter 1) argues, is that ‘we tend to register ideas only

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in so far as they are externalized, and this externalization is one of the mechanisms by which doubt is repressed or sidelined’. In the field of ‘religion’ this means that we are more likely to pay attention to the outspoken convert or the committed ideologue, rather than to those who doubt or hesitate because they appear to stand in the way of the ‘meaningful structure’. Aside from the possibility that belief statements can be ‘exaggerated belief acts’ (Bloch 2002: 136) and therefore indicate less than stable conviction, focusing on the ‘doubter’ might also be a way of avoiding the trap of reification. As Bell argues, the language of belief and religion ‘ignores the great differences from one person to another, awareness of the possibility of other positions, the individualized juggling and tensions as well as pragmatic non-judgments and refusals to engage’ (Bell 2002: 110). In other words, the language of belief distorts the lived reality of our interlocutors in the field. Although Bell does not use the term ‘doubt’, she maintains that people ‘are constantly asking themselves what to believe, how much to believe it and with what specific investments or commitments’ (2002: 112). That is, they are wavering between options, as we have characterized doubt above. While people’s attitudes to mediums are often best depicted as ‘half belief half doubt’, it is important to recognize that the ability to waver in one’s attitude is dependent on what is at stake in one’s appeal to, and relationship with, a medium. Indeed, as the next sections will reveal, both clients and mediums are constantly trying to differentiate between what is true and authentic, and what is fake. Doubting mediums In contemporary Taiwan the articulation of belief/disbelief is particularly pronounced in the context of spirit-mediumship (cf. Stafford 2007). Many of my interlocutors, both mediums and their clients, assumed that the sole purpose of my research was to discover if the mediums were ‘really possessed by gods’. Consequently, clients would at times put me in a difficult position by asking for my ‘professional opinion’ of a medium’s authenticity.

‘Believe But Don’t Be Superstitious!’

There are several reasons why doubt is so prevalent in the context of spirit-mediumship. For a start, there is a tradition of elite criticism of religious practitioners, including spirit-mediums, starting in late imperial China, which has continued throughout the rule of subsequent governments both in mainland China and in Taiwan. Besides accusations that mediums are simply frauds, it is ‘the view of popular religion as at base utilitarian that has made mediums the objects of suspicion’ (Tsai 2004: 45). With the democratic transformations of the 1990s and the revival of ‘Taiwanese Folk Religion’ as a marker of Taiwaneseness, the government’s stance towards religious practice has changed considerably and there are no more large-scale campaigns against ‘superstition’ and ‘wastefulness’. In 1992 the Chinese Ministry of the Interior still published a booklet called ‘Shrines and Fake Masters’ warning of the dangers of fraudulent religious experts, but three years later it published an edited scholarly volume on shrines in which the positive ‘social functions’ of shrines were acknowledged, and during my fieldwork in 2007 the Republic of China Association of Mediums (Zhōnghuá Mínguó Língjí Xiéhuì) held a meeting which listed then Vice-President Anette Lu as a guest of honour.5 Even though there are some attempts to control unregistered shrines,6 these do not seem to have an impact on the mediums. None of the shrines I have worked with were officially registered. The mediums all agreed that unless a criminal offence was committed by a medium and charges were pressed, there was nothing to worry about. As one medium added, ‘the police also need the gods’ help, you know’. Today, spirit-mediumship is recognized as a valuable part of popular culture and the attitude towards mediums tends to be positive, especially when they are visible in the public sphere. For example, mediums are an indispensable part of religious festivals, which draw large numbers of domestic tourists; they are also extensively covered by the national media, appearing in television commercials for fast food chains and on popular programmes which deal with the ‘true stories’ of mediums’ miraculous feats; and some mediums have written popular books about their personal experiences. However, this

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kind of attention does not erase doubts about the mediums’ religious claims. Negative attitudes appear especially strong towards those mediums that do not belong to public temples but run their own private shrines and work on a fee-for-service basis. The Taiwanese mass media plays an important role in maintaining this ambivalence. My interlocutors always cited newspapers and television programmes when talking about the dangers of ‘fake masters’. In a survey of newspaper articles spanning the period from 1962 to 2004, Guo Wenban (2004) has shown that the vast majority of articles report negatively on private shrines. The negative public image of these shrines is so strong that the term ‘shrine’, which is the common term in media reports, is frequently employed by mediums to refer to other shrines while using neutral terms like ‘temple’ (gōngmiào/gōngtán) or ‘hall’ (táng) when referring to their own places (Chen Xingzhi 2003, quoted in Guo Wenban 2004: 196). ‘Shrine’, it seems, has come to be equated with ‘bad’ or ‘fake shrine’. After decades of negative media exposure of private shrines the public view of entrepreneurial mediums is cautious at best. Even those who regularly consult mediums are alert to the possibility of being duped by a shéngùn or ‘Fake Master’. In finding a ‘good shrine’ most people tend to rely on the recommendation of trusted others such as family members or close friends.7 As one of my interlocutors put it: ‘It’s not like you just walk in there! How would you know what to expect?’ In short, the public perception of mediums is either neutral or positive when they are out in the open, but turns negative with regard to ‘entrepreneurial’ mediums, especially those who operate in hidden ways. Importantly, no matter whether one leans towards belief or disbelief, nobody living in contemporary Taiwan, including the mediums themselves, could be unaware of the widespread doubts about religious claims (Stafford 2007). Aside from the negative governmental and media discourses, there are other factors that may explain why ambivalent feelings are particularly pronounced in relation to spirit-mediumship. It could be argued that Taiwanese possession rituals ‘push the

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question of belief quite hard’ (Stafford 2007) and thus force people to reflect on their possible truth content. Gods who are normally far removed from the world of living humans – their existence either so blatantly obvious or too unimportant to care about – suddenly appear before one’s eyes and act in ways that are (at least partly) counter-intuitive. Maurice Bloch’s reflections on the relation between ancestors and the living in Madagascar are relevant here when he states: ‘Neither ancestors nor elders are normally perceived as counter-intuitive, since in ordinary circumstances their counter-intuitive potential is not cognitively salient, because they are so familiar …’ (Bloch 2002: 145). Believing in ancestors, says Bloch, is no different from ‘believing in fathers’ from the Malagasy point of view. Taiwanese gods, like Malagasy ghosts and ancestors, are the transformed souls of deceased humans who continue to exist in a parallel world which mirrors that of the living. The gods are thus in many ways familiar beings, and actions and rituals devoted to them are often explained in the language and terms of this world. One medium offered me this piece of advice: ‘If you want to understand the gods, you need to understand people. Gods just occupy a different space, but otherwise it is all the same – it is very simple.’ Believing in gods, one could say, is then no different from believing in people. But this holds true only as long as the gods are spatially removed from the world of the living. Once the gods enter the medium’s body, a transformation takes place which distances the person of the powerless human medium from that of the powerful god. Through this process the gods lose their familiarity and their counter-intuitive potential does become cognitively salient. This is especially true of spectacular trance performances. There are forms, or rather styles, of spiritmediumship in which the transformation into the possessed state is hardly visible or spectacular – sometimes it is marked by little more than a nod of the head or a change into ceremonial garb. Many mediums claim to be able to communicate with gods, ghosts and ancestors without being possessed. In this form of mediumship, called tōnglíng, the mediums’ cognitive faculties remain unaltered while they pass on what the spirit has told

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them – they speak with and for the gods, not as them. Many mediums who do become possessed viewed this practice with disdain. They argued that anybody could claim to communicate without possession and that there was no way to verify their abilities. Additionally, even with spectacular types of performance the novelty quickly wears off. The above-mentioned suspicions therefore pertain mostly to initial doubt – at my main field site long-term customers seemed to have grown accustomed to even the most counter-intuitive parts of the medium’s trance performance, like when the medium ‘flies’ into the air at the moment when the god enters his body. Customers often called ahead of the seance to ask whether the medium was already in a trance, or simply asked for the god’s advice over the phone. Nonetheless, without this transformation clients would lose the incentive to defer to the medium, or, as one of my interlocutors put it: ‘I sometimes worry that it is just a person I am talking to – that would be of no use. How does he know!’ Paradoxically, the same mechanism that is needed to suspend doubts about the authenticity of the medium’s trance draws attention to the artificial character of the performance and triggers doubts about the supernatural agents the medium claims to embody. I argue that it is this ‘contact situation’, the ‘stepping in’, that engenders doubt. This is supported by fieldwork data; my interlocutors clearly separated possession rituals from other religious activities such as visiting a temple to pray or making offerings to their ancestors, saying that the former involved ‘getting into contact’ or ‘getting in touch’ (jiēchù) with supernatural agents. For many it was the prospect of ‘contact’ that made them reflect. This was especially true for those who were new to the experience. [O]f course I offer incense when I am in a temple … I did that before I came here. But the feeling is different. At certain times you just go to the temple … it is nothing special. We have always done that … like the Māzǔ temple, you know? I was nervous before I came [to this shrine]. It was a friend who took me here … but I was also curious [laughs]. I thought,

‘Believe But Don’t Be Superstitious!’

‘how strange’: a god entering a person’s body … is that really possible? Many people say it is … I don’t know. But if it is true, then how should I behave? I don’t know anything about stuff like that. I know only a few gods like Māzǔ or Guānyīn and Buddha. Now that I am here I keep thinking about The Imperial Lord’s [the most important god at the main field site] words and if I should do what he tells me or if that would be naive. Sometimes I ask the medium to explain things to me, for example how it feels to be possessed … I don’t know: what if it isn’t true? I believe it’s real, but sometimes I still think it’s not … especially when money is involved. I think you should never trust what you see … you have to protect yourself.

Charles Stafford has argued that the Taiwanese are interested in those ‘aspects of religion which are psychologically compelling and instructive’ (2007: 187). Following Dan Sperber, Stafford argues that believers recognize – though do not necessarily express – the extraordinary and seemingly irrational character of religious knowledge. In Stafford’s view beliefchallenging aspects of religion become credible and compelling when one observes others behaving ‘as if it were true’ – that is, when one sees other doubters behave as if they were certain. In this context, participation in or observation of rituals becomes an opportunity to reflect on and learn about the psychological states of others and oneself. While most of the clients at my field site came for help, quite a few came firstly out of curiosity and ended up as clients because they became convinced of the medium’s authenticity. Here, doubt may be not just an element of, but even an ‘a priori shaper and instigator of action’ (cf. Bell 2002).8 This gives us a clue to why shrines, with their possession rituals and promises of miraculous events, may thrive in a climate of doubt. For many clients, speculating about other people’s psyches and watching them interact with the possessed medium was part of the attraction. Long-term customers loved to share stories about seances where newcomers were taken aback by deities’ strange ways and how these deities dealt with unreasonable

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demands. Likewise, when one of the more spectacular gods entered a medium’s body, people would enthusiastically point out how uncannily real it all looked. They also seemed to enjoy watching others, including myself, react to the antics of ‘unruly gods’ like the ‘Monkey King’ or ‘the crazy monk’. Not only was this entertaining, it was also a means to find out things about the other participants.9 Beyond fulfilling one’s curiosity it appeared that another attraction was the potential to find ‘co-believers’ who had (already) cast aside their doubts and acted on the god’s instructions without hesitation. I believe clients needed these expressions of emotional and cognitive harmony to make their commitment to the shrine feel safe and meaningful. The clearest expression of this search for assurance came from a young woman who at first agreed to talk to me about doubts concerning the medium. The interview went smoothly while we spoke of the medium’s qualities and the uncannily accurate predictions he had made in the past but when I cautiously told her about my own reservations, she ended the conversation and told me that she ‘needed’ to believe in the medium’s authenticity because otherwise she would be ‘left with nothing’. Thus despite the fact that doubt is clearly part of what makes mediums and their possession rituals attractive, there may be incentives (when the stakes are high) to overcome or push aside hesitation and ambivalence. Doubt as a means to evaluate the medium So far we have seen different possible explanations for the prevalence of doubt, particularly in relation to possession rituals: doubt as intrinsic to the nature of belief; doubt as fostered by elite discourse and resonating in mass media outlets and doubt resulting from the counter-intuitive nature of possession rituals as a contact situation. Doubt in its many forms is an ongoing part of the field of Taiwanese spirit-mediumship – it is intrinsic to people’s disposition towards mediums yet has failed to erode the practice. Indeed, the recent proliferation of religious

‘Believe But Don’t Be Superstitious!’

entrepreneurship and privately owned shrines shows that the practice is thriving and evolving (cf. Pas 2003). Therefore we might further speculate on its functions. A very useful approach comes from Maxine Miska (1995), who, drawing on the example of Taiwanese Hakka mediums,10 suggests that ‘systematic doubt’ may serve as a (psychological and practical) tool for the evaluation of both gods and religious experts. Moreover, this ‘systematic doubt’ acts as a check on the mediums’ power over their clients.

Figure 5 Inside one of the shrines.

It can be argued that consulting a medium is in a sense more important or more meaningful than other practices, especially communal worship, because of the personal psychological investment clients make in deciding to seek out the services of a medium. Even though mediums are sometimes consulted for help with trivial matters, visiting a shrine (Figure 5) is usually connected to ‘what really matters’ (Kleinman 2006), involving psychologically painful states of concern and uncertainty about one’s own well-being or that of others who are dear to one, in the face of financial, physical or emotional crises. Mediums advertise

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the promise of dealing with these uncertainties, commonly describing their work as ‘resolving/releasing doubts’. Important decisions are based on the deities’ instructions and in some cases a visit to the shrine is the client’s last ray of hope. Clearly, when the stakes are that high, ‘half doubt half belief ’ is not an option. Clients at my field site made decisions on the basis of the medium’s advice that were as significant as changing career plans, breaking off marriages and setting up businesses. In order to get the desired results one has to do exactly as the medium says. The most common reply to unhappy customers I have heard from mediums was: ‘Well, have you done what I told you?’ Before taking the risk of entering into a relationship marked by such an obvious imbalance of power social actors have to assure themselves (and others) that they have found a medium who is really possessed by a god. To this end a variety of techniques are employed. The most common one is making sure that the medium does not receive any information prior to the seance. Here is what Little Fish told me: I have grown up with [a father who worked as a medium] and therefore no one can fool me. When I want to consult a medium I never fill out a form11 [because] when they have the form they can guess … it is easy if you have the experience and know how to ‘read people’. Also, when you come to a shrine people will ask you to sit down and have tea. They will be like ‘how are you?’, ‘what’s your work?’, ‘have you graduated?’ … and there it is! They can start from that information. So I don’t talk to them. But there is an even better way … I just lie to them. When it is my turn to speak to the god, I make something up and when the god responds to it I know it is all a scam … If he is real he will tell me what troubles me instead. Of course it is embarrassing to be caught but I think if it really is a god he will forgive me because of his compassionate nature. …

Another client described the mediums’ reactions to the threat of exposure as follows:

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[W]hen it is clear that this is fake and they try to get away with some vague statements they sometimes turn fierce or they just say: ‘This little god can’t help you with that’ or ‘Heaven’s secrets can’t be told.’ They mean that telling us would mean violating this rule. Sometimes we also wonder if perhaps he does not know anything at all … Just like a teacher who does not know the answer to a student’s question – he will never admit [not knowing] but rather make up something …

Clients thus discover that some mediums are just ordinary people, or at least have more ‘human weaknesses’ than they like to admit. Mediums turn attention to the god’s fallibilities when a seance ‘goes bad’. The anthropomorphic nature of Chinese gods in theory allows for failing, weak gods, but as we have seen in the quote above, statements like ‘this little god can’t help you’ are usually seen as bad excuses and proof of the medium’s fraudulence. Several mediums told me that they had been tested by some of their clients and, predictably, stressed that they had easily withstood these tests. During interviews many clients claimed to have employed the kind of tactics described above, but I have only observed mild forms of testing during actual seances. In one such instance a first-time client was accompanied by a group of friends whom she later described as ‘believers in science who wanted to protect me’. After the medium had gone into trance the friends whispered to each other and shook their heads (probably accusing the medium of ‘guessing’) without directly confronting him. This went on for a while until the entranced medium interrupted them: ‘since you do not believe in this, why did you bother to come here?’ he said, speaking in the god’s voice. He added: ‘why should I help your friend?’ This stopped the whispering and the remainder of the seance passed uninterrupted. The woman became a regular customer and the medium told me that two others from the group also returned for seances (I have not been able to verify this). To protect themselves from deceit, clients search for natural explanations for the supernatural things mediums claim to

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be capable of. But I believe the thoroughness and ‘rationality’ of the process is inevitably exaggerated in these ‘doubt statements’. The reason for this is that visiting a shrine is a project of hope in which doubts are obstacles. I therefore take these statements as a psychological device, a mechanism by which ambiguities are sidelined to make room for more purified convictions which consequently provide an impetus for more committed action – and because consulting a medium is done in times of crises, action has to be committed (cf. Pelkmans, Chapter 1). This is supported by my interlocutors’ statements; the progression from ‘half doubt half belief ’ to full belief was a common element in the efficacy narratives of long-term clients. Typically, initial doubts were presented to be a hindrance to efficacious results. Some clients claimed that the gods would simply refuse to help you if they sensed your mistrust, but the more common explanation was that doubts were a psychological obstacle that prevented one from putting the god’s instructions into practice. What is important here is that the progression from doubt to belief not only reflects changes in the client’s attitudes, but is also often indicative of changes in the actual quality of the medium’s performance. This point requires explanation. Initially clients come to the shrine with the hope of obtaining ‘miraculous responses’ (língyìng) from the gods. Stories about such responses, told and retold by clients and mediums, are the currency in which a shrine’s quality is measured. This clearly puts mediums in a tough position. Sister Cinnamon complained to me that many people just come to the shrine to receive a quick fix for their problems. She added that if life was that easy then she would be rich and live in a luxurious villa. Since the gods are supposed to know people’s minds and actions,12 clients are reluctant to divulge a lot of information. As we have seen above, an inquisitive medium is often viewed with suspicion. This means that mediums frequently have difficulties in realizing their full potential as ‘folk counsellors’ because ‘they are unable to obtain the facts they require to

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use effectively the explanations and interpersonal manipulations available to them’ (Kleinman 1984: 228). At the shrines I frequented there was a clear separation between long-term clients who some mediums referred to as ‘our believers’ and new clients or infrequent visitors, who would be referred to as ‘guests’. Clearly, long-term interaction allowed the question of authenticity to recede into the background. One of my informants told me that he was sceptical in the beginning but no longer cared whether or not the possession was real because he just liked the god’s reasoning and advice. Doubts had to be overcome to allow the transformation from counter-intuitive supernatural agent to efficient counsellor. Interestingly, this overcoming of doubt was achieved by rendering both the deity and the medium and his practices more mundane. As one long-term client told me, ‘the god here teaches us how to fish but he won’t give us the fish. We [humans] have to do the fishing!’ This partly explains both the high tolerance of long-term clients for failed predictions and their apologetic behaviour when it was obvious that the medium was just guessing. In one instance a client whipped out his electronic calendar in which he had written down all the questions he wanted to ask. Before he could ask, the possessed medium announced that ‘you have ten questions for me!’ When the client answered that there were actually only six, another long-term client asserted that the god’s answer was amazingly close. It seemed to me that this was done out of a feeling of awkwardness because the situation reminded the clients that the seance was predicated on the unverifiable idea of the presence of a superhuman agent, something with which many initially struggled. Although long-term clients had accepted that consulting the god was beneficial for all practical purposes regardless of whether he was ‘real’, they joined the medium in a tacit agreement to maintain the fiction. This agreement not only protected the medium, but protected the institution of the shrine as a safe haven where personal problems could be discussed and potentially solved.

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The mediums’ response – performing the sceptic ‘I am a believer in science – but science can’t explain everything!’ In his study on the Afro-Brazilian candomblé cults in the state of Bahia, Mattijs van de Port (2005) observed that possession seemed to ‘escape all attempts at signification’ as its essence remained beyond verbal expression. As such, he argues, possession demonstrates that ‘there are realities “beyond” conventional knowledge’ and that in doing so it creates ‘a locus for the really real’. The candomblé priests studied by van de Port actively used the rhetoric of the ‘ineffable’ to authenticate their own version of the ‘real’ candomblé. Similarly, in Taiwan the ‘hyper-exposure’ of mediums in the public sphere has pushed them to engage with the question of authenticity. This is evident not only in attempts at standardization and institutionalization such as in the establishment of The Mediums’ Association of the Republic of China (Zhōnghuá minguó lingjí xiéhuì) in 1989 but also in the everyday practice of private shrines, some of which display certificates from Daoist organizations much like a doctor displays certificates of his qualifications in his practice. Since doubt is part and parcel of people’s disposition towards mediums it is difficult yet essential for mediums to counter the scepticism. In addition to positioning themselves as experts on details such as deities’ histories and iconography and using that knowledge to earn the client’s trust, mediums also employed ‘authenticating devices’ (Oring 2008) such as what I call the ‘rhetoric of ignorance’. This device is based on a form of ‘distancing’ from knowledge believed to be possessed by, and only by, the deities. Cases in point are the charms and the ‘medicine’ made from them. Written charms are strips of paper with characters written in ink and the stamp of the respective deity in charge of the matter. Depending on the client’s problem they can be placed in a certain location, they can be burned and the ashes spread, or, alternatively, the burned ashes can be mixed with water to be drunk by the client. They are prescribed at almost every seance. Charms can be written by gods and people alike and books can be bought from which the different types can

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be copied, so in theory anybody can learn how to write one. The medium at my main field site liked to tell stories about the uncanny efficacy of his charms. He described how puzzled he had been when he found out that they actually worked and stressed that it had taken him a long time to become convinced himself. The medium also told customers how he had taught other people at the shrine how to write them. ‘They looked just the same,’ he would say, ‘but they never worked when they wrote them … it is a mystery beyond words.’ The important point here is that the medium based his confidence in the efficacy of his charms on his experience, while simultaneously displaying his surprise, which underlined that the exact working of the charms was as much a mystery to him as to anyone else. His wife often remarked on the mystery of it all by mentioning that, physically speaking, charms were only ‘a piece of paper’. The medium reinforced his position as a ‘pragmatic sceptic’ by positioning himself as a ‘believer in science’, often talking about how he had always loved maths and physics and how he had enjoyed pondering scientific puzzles until he found the solution. Several times he mentioned that he could have had a career in engineering or a related field. He also gave scientific explanations for apparent supernatural phenomena and dismissed some of the popular beliefs of his customers as illogical. That way he and his wife became, just like their clients, spectators of the inexplicable. The phrase ‘science cannot prove it’ was often used by clients and mediums alike when commenting on the efficacy of supernatural agents. This phrase can be read in two distinct ways but only carries its authenticating power in the second one. To clarify the two interpretations, they can be rephrased as: 1. The Western ‘knowledge system’ can’t prove/explain it, but the Chinese one can. 2. The Western (or ‘modern’) ‘knowledge system’ may be able to explain almost everything, but it fails to explain these phenomena (which are nevertheless experienced and thus ‘real’).

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The first reading refers to the compartmentalization of, and switching between, different ‘knowledge systems’ which exist alongside each other. The strongest case in point is the treatment of illnesses. Diseases can either be seen to have purely medical roots or to have been caused by spiritual pollution. In the first case they are treated either through Chinese medicine, Western medicine, or a combination of both. In the second case they are treated by religious experts. There is usually a progression in treatment and the religious expert’s help is sought out only after medical professionals have failed in their treatment. Calling oneself ‘a believer in science’ is rather meaningless in this context because it is ‘common knowledge’ that Western and Chinese medicine as well as ritual practices are effective within their respective limits. Therefore it comes as no surprise that social actors readily draw on all three knowledge systems in order to get the best results. However, this does not mean that there is no competition between mediums and medical professionals. On the contrary, the medium at my main shrine was extremely proud of his main deity for ‘outperforming’ Western-style doctors. But, and this is crucial, he outperformed them on their own terms, giving or correcting medical diagnoses in ‘Western terms’.13 The second reading presents (Western) science as the superior knowledge system and sets it up against the uncanny, the counter-intuitive and the supernatural. It is important to stress that the accounts of the efficacy of spiritual treatments deal with the truth of events which appear to be unlikely and which can only be known through experience. An example of this was ‘The Imperial Lord’s Medicine’, a mainstay of the shrine. It was a concoction of different vegetables and herbs including cabbage, pineapple, aloe and, most importantly, the ashes of a burned charm written by a deity usually referred to by his abbreviated title, ‘The Imperial Lord’. The mystery of The Imperial Lord’s medicine was that it tasted different depending on who was drinking it. During my stay at the shrine the medicine was often served and those who drank it were all asked to comment on its taste. The medium and his wife would then join in the surprise when each person tasted something

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different. The medium loudly speculated on possible ‘rational’ causes such as the quality of the ink they used on their charms only to conclude that they had not been able to find a ‘rational’ explanation in all those years. One time he told us how the medicine cured a child suffering from an oedema of the scrotum within ten days. When the mother saw how effective the charms were, she assumed that it would reduce any swelling so she mixed the medicine herself (without the charm) to get rid of a minor skin problem, drank it and got diarrhoea. The medium laughingly remarked that this ‘deserved her well’. He presented this as another proof that it is the charm that (miraculously) makes the medicine effective. We have doctors, government workers and professors among our clients! They thought we were cheating people at first but then …

Regardless of their own stance on the matter, mediums know that ‘science’ and ‘rationality’ are forces to be dealt with. Therefore the believer in science –‘the former sceptic’ – is a commonly encountered ideal type in the mediums’ rhetoric of authenticity. In the eyes of the public spirit-medium shrines are still associated with the lower classes. Having clients who are believed to be less likely to consult a medium reflects positively on the shrine. My main shrine actively sought to distance itself from behaviour considered to be ‘low class’ such as chewing betel nut, drinking, gambling and swearing. Therefore the educated stranger who happens onto the shrine by chance is supposedly reluctant to talk to the deity, but then caves in and ends up questioning his firm beliefs, is very valuable to a shrine. In this function I became a prized possession. At the beginning of my fieldwork I had consulted the deity myself. During the first seance he diagnosed me (correctly) with ‘pain in the leg’ and an upset stomach and revealed that this was because ‘you worry too much’. Standing in front of an audience and wanting to get off to a good start, I was admittedly somewhat overenthusiastic in my surprise at the god’s knowledge of

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me. The story of ‘the anthropologist’s knee’ became part of the pool of efficacy narratives and continued to be told even after I had gotten to know the medium and his wife and my stance as a non-believer had been made clear to them. When new clients arrived I would first be introduced as a researcher who has to maintain an objective attitude then be encouraged to tell my story or others which I had witnessed involving other clients. At another shrine my presence was explained to customers with: ‘His professor sent him here because he wants proof of strange phenomena.’ Other stories included a surgeon who became a medium and operated in a trance, an anthropologist who became a medium herself (and published a book about it) and a law professor who left his job to become a medium. In all these examples the protagonists experienced instances of the inexplicable, and it was the initial attitude of suspicion and doubt attributed to the ‘rational’ protagonists that made the narratives valuable. Crucially, it demonstrated to the audience that doubting what is beyond comprehension is a futile act. ‘I am a normal person now but you will see me turn into a really strange person!’ Central to spirit-mediumship is the idea that the everyday self of the medium is replaced by that of the possessing deity, a transformation in which the medium becomes a mere ‘fleshbody’ (ròutǐ) for the god to use. Mediums make use of various authenticating devices to boost this idea. They include speaking in dialects unknown to the medium, illiterate mediums who are able to write when in trance and mediums being unable to recall that they underwent the experience of possession. Although I do not intend to judge whether or not the mediums I worked with believe that they are possessed by deities, what struck me was that mediums taught clients how to assess the authenticity of a possession experience. The medium at my main field site had his own speciality; to prepare himself for the seance he would sit cross-legged on a little table and wait for the deity to descend into his body. The instance the deity ‘attached himself ’, the medium would jump up several times while doing half turns

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in mid-air, all the while remaining in a cross-legged position. It was an impressive feat that called for considerable strength and body control. Both the medium and his wife frequently encouraged customers to try for themselves if they could manage to copy his moves, adding that all of them had tried it ‘in secret’ but no one ever succeeded. At another shrine the medium virtually instructed new clients to realize his uncanny transformation; ‘look at me,’ he would say, ‘I am a normal person now – I talk normally, I move normally, right? But when the deity enters my body I will turn into a very strange person. I will sweat and shake and there will be snot coming out of my nose … sometimes I will even cry … it is really dirty!’ At yet another shrine I was asked to take pictures of the entranced medium so ‘that you can compare how he looks before and after. You can see he really looks like our respected master [i.e. the god possessing him].’ The pictures I took were proudly displayed at the shrine and shown to clients to marvel at. Mediums I accompanied on a pilgrimage asked me to film them during possession and instructed me to focus on that aspect of their trance performance that most clearly proved ‘true possession’, namely the endurance of self-inflicted wounds.

Figure 6 Clients visiting a medium.

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As aforementioned, it is impossible to judge if mediums believed they were possessed by deities, but the intentionality of directing attention to the uncanny was hard to miss. Importantly, in doing so they made clients sensitive to what van de Port (2005: 170) calls the ‘politics of keeping the inexplicable inexplicable’. It seeks to lock up the trance-experience in the here and now of the experiencing body. All discursive knowing about the immediate experience of trance is effectively sealed off, in an effort to guarantee the survival of the mystery in all its enchanting ineffability. This can also be seen in the teaching of mediums. At one shrine clients were encouraged to become mediums themselves. The education of the mediums-to-be was divided into two parts. One included a more or less systematic teaching of ‘Daoist’ ideas and ways to carry out certain rituals. Crucially, possession itself was never taught in any way; rather the prospects were simply told to sit in front of the altar with closed eyes and imagine a ‘vast empty space’. Depending on their ‘predestined connection’ with the deity, possession would sooner or later simply happen. One medium explained to me that ‘you can learn from different masters just as you can study different subjects at university, but whether I get possessed is the decision of my boss [the possessing deity] … he made me his medium and I will have to open my own shrine. For him this was determined from the beginning.’ Conclusion The popularity of spirit-medium shrines in contemporary Taiwan should clearly not be taken as a sign that people unreservedly believe in the claims of mediums. Rather, doubt and suspicion are omnipresent. It is not that the deities are counterintuitive in and of themselves, but rather that their descent into the human world is mind-boggling, creating a situation in which the commonly held attitude of ‘half belief half doubt’ becomes salient, with clients trying to make sense of what they are witnessing. Doubts and suspicions are not only part of, but also shape, the attitudes of clients and their engagement with spirit-mediums and, in turn, the mediums’ practice as they engage a critical clientele.

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There is an undeniable cognitive element in the attempts to make sense of the inexplicable, but attitudes to mediums and deities are shaped in a social playing field in which sets of actors use different strategies and tactics. Individual clients constantly worry that they may be dealing with fake mediums, and they repeatedly scrutinize the authenticity of mediums by testing them – either openly or tacitly – against rational explanations. In turn, the mediums make use of a range of authenticating devices to convince their clients that they are the ‘real thing’. If successful they make their audience complicit in this authenticating process. Supposedly ‘rational’ and highly educated clients such as doctors and the occasional anthropologist lend credibility to the claims of the medium. Equally important for overcoming suspicion is the interaction among the audience, especially if this amounts to watching other ‘doubters’ act as if they believe. The success of a medium partly depends on his skill in creating such an atmosphere. Although it would be highly problematic to characterize attitudes to spirit-mediums in terms of ‘faith’ or ‘stable conviction’ – clients often have reservations about the authenticity of supernatural powers – many long-term clients are able to relegate their doubts to the margins. For some people there may simply be too much at stake in the outcome of the seances to allow their doubts and second thoughts to interfere with their efforts. That is, their projects of hope demand the suspension of doubt. For others this domestication of doubt takes the form of reducing their expectations of what the medium is able to achieve, and in such cases the mediums are seen as fallible but valued counsellors who have specific (and perhaps supernatural) gifts to help and give advice to their clients. This suspension of doubt in turn makes the clients more forthcoming and thus allows the mediums to become more effective counsellors. Notes 1 For more on these ghosts see Moskowitz (2001). 2 A note on transliteration: I have used the Pīnyīn system of romanization throughout this chapter. In the case of authors’ names I have

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used their preferred spelling. In cases where I could not find a romanized version of their names, I have taken the liberty of using the Pīnyīn system to transliterate them. 3 The Chinese term used was luójí, which is a loanword that has roots in the word ‘logic’. 4 When I write about spirit-mediumship in Taiwan I adopt the standpoint of the majority of the people who visited the shrines I have worked at. They were for the most part not interested in the medium’s religious tradition and would employ the help of different types of medium who belonged to different traditions and sub-traditions as well as sectarian groups. Additionally, a more accurate term for the mediums I have worked with would be ‘medium-masters’, or ‘medium/master’, as they all offer services that require specialized religious knowledge and are performed without the need for possession. I have retained ‘medium’ for the sake of readability. 5 For more on this association see Paper (1996) and Tsai (2004). 6 For more on the ‘problem of controlling shrines’ from the state’s perspective see Huang Qingsheng (2004). 7 The authenticity of the medium is important but by no means the only factor in determining how shrines are chosen. Other factors are the power of the possessing deity – some are reputed to be more efficacious than others – and the medium’s training – novice mediums are sometimes said to lack the spiritual purity and control of the flow of their qi to correctly channel the god’s instructions and prevent their own thoughts from interfering. 8 Bell (2002) in fact uses this phrase in the negative to challenge the notion that ‘belief ’ and ‘action’ are directly linked. I have taken the phrase to suggest that ‘doubt’ may be at least as important as belief in shaping and instigating action. 9 At my main field site one client’s daughter who had trouble ‘getting along with people’ was asked to help out at the shrine with the instruction to watch people interact with each other as well as with the deities so that she would learn how to ‘read people’ and become an agreeable person. 10 The Hakka are a Han Chinese minority group that speak the Hakka language. 11 Some shrines have a registration process very similar to Taiwanese hospitals. First, the client is required to fill out a form giving his date of birth, sex and address. Then the client chooses from several topics such as extramarital affairs, marriage, business, body (health) and family fortune.

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12 A common Taiwanese proverb holds that ‘the gods are only three inches above our heads’. Another proverb says that ‘when people act, gods watch’. 13 The prescription of contraband Western medicine at shrines is quite common and is one of the main reasons for calls for stricter control of private shrines. I have witnessed combined prescriptions of pills and magic charms to ‘make the medicine more effective’. In the case of my main field site it was the fact that the main deity had only recently been deified and was thus (in his own words) a ‘modern deity’ that allowed him to use modern medical terms.

References Bell, C. (2002) ‘The Chinese Believe in Spirits: Belief and Believing’, in Nancy K. Frankenberry (ed.), Radical Interpretation in Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bloch, M. (2002) ‘Are Religious Beliefs Counter Intuitive?’, in Nancy K. Frankenberry (ed.), Radical Interpretation in Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chen Chung-min (2001) ‘What Makes the Spirit Medium so Popular’, in Wang Ch’iu-kui, Chuang Ying-chang and Chen Chung-min (eds), Shèhuì, mínzú yú wénhuà zhǎnyǎn guójì yántǎohuì lùnwénjí. Taipei: Hanxue Yanjiu Zhongxin. Chen Xingzhi (2003) ‘Táiběi shì jiāruì dìqū de gōngmiào shéntán’ [Temples and Shrines of Taipei’s Jiarui quarter]. Journal of Taiwan Sociology 30(1): 93–152. Guo Wenban (2004) ‘Chūtàn shéntán de shèhuì yìyì – liáng tào zīliào de duìbǐ’ [A Preliminary Study of the Social Significance of Shrines: Two Sets of Data Compared], in Mínjiān xìnyǎng yǔ shéntán, Zōngjiào lùnshù zhuānjí. Collections on Religion 6. Taipei: Taiwan Ministry of the Interior. Harrell, S. (1977) ‘Modes of Belief in Chinese Folk Religion’. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 16(1): 55–65. Huang Qingsheng (2004) ‘Shéntán xíngzhèng guǎnlǐ chūtàn’ [State Control of Private Shrines: A Preliminary Investigation], in Mínjiān xìnyǎng yǔ shéntán, Zōngjiào lùnshù zhuānjí. Collections on Religion 6. Taipei: Taiwan Ministry of the Interior.

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Kleinman, A. (1984) Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture: An Exploration of the Borderland between Anthropology, Medicine, and Psychiatry, Comparative Studies of Health Systems and Medical Care 3. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. ——— (2006) What Really Matters: Living a Moral Life Amidst Uncertainty and Danger. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Li Yiyuan (1998) ‘Taiwan minjian zongjiao de xiandai qushi: dui Peter Berger jiaoshou dongya fazhan wenhua yinsulun de huiyin’ [The Modern Tendencies of Taiwan’s Popular Religion: A Response to Professor Berger’s Theory of Cultural Factors in East Asian Development], in Li Yiyuan (ed.), Zong jiao yu shen hua lun ji: Essays on Religion and Myth. Taipei: Lixu Wenhua. Miska, M. (1995) ‘Aftermath of a Failed Séance: The Functions of Skepticism in a Traditional Society’, in Barbara Walker (ed.), Out of the Ordinary: Folklore and the Supernatural. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press. Moskowitz, M. L. (2001) The Haunting Fetus: Abortion, Sexuality, and the Spirit World in Taiwan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Oring, E. (2008) ‘Legendry and the Rhetoric of Truth’. Journal of American Folklore 121(480): 127–66. Paper, J. D. (1996) ‘Religious Life in Present Day Taiwan: A Field Observations Report: 1994–1995’. Journal of Chinese Religions 24: 131–58. Pas, J. (2003) ‘Stability and Change in Taiwan’s Religious Culture’, in Philip Clart and Charles B. Jones (eds), Religion in Modern Taiwan: Tradition and Innovation in a Changing Society. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Stafford, C. (2007) ‘What is Interesting about Chinese Religion’, in David Berliner and Ramon Sarró (eds), Learning Religion: Anthropological Approaches. New York: Berghahn Books. Tsai, Y.-j. (2004) ‘The Writing of History: The Religious Practices of the Mediums’ Association in Taiwan’. Taiwan Journal of Anthropology 2(2): 43–80.

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Van de Port, M. (2005) ‘Circling Around the Really Real: Spirit Possession Ceremonies and the Search for Authenticity in Bahian Candomblé’. Ethos 33(2): 149–79. Weller, R. P. (1994) Resistance, Chaos, and Control in China: Taiping Rebels, Taiwanese Ghosts, and Tiananmen. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.

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6 SUSPENSE IN RETROSPECTIVE ETHNOGRAPHY Henk Driessen

My concern in this chapter is twofold. First, I briefly discuss the ambiguous role of certainty and uncertainty in ethnographic fieldwork and writing. Whereas the cultivation of systematic doubt has been one of the tenets of scientific inquiry, events and experiences undermining certitude are often either ignored in or eliminated from the canon of ethnographic fieldwork and writing. On the other hand, the advance of reflexivity in ethnography over the past decades has helped to create a more realistic image of the fieldwork process with more space for incertitude and doubt. Second, this chapter deals more specifically with some episodes in my own past as a fieldworker, and the impact of the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) on two sites in Andalucía, where I conducted research in the 1970s. Three decades after finishing fieldwork and 70 years ‘after the fact’, Civil War memories of the protagonists’ offspring and my own doubts in reconstructing them were revived by exhumations at two graves of Republicans killed in my fieldwork location during the first months of this major disaster in Spanish and local history. Memory is of course a selective process depending on a language of representation and repression, expression and oblivion, and cycles of belief, doubt, disillusionment, hope and redress. All these elements are present in the Civil War case. 149

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The benefits of doubt? The cultivation of doubt as part of the scientific attitude was one of the first doctrines I learned 40 years ago as a firstyear student in introductory courses on philosophy and methodology. It was a time of counter-cultural excitement and academic upheaval. We were told that one of the sources of the scientific method was scepticism, its main dictum to doubt everything (but not the fundamental assumptions of scientific work) and that it had been Descartes who defined doubt as the cornerstone of the scientific enterprise. In spite of the extreme nature of Cartesian doubt and its rather thin basis in the cogito ergo sum, the cultivation of reasonable doubt became one of the ideological pillars of scientific inquiry. As students we learned about the vital role of doubt in Karl Popper’s positivist methodology and the blessings of scientific doubt, for instance in Robert Merton’s ‘organized scepticism’ of the peer review. Organized scepticism is one of Merton’s four norms of scientific communities. It claims that ideas and knowledge should be subject to community-wide tests and challenges (Merton 1973).1 A popular teacher of a course on cultural philosophy explained to us that scepticism and selfcriticism constituted an integral part of Western rationality and that relativism and its struggle against ethnocentrism was in fact a radicalization of Cartesian doubt.2 Ethnographic research nurtures methodological doubt in the fieldworker’s confrontation with cultural categories and values that differ from his or her own. But what did we students actually learn about the role of uncertainty and doubt in our research practices? Not much, I must conclude in hindsight. Later, during the early stages of my anthropological career, I came to learn that too much doubt is not only tiring but also discouraging and even self-defeating. It threatens to paralyse empirical research. Equally, there appeared to be little room for the milder variants of doubt and uncertainty and contingencies in the dominant version of the research design in social science. Events and experiences undermining certainty

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are either ignored in or eliminated from the canon on ethnographic fieldwork. Cases in point are Russell Bernard’s widely prescribed Research Methods in Anthropology (1995) and Robben and Sluka’s recent reader on fieldwork (2007). In these works doubt is marginalized by simply ignoring it. To be sure, uncertainty during fieldwork is not the same as reflected doubt in published fieldwork reports. The marginal role of uncertainty and reflected doubt in canonical publications is remarkable given the episodic nature of fieldwork, the openness and fluidity of the ‘field’ both in terms of space and time, which may be constructed as a more or less coherent process only with the benefit of hindsight. Chance and serendipity, not to mention chaos, play a much larger role than we tend to admit (see Blok 2000; Mosko and Demon 2005). On the other hand, there was much more room for doubt, uncertainty and the erratic in post-positivist reflexive research and in the auto-criticism of anthropology in the 1980s and 1990s.3 Indeed, in several of the ‘confessional tales’ or ‘I-witnessing’, as Clifford Geertz (1988) called them, there was little self-confidence (see also van Maanen 1988). Postmodernists expressed doubts about whether representing reality is at all possible or even desirable. They gave up many of the distinctions that had been taken for granted such as the ones between logic and rhetoric, fact and fiction, objectivity and subjectivity, emic and etic (Geuijen, Raven and de Wolf 1995). Looking back, one might argue that there was too much doubt in the ironic stances of postmodernism with the effect of undermining empirical anthropological research. Recently, some of these issues were re-addressed in terms of the concept of ethnographic evidence which indeed deserves more systematic attention in its own right. The editor of a special issue of the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute on ‘the objects of evidence’ claims that anthropology can be both reliable and uncertain (Engelke 2008). There is an important role for doubt and uncertainty in the construction of ethnographic evidence, in particular in the preservation of the ambiguities and complexities in ethnographic accounts.

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Ethnographic doubt A relatively mild form of doubt seems to me inherent in much of the fieldwork process. I call this sort of ethnographic doubt ‘suspense’ in its three meanings of tension, uncertainty and postponement of judgement. Reconsidering past fieldwork opens the possibility of new insights and enables us to re-evaluate fieldwork practices (Narayan 2009). I will go into examples from my own ethnographic work in Andalucía in the 1970s and discuss the unexpected events three decades later that answered some of my questions but did not take away my doubts about what had happened in the village and town of my fieldwork during the first months of the Civil War. This retrospective project of course entails a re-reading of field notes dating more than 30 years back, notes that I never used in publications before. During the summer of 1974 I conducted fieldwork as an apprentice anthropologist in a small upland village of 800 inhabitants in the north of Córdoba that had been almost completely destroyed during the Civil War. The village had changed hands twice before it was finally occupied by Nationalist forces in 1939. Not a word had been said during our preparation courses at Leiden University about such traumatic events in this strategic area near a major mining centre, one of the most important industrial and mining areas of southern Spain.4 The past belonged to history and apparently not to present-focused anthropology. So I was unprepared to deal during my fieldwork with this suppressed and contested past. I soon discovered that the Civil War had left deep scars on the community; it was divided into two silently opposing camps, the ‘victors’ and the ‘vanquished’ who were not on speaking terms and mainly avoided one another (no se hablan). Among the victors were my Falangist host – a retired carpenter and former mayor – and two resident señoritos, latifundists who held approximately 600 hectares at the time of my fieldwork.5 The pre-Civil War workers’ union in this Socialist village had fought against the under-exploitation of the large landed estates by both absentee and resident landowners. During my two-month stay, the events of the Civil War were conspicuously present, although

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hardly anybody talked openly about this painful past. An old shepherd, nicknamed ‘the Fox’, took me to the trenches up in the hills where several fierce battles had been fought. Some men in their late fifties silently pointed out other men who had taken part in the executions. But almost all my efforts to talk about what had happened 35 years before were met with silence and secrecy. When I passed through the village at the beginning of the third millennium, the generations of the Civil War had died out and the village population had dropped to 500 inhabitants.6 In early 1977 I moved south to Córdoba’s plains to begin my PhD research. Franco had just died and Spain was going through an exciting period of political transition. My interest in the lasting impact of the Civil War had been aroused three years before. But I was also frustrated because with a few exceptions people had not been willing to talk much about their experiences and views of the disaster of 1936–39. I never dared to press the topic too hard with them because it was hazardous to talk about it openly when Franco was still in power.

Figure 7 Gerda Taro, Republican soldiers on a street in the village of La Granjuela, mise-en-scène after battle, June 1937.

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In the course of 1977 it was decided in the national political arena that the Civil War would be better forgotten as part of an amnesty agreement.7 This alleged ‘pact of forgetting’, as it was called, was the price the losers and their offspring paid so that the transition to democracy could be made in relative peace. The Civil War thus continued to remain a near-taboo topic in local and national politics for two decades to come.8 In 1977, however, I felt better prepared to deal with the compelling reality of this violent episode, to develop a rapport with the winners as well as the losers, my command of Spanish was much better, and I stayed a full year in town instead of two months. Moreover, I gained access to the disorderly municipal archives and amidst clouds of dust found out that precisely the volume with the minutes of council meetings immediately preceding and following the Civil War was missing and that it was being kept at home by the former Falangist municipal secretary. It took patience and visits to a cockfight and a bullfight, of which the secretary was an aficionado, before he brought the missing volume back to the town hall, allowing me to inspect it for just one morning. The parish priest was guarding the parochial books from the Civil War period in his bedroom. After kind requests and much small talk he still was not inclined to let me have a look at the missing volumes. One day, when he was out of town, I asked his unmarried sister, who was also living in the presbytery, whether I could leaf through the volumes I had not yet seen. She said ‘Yes, of course’, and that is how I could establish that the majority of leftwing victims, although all were nominally Catholic, were never entered into the parish register of death (or in some cases only years after their execution) and thus had been ostracized from the Catholic community. These anecdotes about gaining access to local archives evoke the political atmosphere in which I had to deal with the Spanish Civil War. Since Freud we know that memory is a selective process, depending on a language of representation and repression, expression and oblivion. Sometimes it is necessary to forget and keep silent in order to survive or keep on living and this was true for most of the vanquished I talked with in 1974 and 1977–78.

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Yet what is forgotten, repressed or silenced still remains part of history and may break though the wall of repression and silence a long time after the actual events. It was convenient for the victors of the Spanish Civil War and their descendants to forget and be pardoned for the atrocities committed and adapt to new political and economic circumstances. For the new generations of politicians of all persuasions who came to power it became a matter of both survival and convenience not to look back into the past but rather ahead to the new future they were attempting to build. The memories of atrocities, however, were kept alive in the bosom of the families of the vanquished, haunted the living and from time to time came up in conversation. Seventy years after the facts More than seven decades after the Civil War, the key issue is still the disputed nature of the facts according to the people involved and/or their descendants. I knew that the memories of what had happened were kept alive in the social fabric of the families who lost their dear ones in this class war. In a forthcoming book I’ll give a reconstruction of the events during the first months of the Civil War from three different angles: official chronology and academic history, the local archival version and local memories as part of the cultural practice through which remembrances are produced and reproduced.9 In the remaining part of this chapter I’ll restrict myself to a few remarks on the memory-as-cultural-practice angle. On the whole, the evidence from the local archives turned out to be thin. And so were the remembrances I gathered in 1977–78. People were still reluctant to talk openly with me about the Civil War. Fear was kept alive by the intimidating behaviour of the Civil Guards, with their automatic guns kept ostentatiously ready in the bars and polling stations. The vast majority of the inhabitants seemed to comply with the ‘pact of forgetting’ or maybe simply pretended ignorance or amnesia. In this atmosphere of suspense I again hardly dared to broach the subject of the Civil War openly. When I left Santaella in early 1978 I had a rough idea of what had happened, but I also had many questions and doubts about

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parts of the written and oral evidence I had been able to gather. The gaps were all the more frustrating as I was convinced that the effects of the Civil War persisted in local life, being as it was the main rupture in local history of the last century. In fact, I never published my scattered data on the Civil War. Let me now briefly deal with how some of the memories were finally publicly voiced and gained new meaning following the opening of the graves of executed Republicans in the summer of 2004. Chronicles and screams of silence During the fall of 2007, when navigating the Internet, I came across a brief documentary named Crónicas del Silencio about the exhumations in the summer of 2004 of Republicans killed in Santaella in 1936.10 The publicity caused by this film and by a second, longer documentary released in 2007, El Grito del Silencio, forced me to revisit the facts and stories I wrote down in the 1970s.11 I was still interested in how people digest traumatic experiences and considered my failure to document the Civil War from a local perspective as part of my own ‘unfinished’ past. Triggered by these two documentaries, I began to gather more information at a distance. The exhumations had been initiated in 2002, after similar efforts elsewhere in Spain (see Tremlett 2006), by an elderly man from Santaella who was living with his family in eastern Spain and whose father had been executed by Falangists in September 1936. His petition to start the diggings was backed by a town councillor of the small Left United party and by the Córdoba branch of a Spanish NGO called Forum of Memory founded in 2001 and allied to the Spanish Communist Party.12 This NGO mainly consisted of left-wing volunteers, among them lawyers, historians, physical anthropologists, archaeologists and forensic scholars who had worked on fresher graves in former Yugoslavia and Latin America. It uses the purple, red and yellow pre-Civil War Republican flag as its main emblem. The Santaella diggings received wide support from the municipal council, which was dominated by the Social

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Democrats (PSOE) as it was in the decade before the outbreak of the Civil War. However, the conservative district magistrates in nearby Montilla refused to give permission, let alone get involved, fearful of an avalanche of similar cases in the district. They simply denied the killings had ever taken place. In spite of this legal hindrance the exhumations, now backed by the entire municipal council, were carried out during several weekends in June and July 2004 and coordinated by the communistdominated Forum for the Memory. The highest Montilla judge continued to refuse permission to investigate DNA to identify the victims and denied that ‘there is evidence of violent death’ in spite of the bullet holes in the exhumed skulls and bones.13 One of the volunteers worked in the Archaeology Department at Barcelona University. He had been invited to give a talk about the excavations in a seminar on death organized by William Christian, an American historian and friend who informed me about this lecture.14 Subsequent attempts to contact the Catalan archaeologist failed. Maybe the reason for this was that he had worked in an atmosphere of tension in Santaella, where the parish priest, supported by a small group of extreme right-wing inhabitants, had preached against the digging, presenting it as an act of profanation and disturbance of the dead. During a night of one of the weekends in which the exhumations took place, some right-wing opponents of the exhumation had pulled the small statue of Santaella’s patron saint out of its niche in her chapel’s façade near the cemetery, in an attempt to put the blame for this act of destruction on the volunteers, whom they called the ‘bone washers’.15 The Santaella diggings aimed to recover the remains of 55 inhabitants supposedly killed by Falangists and Civil Guards, mostly in September 1936. The remains of 22 victims were finally uncovered, 17 in the cemetery of Santaella’s satellite village La Guijarrosa, where the victims had been ‘taken for a stroll’ during the night of their execution, and another five in Santaella’s own cemetery. On a Sunday in July 2004 the remains in the common graves were honoured in a sober, secular and highly emotional ceremony.16 Flowers wrapped in the colours

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of the Republican flag, tied by a purple ribbon, were placed on the bones. There was handclapping, Republican salutes with a raised clenched fist, tears and sobbing, and singing of hymns over the remains. One year later, following a judicial investigation, the remains were all reburied in a section of Santaella’s cemetery, the new common grave marked by a commemorative stone with the names of the victims and the following text: ‘[Erected by] [t]he people of Santaella in memory of the victims and of those who suffered during their lifetime because of the military coup of 1936 and the regime that followed and in defense of legality and the democratic principles’ (Figure 8). The monument carries an epigraph by a daughter of the executed Socialist mayor: ‘Solo habremos muerto si vosotros nos olvidáis’ (‘We will be dead only if you forget us’). The largely secular ceremony was briefly disturbed by one of the victims’ descendants who shouted insults against the parish priest, who had been asked by some of the descendants to say a prayer for their beloved ones, in spite of the fact that this right-wing priest had opposed the exhumations and refused to honour the Republican national flag.

Figure 8 Monument for Republicans killed in the Civil War, Cemetery of Santaella, inaugurated April 2005.

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In the forthcoming book that is growing out of this contribution, I relate the moving recollections of the daughters, sons, nieces, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the executed leftists of Santaella. I will show how the recovery of Civil War memories and the exhumations reopened old wounds and revealed a deep class cleavage in Santaella in spite of the increased standard of living, level of democracy, literacy and growing middle-class buffer. My revisit in March and April 2010 to the town of my PhD research happened to coincide with fierce national and international controversies over the trial of the famous and charismatic judge Baltasar Garzón, who dared to investigate the atrocities of the death squads of the Franco dictatorship.17 Powerful rightwing enemies of Garzón backed by the Partido Popular were trying to unseat the judge by taking him to court for violation of the Amnesty Law of 1977 and for corruption. This case, which actually is a history battle, not only divided Spain but also provoked fierce views among my interlocutors in Santaella, views that were divided largely along old social class lines. Just before finishing this chapter, Spain’s supreme court decided to indict Garzón for exceeding his authority by investigating Spanish Civil War atrocities. In March 2011 a human rights group filed suit in the European Human Rights Court at Strasbourg on behalf of Garzón. This ongoing controversy about the Spanish Civil War again roughly follows the right–left divide in Spanish society that triggered the class war in 1936. Digging into a painful past History is always present; the dead continue to speak and interrogate, haunt and disturb the present. (Benjamin 1973)

Fieldwork never ends, nor do doubts about its results. Past fieldwork may open the possibility of new insights emerging over time from the viewpoint of an older ethnographer, part of a changed academic climate, who looks back on past fieldwork.

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In this respect, retrospection may not only take away old doubts but also create new ones. Memories recalling violent episodes such as a civil war carry additional burdens of identity and are almost by definition contested, not only among politicians and descendants of the parties involved, but also among scholars studying past and present. What people are is closely related to what they claim or are allowed to remember (cf. Antze and Lambek 1996). Since the early 1990s the field of contested, suppressed, forgotten and recovered histories has increased considerably. It is part of the wider issue of how historical memory as part of identity formation is produced, contested and transformed (see also Linke 2001; Swedenberg 1995). The 2004 exhumations not only forced some of the inhabitants of Santaella to revisit and reconsider once again the painful events of 1936–39 and their long aftermath, they also urged the anthropologist to reassess the unpublished data collected in 1974 and 1977–78.18 This process of rethinking and reconstitution conjured up sentiments and doubts I went through at the time of fieldwork. It also brought back feelings of anxiety and questions of ethics (how to protect interlocutors in tense political moments) and the fatigue of steering a course between the two opposing sides in the old conflict. Yet the diggings also enabled me to get new data and develop a more balanced view of the events. On the other hand, this hindsight view did not take away all my doubts and former distress. To be sure, it is impossible to get to the bottom of what really happened (Leopold von Ranke, wie es eigentlich gewesen) and come close to the suspense of a whodunnit. There will always remain suspense in its sense of postponement of judgement in my case of retrospective ethnography. The exhumations also revived the old struggles of the 1930s. The class differences did not soften over the decades in the minds and hearts of the Civil War generation and its sons and daughters. It is also striking that the children and grandchildren of the Republican protagonists still cherish the Socialist ideals of their fathers, uncles and grandfathers in spite of a long time of repression and suffering. At the time of my fieldwork they at least did

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not show or voice any doubts concerning the political ideals of their beloved ones who became victims of the Civil War. The final rite of passage, 70 years after the facts, made possible a dignified public mourning that was denied to them for such a long time and moreover transformed their dead fathers, uncles and grandfathers from nameless ‘villains’ into named heroes. Now the victims’ children and grandchildren finally have a lieu de mémoire, where they can go to communicate with their dear ones, whom they hardly knew though still claim to miss. And, moreover, they have a way to release some of the suspense of their old traumas. The few surviving sons and daughters of Franco’s Republican victims I was able to interview in April 2010 told me that they were satisfied with the monument in the town’s cemetery but also that they will never forget nor forgive what happened to their fathers in September and October 1936. Notes 1 Merton’s other three norms are universalism, disinterestedness and communalism. 2 Thanks are due to Willy Jansen, who joined me during my PhD fieldwork, and to Toon van Meijl for triggering my memory of Ton Lemaire’s courses. Ton Lemaire is a Dutch philosopher and anthropologist who published ‘On the Value of Cultures’ (in Dutch, 1976). He is inspired by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Claude Lévi-Strauss. In the 1980s Lemaire turned his back on academia and retreated to the French countryside. Jack Goody in his Huxley Memorial Lecture of 1995 claimed that explicit forms of scepticism not only developed in Greek, Renaissance and Enlightenment rationalism but are more widely distributed in the civilizations of the Near East and India and even in the tribal societies which also display kernels of doubt with regard to hegemonic religious discourses (Goody 1996). 3 See James Clifford’s (1988) book on ethnographic authority and other works in which doubt is also implicitly discussed as the dark side of authority and truth (Rabinow 1977; Scheper-Hughes 1992). 4 Peñarroya-Pueblonuevo (12,000 inhabitants in 2008) had almost double the number of inhabitants when the Civil War broke out. Its

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coal and iron-ore mines and heavy industry made it a strategic town to the extent that it was part of the front during the entire Civil War. 5 The Falange (lit. ‘phalanx formation’) was founded by José Antonio Primo de Rivera, a Madrid lawyer and son of dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera. The ideology of the Falange was republican, modernist and favoured a programme of national-syndicalist social organization. It was strongly opposed to Bolshevism, Socialism and democracy. The Falange’s ideology was adopted by Franco during the Civil War and the party incorporated in his regime retained many of Falange’s Fascist traits. Its symbols were the yoke and arrows of the Catholic Kings and a flag with red, black and red vertical stripes. The blue shirt of its members was a symbol of industrial work. 6 It was only in 2008 that I discovered the series of photographs shot by Gerda Taro depicting violence in the village where I did my first fieldwork. 7 Yet see Julius Ruiz (2009).This historian points out that there is a confusion of amnesty with amnesia. Spanish historians in fact published widely on the Civil War but were often influenced by the alleged contrast between so-called Francoist ‘plans of extermination’ and Republican ‘uncontrollable’ violence. My experience during fieldwork in the 1970s was that the vast majority of my interlocutors avoided the topic of the Civil War and its aftermath. 8 Since then there have been an avalanche of scholarly works, novels, fiction and non-fiction films on the Spanish Civil War. 9 In spring 2010 I went back to Santaella, the town of my doctoral fieldwork, to gather new retrospective evidence on the Civil War and its long aftermath. 10 This film of 22 minutes was produced and distributed by the Foro por la Memoria and the Partido Communista de Córdoba in 2006. 11 The DVD El Grito del Silencio was made and directed by Dominique Gautier and Jean Ortiz, Pau: Créav, 2007. 12 A second important NGO, The National Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory, has a similar programme of excavating the mass graves of Francoist victims and attempting to identify them. For the controversy between pro- and anti-exhumers and on ‘proper’ procedures and protocols, see the excellent article by Francisco Ferrándiz titled ‘The Return of Civil War Ghosts’ (2006). The broad movement to recover the forgotten and repressed history of the Civil War reflects the renewed interest in the conflict by a new generation too young to remember the long years of the Franco dictatorship. 13 See Diarío de Córdoba, 30 August 2004.

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14 Personal communication from William Christian, 3 December 2007. 15 These and similar stories were gathered during a revisit after 33 years to Santaella in March–April 2010. 16 Reconstruction based on a report by M. Sanchez in El Diario de Córdoba (23 June 2006) and the DVD El Grito del Silencio. For the production data see note 11. 17 For a summary see Giles Tremlett, The Observer, 25 April 2010. 18 For similar cases see Paul Sant Cassia (2006) and Josif Kovras (2008).

References Antze, Paul and Michael Lambek (eds) (1996) Tense Past: Cultural Essays in Trauma and Memory. London: Routledge. Benjamin, Walter (1973) Theses on the Philosophy of History, Illuminations. London: Fontana. Bernard, H. Russell (1995) Research Methods in Anthropology: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches, 2nd edn. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press. Blok, Anton (2000) ‘Preface to the Second Edition’, in La Maffia di un villaggio siciliano 1860–1960. Turin: Einaudi. Cassia, Paul Sant (2006) ‘Guarding Each Other’s Dead, Mourning One’s Own: The Problem of Missing Persons and Missing Pasts in Cyprus’. South European Society & Politics 11(1): 111–28. Clifford, James (1988) The Predicament of Culture: TwentiethCentury Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Engelke, Matthew (2008) ‘The Objects of Evidence’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 14: S1–S21. Ferrándiz, Francisco (2006) ‘The Return of Civil War Ghosts: The Ethnography of Exhumations in Contemporary Spain’. Anthropology Today 22(3): 7–12. Geertz, Clifford (1988) Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author. Cambridge: Polity Press. Geuijen, Karin, Diederick Raven and Jan de Wolf (eds) (1995) Postmodernism and Anthropology: Theory and Practice. Assen: Van Gorcum.

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Kovras, Josif (2008) ‘Unearthing the Truth: The Politics of Exhumations in Cyprus and Spain’. History and Anthropology 19(4): 371–90. Lemaire, Ton (1976) Over de waarde van kulturen. Baarn: Ambo. Linke, Uli (2001) ‘The Anthropology of Collective Memory’, in Neil Smelse and P. B. Baltes (eds), International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences. London: Elsevier. Merton, Robert K. (1973) The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mosko, Mark and Frederick Demon (2005) On the Order of Chaos: Social Anthropology and the Science of Chaos. Oxford: Berghahn Books. Narayan, Kirin (2009) ‘Stirring up Ethnography beyond the Finished Text’. Etnofoor 21(1): 61–79. Rabinow, Paul (1977) Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco. Berkeley: University of California Press. Robben, Antonius and Jeffrey Sluka (eds) (2007) Ethnographic Fieldwork: An Anthropological Reader. Oxford: Blackwell. Ruiz, Julius (2009) ‘Seventy Years On: Historians and Repression During and After the Spanish Civil War’. Journal of Contemporary History 44(3): 449–72. Scheper-Hughes, Nancy (1992) Death without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Swedenberg, Ted (1995) Memories of Revolt: The 1936–1939 Rebellion and the Palestinian National Past. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Tremlett, Giles (2006) Ghosts of Spain: Travel through a Country’s Hidden Past. London: Faber & Faber. Van Maanen, John (1988) Tales of the Field: On Writing Ethnography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

7 IN SEARCH OF CERTAINTY REVOLUTIONARY INDIA

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What makes a revolutionary? One of the most intriguing questions about the spread of revolutionary insurgency, such as the advance of the Maoists in South Asia, is who is supporting the movement and why. While in South Asia it is generally acknowledged that the leadership is composed of educated middle-class intellectuals, often urbanbased and higher-caste (Bhatia 2000; Shah 2006), the composition and motivations of the grass-roots support are heavily contested. The political commentary in general splits into two kinds of analysis. On the one hand, there are those who argue that the grass-roots support for the movement is dependent on those ‘caught between the fires’, who are often swept into the movement out of fear, or imply that it is false consciousness that accounts for their participation (Guha 2007; Guha 1999; Mishra 2007). On the other hand, there are those who are uncomfortable with explanations of this kind, who want to stress the agency of the recruits and who emphasize that the revolutionaries speak of a practical ideology amongst its supporters, nurture Gramscian ‘organic intellectuals’ and form class consciousness (Bhatia 2000; Kunnath 2006; Shneiderman 2009). 165

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These debates are, of course, nurtured by a long history of discussion of rebel action which goes back to the analysis of peasant movements as pre-political (Hobsbawm 1959) and to the assertion of rebel consciousness, even if theoretically limited in some cases (Guha 1983, 1999) or limited to the ‘weapons of the weak’ in other cases (Scott 1985). Undoubtedly, the answer is not one or the other – motivations are not only likely to be different for different people in different places and times, but there are also serious questions to be asked about the concept of individual autonomy that underwrites idioms of both resistance and subordination.1 In my previous work (Shah 2006), I have explored how my fieldwork in rural Jharkhand showed that the early grassroots supporters of the Maoist movement (by ‘early’ I mean the first five years when the movement was establishing itself in an area) were neither ‘organic intellectuals’ nor acting out of ‘false consciousness’. The early Maoist spread in Jharkhand was in fact dependent on the educated rural elite and on greater control over a market of protection to access the informal economy of state resources. The tacit collaboration of the rural elite with the Maoists was an extension of rural elite activity in a pre-established informal economy of state development resources, for which the Maoists were merely the most recent providers of protection. In a revolutionary context such as that of Jharkhand, support, however, can take on various different shades. It is one thing to support the revolutionaries by feeding them in your house or providing them with information about the local vicinity, enabling their access to the informal economy of state resources, but quite another to become a recruit to the armed squads. Ronald Berg (1986) has, for instance, argued of the Shining Path in Peru that support can vary from sympathy to passive and active support. Since I wrote the paper published in 2006 the movement has spread in my field research area, and Maoist activity has increased from control over the markets of protection of the informal state economy to recruiting candidates for the armed squads, who will then be posted in other areas. With this shift, people who were previously mediating between the Maoists and

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the state might become potential recruits for the armed squads. In this chapter I focus on the dilemmas of a friend, Chotu Roy, who might very well have joined the armed squads. In doing so, I want to expand the arguments of my early work to show how the question of why one supports a movement, as well as the nature of that support, can change over time. In particular, I want to stress the importance of the dialectic between certainty and uncertainty, at two different levels of epistemology and ontology, which may be central to the making of a revolutionary. In considering religious subjectivity, recent research has questioned the certainty of values which characterize narratives of religious transformation. Matthew Engelke (2005), for instance – in his analysis of the early days of the transformation of Shoniwa Masedza into Johane Masowe, Africa’s ‘John the Baptist’ – has signalled the importance of moments of uncertainty and doubt as constitutive elements in the production of religious subjectivity. These are moments of ontological uncertainty, a questioning of what is or ought to be. Leaving aside the fascinating analysis of millenarian movements where political mobilization is often led by a prophet and directed by religious beliefs (cf. Adas 1979; Worsley 1957), it is surprising how rarely scholars have explored the parallels between the transformations of religious and revolutionary subjectivities, despite the centrality of the alterations in action and ideology that take place in both cases. In this chapter I argue that hesitation, doubt and uncertainty might well be constitutive elements of those who end up becoming revolutionaries. While these lessons from considerations of religious subjectivity are important, I want to argue that epistemological uncertainty plays an important role in the formation of revolutionary subjectivity. This is an anxiety about what one knows about one’s social relationships, which is particularly characteristic of the epistemic murk of the revolutionary situation analysed here. The argument proposed is that the search for greater epistemological clarity in social relationships can be the central experience of those who seek to go underground as revolutionaries. Here, the parallel analysis from religious subjectivity is limiting; while the

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central contribution has been an analysis of ontological uncertainty, the nature of the social relations which precede and characterize the transformations have surprisingly rarely been analysed. The case of Chotu Roy shows not only the importance of the question of whether Maoist ideology was worthy of his support, but also how the dialectics between the certainty and uncertainty of social relations that characterize the spread of revolutionary situations can be central to the decision whether or not to join the armed squads. My argument in brief is that the potential revolutionary may be unsure about his/her ideological commitments in their decision to join the armed squads (why and to what end). And that a crucial component of their decision may be an uncertainty about the social relations in which they find themselves and the hope that revolutionary engagement will come with more guarantees. Into the heart of darkness It was a weekly Thursday market day in January 2007 in the town of Bero (Figure 9). I had just travelled a bumpy one-anda-half hour journey from Jharkhand’s capital, Ranchi, to get there. I took a deep breath, inhaling the exotic but familiar smell of spices and dust in the air. As I closed my eyes the honking of the truck horns and the buzz of people intensified. Leaving the main road, I walked up the mud track past the house where I had lived in 1999. I was excited. I was anxious. It had been three years since my departure and I was arriving unannounced. This time I had a husband by my side. Old neighbours shouted, ‘Alpa, Alpa! You’re here! Come in. Who is with you?’ I promised I would return. My first stop had to be the house of my old friend Chotu Roy. As we turned into an alley, I expected to see the two brick rooms and mud kitchen I knew well. But the landscape had changed. Facing us was a new, pink, two-storey building. A young girl in a yellow dress, who couldn’t have been more than two, was playing with a miniature mud stove and cups

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and saucers at the bottom of a stairway. Before I could even ask for Chotu, his mother flew down the stairs shouting my name in excitement. News travelled fast in Bero. Behind her was a beautiful young woman, fair and slim. Chotu was also married. I touched the feet of ‘Ma’ and hugged Chotu’s wife. I introduced my husband. We climbed up the stairs; the ground floor had been rented out. As Chotu’s wife lit a new gas stove to make some lemon tea, his mother brought my attention to her wood-fuelled mud stove on the terrace. ‘The chilka roti (rice chapatti) you love just does not taste the same on gas. So tell me, when can I make it for my new son-in-law?’ I laughed, translating for my husband. We were happy, joking and cutting into each other’s words in our excited pleasure. There was much to catch up on. ‘Where is Chotu? How is he?’ Suddenly there was a chilly silence. His wife’s face fell. His mother burst out, ‘You speak to him. You tell him. He will listen to you. He has to leave this town. He has to go away from here.’ My stomach lurched. I suspected the truth. Had I not been in a similar situation five years ago? Did I not remember Shiv coming to me with the same request – to help him get away from the nearby village of Tapu, where I lived in 2000–02? Chotu’s wife and his mother wanted him to leave Bero to escape from the situation in which he found himself amidst the spread of the revolution. Over the last few years this little-known part of India, often considered a place where ‘nobody goes, the wild east, the subcontinent’s heart of darkness’, the forested plateau region of Jharkhand in Eastern India, has gained international attention.2 The media’s eye has turned to its ‘flaming forests’ housing the country’s poor, indigenous or tribal population who are alleged to be harbouring underground armed revolutionaries, commonly called the Maoists or the Naxalites, heirs to the revolutionary ideology of Marx, Lenin and Mao Zedong. The Naxalite goal was the creation of a liberated territory from Nepal to Andhra Pradesh, and in the late 1990s, Jharkhand became a crucial territorial link.

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Figure 9 The dusty town of Bero in Jharkand, India.

By the time Jharkhand separated from the State of Bihar within the Indian Federal Union on 15 November 2000, three major Naxalite organizations – the Communist Party of India (Marxist Leninist) Party Unity, the Communist Party of India (Marxist Leninist) Liberation and the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) – had made inroads into the area. The received wisdom is that Naxalite support in rural Jharkhand is buttressed by its disenfranchised indigenous or tribal poor. When the MCC, Party Unity and the Andhra Pradesh-based Peoples War Group (PWG) combined to form the Communist Party of India (Maoist) in 2004, Jharkhand with its forest cover became the site of one of the major guerrilla zones of the Maoist party. Maoism, rather than just Marxism-Leninism, is the guiding ideological force of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) – a programme of protracted armed struggle against class enemies with the objective of seizing power not through participation in elections but through armed action. The new party believes in a revolution against imperialism, feudalism and comprador

In Search of Certainty in Revolutionary India

bureaucratic capitalism in order to fulfil the aspirations of the masses for a stronger revolutionary party and thus bring in a new democratic society by advancing towards socialism and communism (Communist Party of India (Maoist) 2004). Currently the Maoists are active in 18 out of 22 districts of Jharkhand. The Maoists run parallel governments in many areas in Jharkhand, holding Jan Adalats (People’s Courts) to settle both civil and criminal disputes, imposing penalties that range from simple fines to death. It is widely reported that between 2000 and 2009, well over 1,000 people have been killed in Maoistrelated violence in Jharkhand alone. The tensions of the markets of protection In my earlier writing (Shah 2006), I began to explore who was supporting the early spread of the movement as well as the related questions of how and why. Through my experiences of the initial spread of the Maoists in rural Jharkhand, I questioned the received wisdom that the MCC is a poor indigenous people’s movement against the state, showing its early growth to be dependent not only on a rural elite (usually higher caste rather than tribal) intimately connected with the state, but also sometimes used by and worked in collaboration with state officials. I thus questioned the boundaries between the ‘terrorist’, extreme left-wing, armed guerrilla MCC and the local state in Jharkhand. I wondered about the extent to which the Maoists and the state have rhetorical arguments against each other whereas what sustained both was intricate interdependencies and intimate collaboration. I also showed that continuities in people are not the only basis for focusing on the links between the MCC and the local state. As representatives of the state had done previously, the MCC sells protection – an ambiguous commodity – in return for support, to access the informal economy of the state and also to safeguard itself from the possible consequences of its own activities. The abolition of landlords in the early 1950s meant that the rural elites such as Chotu’s family, who faced gradual impoverishment, increasingly attempted to sustain their lifestyles through

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state-related resources – whether directly (through government jobs) or indirectly (through government contracts, for instance). They reproduced (in the case of the descendants of the landlords) or created (in the case of the newer elite) their position through extensive links with the state. They were entrepreneurs who maintained their financial position relative to the tribal peasantry in large part because of their ability to be brokers for the implementation of state development schemes, and concomitantly to siphon off money. The expansion of the MCC was linked to the politics of accessing this informal economy of state patronage. In return for their cooperation in harbouring and fostering the movement, recruits in areas under MCC control were offered privileged and protected access to state resources. Hence when the MCC arrived in the village of Tapu, they promised my friend Shiv contracts from the local Block Development Office (Block Office) of the Ministry of Rural Development. Most of the Block Office schemes involved construction projects for common use (roads, dams, community buildings) and required a villager as the contractor. As Shiv had done when he built the first dirt track to Tapu in 1996, it was assumed that the contractor will siphon off up to 10 per cent of the total project money. Block Office contracts were, however, few and competition for them was fierce. To obtain a contract, a ‘source’ was necessary; a powerful person with leverage over the state officers sanctioning the contracts, as well as the ability to threaten competitors and offer protection. While in the past this ‘source’ was usually a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) or an aspiring MLA, the MCC started to take over this role when they came to the area. While for some the MCC guaranteed potential contracts and the possibility to siphon off money, for others such as Chotu, who operated more widely at the Bero regional level, the MCC also offered the possibility to better manage their systematic access to state resources. The state engineers who were posted to rural development offices in places like Bero were often fearful of the surrounding village areas in which they had to implement

In Search of Certainty in Revolutionary India

schemes as they thought they were ‘wild’ and ‘tribal’. Expecting a re-posting within three years, they sat in the safety of their offices while relying on the local expertise of informal engineers such as Chotu, who roamed the rural landscape, negotiated with the varied political actors making demands on state officers and ensured the continued implementation of development projects. In return the officials gave Chotu a percentage of the illicit cut that they took for themselves from each project. When the MCC arrived in the region, they started to demand 5 per cent of all the large projects in the rural areas where they intended to expand. The savviest mediators in the area, like Chotu, who in any case made it their business to get to know and be on good terms with new powerful people emerging in the area, negotiated good relations with the MCC commanders. As a result of their ability to buy MCC protection, they were used by some state officials and aspiring contractors to manage competitors and pressures in project implementation. The net effect was that some state officers and contractors were asking for protection from the MCC to stave off competition in return for which the MCC would receive a cut of the project. Thus the MCC expanded in the area, entering a pre-existing protection market and engaging in activities that were already well established locally. As a result of these findings, I have argued that initial grassroots support for the MCC is based neither on a shared ideology nor on the threat of violence alone, but on the party’s having greater control over what can be termed a market of protection. Violence was deployed in the course of selling protection to bargain for power and material benefits. In selling protection, the MCC competed in a market previously controlled by parts of the local state. Unveiling this market of protection was central to contesting the boundaries between the state and its alleged enemies, the terrorist, in rural Jharkhand. The individuals who mediated these boundaries, however, clearly experienced significant tensions. At some point it was likely that the Maoists would call on them for support of a different sort – either to become local informers or to join their guerrilla squads. In 2002 I had to help Shiv escape from the village of

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Tapu where I then lived because he was under pressure to become an MCC informer, and had no option but to leave the area if he wanted to avoid them. Shiv was a married man with children and was no longer keen to experiment with the particular model of masculinity, of being feared and fearless, that he once flirted with as a young road contractor. Chotu, on the other hand, was an unmarried man at that point and so opted to tread the riskier path. Five years later he was clearly more involved with the MCC. Nevertheless, in 2007, I found him having a dilemma at the regional level similar to the one Shiv had previously experienced at the village level: whether to continue his activities, to join the armed squads, or to escape? The question was, why and how had he come to be in this situation? Becoming a suspected murderer It was a cold frosty morning in December 2006. The shopkeepers in the Bero high street were opening the shutters of their shops to display their wares. Most of them were ex-zamindars (former landlords) from the neighbouring villages and had come to live in the market town of Bero in the last 15 years, swelling the population from around 1,000 to about 5,000. Aspiring to join the middle class, they had left their homes in the surrounding villages and come to diversify their rural livelihoods by becoming small-time businessmen and upgrading their village mud huts to brick houses with running water and sporadic electricity. Sambath Sahu opened his hardware shop and settled his heavy weight on the chair at the front. ‘Chai,’ he ordered. The little boy across the street was attentive to this routine call. He ran into the restaurant nearby and came out a few minutes later with a small glass of milky tea. Waiting for the tea to cool, Sahu took in his surroundings. Opposite to him, the pan-wallah (pan seller) was arranging his little bottles of paste, tobacco and leaves. In the distance he could see a police car leaving the local police office. As he sipped his tea, a motorbike, flanked by two masked young men, screeched to a stop in front of his shop.

In Search of Certainty in Revolutionary India

Sahu dropped his glass. One of the young men jumped off the bike. He shouted across the street, ‘Let this be a lesson to all who defy Bikram Bhagat’, pulled out a revolver, and shot Sahu in the head. Then he jumped onto the bike. The driver revved up the engine and sped off. Bikram Bhagat was reputed to be the Area Commander of the new revolutionary force. An internal split in the MCC meant that the Bero faction was now called the Jharkhand Liberation Tigers.3 Over the last five years the revolutionaries had diversified their activities. While they continued to take a percentage of all the state development schemes, in the latter part of 2006 they had begun demanding a hefty levy of two to three lakh rupees (approximately 2,380–3,570 pounds sterling) from all the Bero shopkeepers. Unless one had been actively supporting the revolutionaries, everyone had to pay. Not even the small pan-wallah or newspaper-wallah was spared. Sambath Sahu had refused to pay. A friend in Ranchi, the capital of Jharkhand, contacted me in London about the incident in case Sambath Sahu had been an acquaintance. The murder had resulted in the posting of a Special Police Task Force to Bero and had drawn her attention to the story in the newspaper. In the old days it would have been almost impossible for me to verify anything about the murder without visiting Bero. The few phones in the town were rarely working and letters rarely seemed to arrive. However, a year ago, Chotu had acquired a mobile phone. I tried to contact him to find out more about the killing. The phone was answered by someone who refused to give his name or confirm whether my call had reached Bero, and denied that he knew anyone by the name of Chotu Roy. This was a strange response in a place where most people knew Chotu and, moreover, people there were usually extremely helpful in trying to locate others. Chotu’s mother’s pleas to me to convince Chotu to leave Bero only made things murkier, but things began to become clearer once I realized that the town of Bero was rife with rumours about who had killed Sambath Sahu. The primary suspect was Chotu.

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Robbing shopkeepers I am not interested in who killed Sambath Sahu or the question of who framed my friend. While it is indeed difficult for anthropologists to ultimately avoid assessments of the ‘truth’, like the contributors to Harry West and Todd Sanders’ collection (2003: 15) I am not concerned about the veracity of conspiracy claims. Rather, I want to situate such claims in a wider socio-cultural framework. Specifically, I am interested in asking what we can learn about the contested formation of revolutionary support through an analysis of the dilemmas Chotu faced. It was a day in the summer of 2006. Chotu was ready to go to bed. His phone rang and he recognized the number and wondered what the demand would be this time. He picked it up. Bikram Bhagat was at the other end. ‘I want you to collect 30,000 rupees from Avinash Maheto and 20,000 from Mangal Roy. They are expecting you. Keep 3,000 and 2,000 rupees of each collection for yourself. At 3 p.m. on Tuesday next week, wait under the mango tree opposite the Forest Office with the rest of the cash.’ Chotu broke out in a sweat immediately. Until that moment he had been proud to mediate relationships between the state and the revolutionaries fearlessly. With some other young men, he had carved out a field for himself amongst the revolutionaries. He had got to know their local leaders, and was even becoming enthralled by their talk of a movement against oppression and dispossession. He was one of the first points of call for all the demands that the revolutionaries made on state development schemes. As I have argued elsewhere (Shah 2009), taking money from state development schemes, especially if it was to be spent for better public use, was generally concerned a legitimate activity in the area. But this demand was of a different order. He was being asked to take the money of honest hard-working shopkeepers in Bero. This was essentially thievery. For two nights Chotu was racked by fever. How could he rob these men of honestly earned money? What would the rest of the town say? But if he didn’t, Bhagat would be suspicious of why he ceased to support him. Was this a test of his commitment

In Search of Certainty in Revolutionary India

and loyalty to Bhagat? If he failed, the risk was death. He had no choice. He got the money. His conscience did not allow him to take a commission. He waited under the mango tree by the Forest Office. At 3 p.m. he received a call. The person at the other end said, ‘In five minutes you will see a bicycle driven by a man with a woman wearing a red sari on the back. Give the package to this woman.’ Chotu could not sleep that night. He was tortured by the guilt of being party to robbing an honest man. Moreover, he felt that all the townsmen were talking about him and the other men who were collecting levies from the shopkeepers for Bikram Bhagat. He could no longer walk through the town with his head held high. He was deeply affected by the fact that he had been party to this crime. He felt that he had betrayed himself and betrayed those around him.

Betrayal Soon his sense of having betrayed himself and his townsmen turned into questioning and awakened fear that it was actually he who had been betrayed by others. He began to wonder why Bikram Bhagat had asked him and not the others who were also acting as some form of revolutionary agents to extract money from shopkeepers. The recurring question that now kept him awake at night was: ‘Who put forward my name?’ His suspicion turned towards his cousin Gaurav Chatterjee. Gaurav’s and Chotu’s families were engaged in a dispute over land. In the early part of the twentieth century, the Maharajah of Chotanagpur had granted some land in Bero to Chotu’s family to look after. While Chotu’s family considered the land as theirs after India’s independence, Chotu’s father failed to acquire the papers to register the land in his name. Meanwhile, according to Chotu, Gaurav’s father acquired the registration certificates by persuading the current descendant of the king to sell the land to him. A few months ago, Gaurav had sold this land making a huge profit on it. This resulted in bitterness between

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Chotu and Gaurav. Chotu believed Gaurav had stolen land that was rightfully theirs. Gaurav was also known to mediate relations between Bikram and the state. Chotu suspected that Gaurav had promoted his name to Bikram as a suitable collector of the levy from the shopkeepers. These suspicions were strengthened in Chotu’s mind after the murder. He began to think that Gaurav and his family had spread the rumour that Chotu had killed Sambath Sahu and that they were conspiring to cripple him. Chotu thought that Gaurav’s ultimate objective was to claim the land on which their pink two-storey house was built, and for which his father had also not acquired all the correct registration certificates. Of course, Chotu was not sure whether or not Gaurav was behind the fix that he found himself in. But in the aftermath of the murder, Chotu did not pay much attention to the fact that there might be several other people involved. His immediate reaction and suspicion was that Gaurav was weaving a web to trap him. Chotu was sick with the realization that those closest to him, his kin, were conspiring against him. It was a damming thought that the cousin with whom he had played on a daily basis as a child, who knew him better than any of his friends, who was one of his closest relations in Bero, had become his worst enemy. However, three weeks after my arrival in the Bero area, and three weeks after Chotu had shared his doubts with me regarding Gaurav, another incident took place that made Chotu rethink his suspicions about who had put forward his name to collect the levy and the related question of who had framed him as the murderer of Sambath Sahu. In search of certainty It was a Monday in March 2007. I walked up the mud track past the house where I lived in 1999. Shiv was with me and we were silent. I was leaving Bero that day to return to London. How long would it be before I returned? What would happen in between?

In Search of Certainty in Revolutionary India

Chotu was waiting for us at his house. We sat on Chotu’s bed. Addressing Chotu, Shiv reflected on the situation. It is impossible for you to break free from your past activities and distance yourself from Bhagat. You have tried. After the murder you stopped all your Block Development Office work in the hope that Bhagat would no longer be able [to] pressurize you to make monetary demands of state officers and village contractors. You took up land brokerage instead. Like everyone in Bero who has a mobile phone and who is constantly changing their SIM cards for security, you changed your SIM card seven times. You hope that none of your old contacts will be able to reach you now. But really there is no escape unless you leave the area.

He reasoned, ‘Perhaps Bombay is a good idea.’ Bombay was a metaphor for the market. In Bombay Shiv imagined Chotu working as a manager in a factory or a small business. Bombay represented a life away from both the state and the shadow state. Chotu looked pensively at Shiv and said, ‘Either I go to Bombay, or I go to the Saranda Forest.’ The Saranda Forest was a metaphor for joining the armed squads, for full involvement in the heartland of guerrilla activity. ‘At least there I will know who is who, I will have a clear sense of the command structures, I will know what my role is and I will be able to protect myself using arms. And perhaps, there I might live amongst people who are formulating a better world.’ Apart from being mildly attracted by Maoist rhetoric, he thought that at least in the Saranda Forest he would have a clear structure of the hierarchy of relations above him, a predetermined role cut out for him and he would no longer have to carve out a risky path between unpredictable relationships. Ironically, Chotu wanted to join the Maoists because he thought they would behave like a Weberian state with clear boundaries and responsibilities. Ultimately, of course, the contrast was overdrawn as part of the fear of the Maoists, as I will explain, develops because people think that the Maoists represent this influential, solid structure that they just cannot see.

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Chotu was at that moment desperately in search of certainty. What I want to stress here is firstly that the characteristics of revolutionary support change over time – from being a mediator for the Maoists in the area, Chotu was considering joining the armed squads. Second, the reasons for support change over time. And third, ultimately the dialectics between certainty and uncertainty are likely to be a significant part of the process of becoming a revolutionary. This is not just about whether one wants to join the movement or not (the ontological doubt and uncertainty involved in the transformation of the subject that are part and parcel of conversion (Engelke 2005)) but also about a search for epistemological certainty, that is social relations that are imagined to be less opaque, more predictable and hence more trustworthy. From being an initial mediator of relations between the state and the Maoists, a man who facilitated control of the market of protection over the informal economy of state resources through which the Maoists established a presence in the area, Chotu now considered supporting the Maoists by joining their armed squads. He was undoubtedly unsure about whether he should commit to their visions of a better world – self-doubt and ontological uncertainty were central feelings that he experienced. However, significantly, it was also the epistemological uncertainty of social relations; that is, what he knew about his kin and fellow townsmen, their intentions and motivations – an uncertainty exacerbated by the spread of the Maoists and his particular role in that spread – that eventually led him to consider joining the Maoists. Accusations of witchcraft, which have a long history in this area, also produce similar effects of uncertainty. The long history of anthropological engagement with this theme indicates that the efficacy of witchcraft is a direct function of the intimacy between the witch and the victim, and that the vast majority of accusations involve relations between peers and kin (Douglas 1970). Lessons from the analysis of witchcraft can be a central component of the analysis of modern politics, not only in the sense that the ideas and practices of witchcraft are a response to modern exigencies in many parts of the world (Comaroff and

In Search of Certainty in Revolutionary India

Comaroff 1993; Geschiere 1997), but also because the analyses of witchcraft accusations might be tools through which we may better understand particular political processes (Caplan 2006; West and Sanders 2003). Indeed, Chotu’s case shows how the uncertainty in social relations generated by the spread of the revolution can work in similar ways to witchcraft accusations – suspicions of rumours surrounding murder accusations, and accusations of revolutionary participation can become interpreted as a vehicle to settle long-standing tensions (in this case over land) in relations between kin. By mediating such intimate relations, witchcraft accusations have been noted to produce a normative order but they are also produced by and sustain such an order (Douglas 1970). Arthur Miller, who was inspired to write The Crucible because of the parallels between the workings of witchcraft accusations in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692 and the crackdown on alleged communist supporters during the McCarthy years of the Cold War, argued that he used to think half-seriously that you could tell when a dictator was about to take power or had been overthrown in a Latin American country because The Crucible would suddenly be produced in that country (Miller 2000). In the context of the transformation of the wider political economy of violence, any notion of what is everyday, what is normal, what is ordinary is, of course, not a neutral category of description, but has to be historically and politically contextualized. What characterized the transformation of the normative order that accompanied revolutionary spread? One common answer is a ‘culture of fear’ or a ‘culture of terror’. Indeed it is tempting to argue, as Linda Green (1999) has done so poignantly of Guatemala, that the effects of the revolution and the state’s responses to it has meant that fear is not just a response to danger, a subjective personal experience, but has penetrated social memory: fear is a way of life. While Green’s descriptions are emotive, the Bero case illuminates that fear is not simply an abstract status quo in a violent, revolutionary or post-conflict context. As social scientists, it is important for us to analyse the changing historical, social and political contexts in

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which fear develops. There is a transformation in the normative order which accompanies the spread of revolution, and which is characterized by the enhanced potential for uncertainty of social relations. The experience of fear is a product of this uncertainty. How have the conditions for enhanced uncertainty regarding social relations developed? In the shadows of violence, Das and colleagues (2000) have argued that there is often a slow erosion of trust in one’s known world, through which people’s access to established contexts and trusted categories disappears. The specific meanings of attempts to live an ‘ordinary life’ must be placed, as Tobias Kelly (2008) argued in his study of the West Bank, in the context of a wider political economy of violence. In my earlier work I showed that with the presence of the Maoists, the wider organization of violence in the Bero area was transformed. I argued that the MCC sold protection to its supporters by spreading the idea of its increasing control of the area. It took over all the private arms in the area and inculcated fear by creating an image of itself as a highly centralized, hierarchical and organized movement with clandestine operations, opaque secrets and hidden resources. Uncertainty about the size and range of the movement was central to the spread of the movement, and it was created by both a cloud of secrecy and the breach of secrecy that accompanied its spread – the leak here and there that the MCC had arrived in x village, was planning y case. An idea was planted that the MCC was or could be anywhere and everywhere. In areas of new expansion it was easy for one person to suspect that anyone else could be involved, to create the impression that everyone is involved, and for that person to then become involved. In this process everyone could feel like that one person, leading to everyone being involved. This generated the normative uncertainty of not knowing who was a Maoist, a villager or a state official. An uncertainty about one’s social relations was crucial to the spread of the movement. People like Chotu, who supported the movement as local mediators, experienced this uncertainty through the specific relationships of ambiguity and opacity that characterize living and working between the state and the shadow state. Whereas before the arrival of the Maoists Chotu was negotiating

In Search of Certainty in Revolutionary India

relations between the state and the politicians, now he was negotiating relations between the state, the politicians and the revolutionaries, as well as all the interrelations between them that can lead to becoming one and the same thing. This situation created a new degree of opacity in local politics. This was not just a normative uncertainty of roles (who is a state official, who is a revolutionary) but a situation in which it was never clear who was connected to whom, how, why or at what point this might change. He was constantly negotiating relations between people but he felt that he could no longer build relationships of trust as there was little transparency. As a result, he did not know whether he might become a pawn to be sacrificed in the struggle between a set of relations that he could never fully understand. He could not know who had stabbed him in the back, when or why, and who had the potential to do so in the future. He was worried about the way in which ongoing tensions between people flared up in unexpected ways. The fear was that family, neighbours and townsmen might seek to settle old scores with violence through the revolutionaries or in their name. It was not just fear of people like Bikram Bhagat but fear of those he knew well, and how they might be the harbourers of violence that might creep through the cracks of their homes, in places that he least expected. As is also noted by others (see de Sales 2009; Lecomte-Tilouine 2009), more than the threat of physical violence or the threat to life, this fear thrives on ambiguity, disorder, mystery and uncertainty. Against the backdrop of this transformed normative order, that is the social ontological breakdown of the relations by which a person has lived, Chotu was forced first to betray himself by having to take the levy from the shopkeepers, breaking his own principles of what he considered moral action. While siphoning off money from state development resources was moral (Shah 2009), taking the honestly earned money of a local shopkeeper was not. In a recent book, Turnatari (2007: 28) argues that it is the relational nature of betrayal that makes it so feared. Always and in all circumstances betrayal involves the rupture of a pact, the negation of the principle of cohesion and a threat to

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the possibility of all relations. Whether one betrays another individual or a community of which one is a part, the act implies breaking some social bond. Above all and on the symbolic level, it negates the principle of cohesion on which ties, bonds and loyalties rest. Precisely because it threatens the survival of the relationship itself or of the group, betrayal is the threat to the social order most to be feared; it is the most significant symbolic break. This moment of betrayal is perhaps equivalent to the moment of conversion. It is the moment when Chotu had to choose whether to stand against or be subservient to the threat to his life. At this point he realized that the violence from which he was profiting was now also a threat to him. He did not have the necessary means to employ sufficient force to secure his physical safety. This was then the moment that tested his own moral convictions – the fact that he did not want to rob the shopkeeper – and led to his betraying them. As a result of this low point, the question of whether his moral convictions would be replaced by other political convictions and commitments was opened up. It is possible that any new way of legitimizing his actions, any new moral convictions, would at first prove to be an escape from (not a resolution to) the betrayal of his moral standards. As such any new moral discourse would disguise, deny or hide older moral standards rather than replace them. Being unable to sleep because of his actions, Chotu was soon overcome by questions of how he arrived at this point in the first place: who put his name up for taking the levy? And then, after the murder of Sambath Sahu, who framed him as the murderer? Chotu’s betrayal of himself and his fellow townsmen made him question all the relations around him and the norms by which he lived. His own acts of betrayal made him suspicious of others betraying him. Turnatari (2007: 29) argues that betrayal forces us to ‘erase the image of ourselves that we have constructed together with the other, the image of the other that we have created, and the image of ourselves as part of that shared experience. In this sense, betrayal is a devastating experience because it forces us to

In Search of Certainty in Revolutionary India

redefine ourselves, to raise questions about the other and about ourselves in combination with the other.’ Her implication is that we begin to fear that many of the relationships of which we are a part might collapse. ‘Uncertainty takes the place of all previous security, and everything seems fragile, precarious and illusory. In this sense, betrayal is a traumatic experience that destabilizes identity, because it throws into crises both interpersonal trust and trust in oneself ’ (Turnatari 2007: 28, emphasis in original). Chotu drove himself to a situation of suspicion and paranoia because his disbelief of his own deeds made him question the deeds of others. His anxieties transformed into fear, a paralysing inability to act and a tendency to distrust – he couldn’t live with it. His desperation opened up new moral possibilities for him and forced him into the following dilemma: either join the armed squads or escape from the area. His considerations in joining emerged neither from a fear of the Maoists nor from a total conviction in a shared ideology. Rather, his reasons for considering joining emerged from the uncertainty that his involvement with the Maoists had precipitated. This uncertainty was not merely ontological, that which scholars of religious subjectivity have argued accompanies conversion, but was a product of the epistemological uncertainty and unpredictability that characterize social relations in revolutionary contexts. Chotu’s considerations in becoming a revolutionary were above all marked by the dialectics between certainty and uncertainty – the tension between the unpredictability of social relations, and his attempts at fixing these relations. In the Colombian Putamayo basin described by Michael Taussig (1987) the rubber planters who ruled by terror created an epistemic murk that was used and sustained to benefit healing, shamanism and sorcery on the one hand, and for super-profitable exploitation out of the organization of force and threat on the other. By contrast, in the epistemic fog that accompanies the breakdown of the normative order in Jharkhand, terror of the Maoists arises from the creation of epistemic clarity – the possibility that on

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the other side norms and relationships will be more certain. This is a certainty carved out of uncertainty and ambivalence, a certainty that denies or projects away uncertainty. Its weapon is paranoia, an ability to make enemies where there would be friends, betrayal where there would be the benefit of the doubt. In this context, becoming a revolutionary is also about being in search of certainty. Acknowledgements This chapter was first published as an article in a special volume of Dialectical Anthropology (33: 3/4) called ‘Windows into a Revolution: Ethnographies of Maoism in South Asia’, edited by myself and Judith Pettigrew. I thank Mathijs Pelkmans for the opportunity to reconsider the material here in the light of other ethnographies of doubt. Notes 1 See for instance the implications of the work of Mahmood (2001), Ortner (1995) and Willis (1978). 2 The Independent Magazine, 11 March 2006: 17. 3 It is important to note that the Jharkhand Liberation Tigers are considered a ‘gang’ by the Communist Party of India (Maoist), which was the major Maoist party at the time this chapter went to press in 2010. The CPI (Maoist) believe that such gangs have no ideology and no future vision of society, do not work in the interests of the poor and are mere extortionists. There are indeed significant differences in operation – one small example is that the CPI (Maoist) do not seek levies from individual shopkeepers in the manner described here. Nevertheless, there are enough parallels between what is described here and the early spread of the CPI (Maoist) for there to be conditions similar to that experienced by Chotu Roy in the case of the Maoists too. Moreover, the Jharkhand Liberation Tigers split off from the Maoist Communist Centre (which later became the CPI (Maoist)) and the initial spread of both in this particular area were one and the same.

In Search of Certainty in Revolutionary India

References Adas, Michael (1979) Prophets of Rebellion: Millenarian Protest Movements against the European Colonial Order. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press Berg, Ronald (1986) ‘Sendero Luminoso and the Peasantry of Andahuaylas’. Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 28(4): 165–96. Bhatia, Bela (2000) The Naxalite Movement in Central Bihar. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press. Caplan, Pat (2006) ‘Terror, Witchcraft and Risk’. The Anthroglobe Journal, 19 January. . Comaroff, Jean and John Comaroff (1993) Modernity and its Malcontents: Ritual and Power in Postcolonial Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Communist Party of India (Maoist) (2004) ‘Party Programme’. Das, V., A. Kleinman, M. Ramphele and P. Reynolds (eds) (2000) Violence and Subjectivity. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. De Sales, Anne (2009) ‘From Ancestral Conflicts to Local Empowerment: Two Narratives from a Nepalese Community’. Dialectical Anthropology 33(3–4): 365–81. Douglas, Mary (1970) ‘Thirty Years after Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic’, in M. Douglas (ed.), Witchcraft Confessions and Accusations. London: Tavistock. Engelke, Matthew (2005) ‘The Early Days of Johane Masowe: Self-doubt, Uncertainty and Religious Transformation’. Comparative Studies in Society and History 47(4): 781–808. Geschiere, Peter (1997) The Modernity of Witchcraft: Occult in Postcolonial Africa. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia. Green, Linda (1999) Fear as a Way of Life: Mayan Widows in Rural Guatemala. New York: Columbia University Press. Guha, Ramachandra (2007) ‘Adivasis, Naxalites and Indian Democracy’. Economic and Political Weekly, 11 August 2007: 3305–12.

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Guha, Ranajit (1999) Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Hobsbawm, Eric (1959) Primitive Rebels: Studies in the Archaic Forms of Social Movements in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Kelly, Tobias (2008) ‘The Attractions of Accountancy: Understanding the Ordinary During the Second Palestinian Intifada’. Ethnography 9(3): 351–76. Kunnath, George (2006) ‘Becoming a Naxalite in Rural Bihar: Class Struggle and its Contradictions’. The Journal of Peasant Studies 33(1): 89–123. Lecomte-Tilouine, Marie (2009) ‘Terror in the Maoist Model Village, Mid-Western Nepal’. Dialectical Anthropology 33(3–4): 383–401. Mahmood, Saba (2001) ‘Feminist Theory, Embodiment, and the Docile Agent: Some Reflections on the Egyptian Islamic Revival’. Cultural Anthropology 16(2): 202–36. Miller, Arthur (2000) ‘Are You Now Or Were You Ever?’ Guardian/Observer, 17 June. Mishra, Trinath (2007) Barrel of the Gun: The Maoist Challenge and Indian Democracy. Delhi: Sheridan Book Company. Ortner, Sherry (1995) ‘Resistance and the Problem of Ethnographic Refusal’. Comparative Studies in Society and History 37(1): 171–93. Scott, James (1985) Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Shah, Alpa (2006) ‘Markets of Protection: The “Terrorist” Maoist Movement and the State in Jharkhand, India’. Critique of Anthropology 26(3): 297–314. ——— (2009) ‘Morality, Corruption and the State: Insights from Jharkhand, India’. Journal of Development Studies 45(3): 295–313. Shneiderman, Sara Beth (2009) ‘The Formation of Political Consciousness in Rural Nepal’. Dialectical Anthropology 33(3–4): 287–303.

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Taussig, Michael (1987) Colonialism, Shamanism, and the Wild Man: A Study of Terror and Healing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Turnaturi, Gabriella (2007) Betrayals: The Unpredictability of Human Relations, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. West, Harry and Todd Sanders (eds) (2003) Transparency and Conspiracy: Ethnographies of Suspicion in the New World Order. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Willis, Paul (1978) Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs. Westmead, Hants: Saxon House. Worsley, Peter (1957) The Trumpet Shall Sound: A Study of ‘Cargo’ Cults in Melanesia. New York: Schocken Books.

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8 ‘SOMETHING WENT WRONG WITH THIS CAPITALISM’: ILLUSION AND DOUBT IN A HUNGARIAN (POST-) INDUSTRIAL COMMUNITY Eszter Bartha

Introduction: working-class reflections on the regime change of 19891 Production started here, in this shop, so I had a good grasp of the capacities of the factory. We had to provide raw material for 200 rear axles and 60 to 80 motors a day. So you can imagine how much we produced back then. Today? We are [only] producing 300 axles a month and the motor production has almost completely disappeared. I read in the newspaper that we sold ten or five pieces per month, so, what are we talking about, comrades? We are doing lease-work in the forge-shop. Production plummeted – that’s all I can tell you. I am not complaining because I lost interest. I will retire in four years’ time, they can do whatever they want – I don’t care. [The new owners] only make a profit from selling off property. Here too. I think that they are not even planning to increase production in this factory. Not that I care. I lost my enthusiasm a long time ago, which is a pity, because we 191

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had a very good, highly skilled, experienced, collective here. Not much is left of it. They [the new managers] transferred most of the people to other units, some of my old colleagues retired, and some others were sent to early retirement. It is not real capitalism that we are having here, it is all fake … If I had been younger I would not have put up with this uncertainty, the constant reorganizations and outsourcing I would have given notice a long time ago. I would have found other work [but] I was too old to give it a try. (Sándor, skilled worker, foreman, 59)2

Sándor was one of the Rába workers I interviewed in Hungary between 2002 and 2005 as part of an oral history project which aimed to map workers’ experiences of the transition from socialism to capitalism and to assess the impact of these experiences on their social and political attitudes.3 My working hypothesis was that there would be a direct link between experience and political ideas: a negative experience of postsocialist change was expected to generate a working-class criticism of the new, capitalist regime and a support of – or search for – left-wing political alternatives. However, instead of straightforwardly affirming this hypothesis, the interview material raised doubts not only about the validity of the hypothesis but also about the rationality of the political choices made by people who have many reasons to feel downgraded in the new system. In this chapter I set out to explore how workers at an ex-socialist factory seek to make sense of the experience of systemic change, which in many ways contradicted the expectation that capitalism would eventually bring prosperity and material welfare to Eastern Europe, which the socialist ‘workers’ state’ had promised but failed to provide. The ambition of this chapter is to go beyond the particular context of a Hungarian postindustrial community and to examine working-class narratives in relation to the wider European and global environment, following the extended case method as described by Burawoy (2000).

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Illusion and doubt are key concepts in grasping the meaning of systemic change from the perspective of the Rába workers I interviewed. When I speak of illusion, I am fully aware of the negative connotations of the term; it refers to something that is untrue and therefore seems to suggest false consciousness. Importantly, however, the concept also draws attention to the rift between the person who expresses a desire, the object at which it is directed and the means by which it can be achieved. It is this aspect that is important in understanding the ways in which Rába workers have engaged with rapidly changing ideological narratives. A comparison with the related concept of ‘hope’ may illustrate this point. Based on his ethnographic research conducted with artists and Orthodox Christians in contemporary Moscow, Zigon (2009) observes that hope can function as a temporal orientation of intentional ethical action in moments of what he calls a moral breakdown. In his inspiring reinterpretation of the concept of hope, Zigon focuses on the internal disposition of individuals. By contrast, in this chapter I focus on the collective hopes, or what I call illusions, of post-socialist working-class communities in relation to external referents, most concretely the idea of a fair and prosperous society (cf. Losonczi 2005; H. Sas 2003; Szalai 2003). Interest in the politics of labour in Eastern Europe revived with the rise of populist parties and the surprising workingclass oscillation between left-wing and right-wing populism. Ost (2005) argues that after the regime change, a large part of the Polish intelligentsia turned away from the original ideas of Solidarity, and wholeheartedly supported privatization and neo-liberal capitalism. Disappointed with both the liberals and the socialists, many Polish workers started to sympathize with right-wing populist politicians, who promised the ‘taming’ of global capitalism and a stronger representation of national interests. Kalb (2009) offers an in-depth anthropological study of working-class political ideas, showing how a former Solidarity activist, who proudly recalled his long fight

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against the Communist regime in defence of labour interests, can reconcile left-wing, socialist ideas with support for rightwing, populist parties. The post-socialist anthropological field offers a perfect terrain for studying the practice of both illusion and doubt – and the trajectory does not necessarily progress straightforwardly from illusion to doubt (Burawoy and Verdery 1999; Hann 2002; Kalb 2009). In the euphoric mood of 1989 few people would have believed that they could become disappointed not only with ‘actually existing’ socialism but also with ‘actually existing’ capitalism. By the late 1980s it had become clear that the modernization project of state socialism had failed, and that the system possessed neither the ideological nor the economic resources to prevent the reintegration of the Eastern European semi-periphery into the global capitalist system. The adoption of Western institutions facilitated new ‘expectations of modernity’. I adopt the phrase ‘expectations of modernity’ from Ferguson’s analysis (1999) of the success and failure of the modernization project in Zambia. As Ferguson argues, the myth of modernization was never solely an academic myth. It provided a set of categories and premises that continued to shape people’s experiences and interpretations of their lives well after modernization had become a discredited theory in the academic world. Such expectations thrived in Eastern Europe after the failure of the Communist modernization project. As Bryant and Mokrzycki (1994) argue, they combined the aspiration to achieve the Western level of material affluence while maintaining universal employment. The capitalist modernization project received ideological support from transition theory (known among critics as ‘transitology’), which dominated the discourse on transformation in the first few years after 1989–1991.4 One could, indeed, describe this age as the era of grand illusions, when not only the masses of working people but also the new Eastern European political elite believed that Communism had been the main cause of economic backwardness. The illusion that a quick

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transition would be possible gained its strength partly from the fact that this narrative became the new legitimizing ideology of post-socialist regimes, which considered successful modernization as a necessary condition for democratic transformation. Furthermore, the grand illusion of capitalism, which promised greater prosperity for the working people, prevented the formation of any effective social movement or resistance to neo-liberal capitalism.5 For many Hungarian workers reality was very different from what the official discourse proclaimed it to be. Restructuring and the draconian bankruptcy law of 1992 eliminated 27.2 per cent of all of the jobs that existed in the country in the eight years after 1989. In 2008 there were 23.2 per cent fewer jobs than 19 years previously (Pittaway 2010a). The outright dismantling of the welfare state further increased the human and social costs of industrial restructuring. To add insult to injury, many economists held the socialist working class responsible for the poor performance of the old industries: they were depicted as inflexible, lazy, undisciplined and thus unprepared to adapt to a capitalist, competitive working environment. Since the political elite lived under the spell of the grand illusion of ‘catching-up’ development, the working class became an unfashionable academic topic. While in the heyday of socialism it required both political and academic courage to challenge the highly simplified notion of the structure of socialist society (two classes – one stratum),6 after the collapse of socialist regimes the validity of the concept of class was called into question. Under socialism, the large industrial skilled working class was unquestionably part of the middle class with respect to income, housing, standard of living, educational opportunities for their children, the consumption of cultural products and social position. However, the focus on consumption simultaneously weakened the political consciousness of the working class (Bartha 2007; Pittaway 2007; Szalai 2004). The working class was declared to be the ruling class but in practice the party ruled in the name of the workers, who had no

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direct control over the means of production and no effective influence on the choices of the leaders and the managers. Workers accepted their exclusion from political decision-making in exchange for the material concessions that the party offered them: a social welfare policy, which was very generous by Hungarian standards, the increase of working-class wages, housing policies and the support of education and workingclass culture and community life. This policy oriented workingclass consciousness towards consumption, and it encouraged an essentially materialistic way of thinking. The consumerist turn in the party’s policy towards the working class and the effective exclusion of the discussion of left-wing alternatives from the public sphere explain why there was no working-class resistance to the restoration of capitalism. The socialist utopia of the workers’ state was quickly replaced with the capitalist utopia of ‘catching up’ with the living standards of the Scandinavian, Austrian or West German workers. How did people respond to the loss of this new hope, and a system which, instead of bringing them greater material prosperity, threatened or deprived them of their established middle-class status? For the purpose of analysis it is important to distinguish between two kinds of doubt. The first kind of doubt is uncertainty about what should be considered real and true. The second kind is doubt about what to do, what lessons to draw from living under both socialism and capitalism and how to translate this experience into a political ideology. Why did so many workers give credit to populist narratives, which relieved people of individual responsibility and explained the failure of both the socialist and capitalist utopian states through the wrongdoing of external and internal ‘enemies’ rather than problems inherent in the internal structure of the nation? While trying to answer this question, I adopt a dynamic, relational approach to class following Kalb (1997), which acknowledges that political choices need to be understood in relation to the

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specific historical context. The Communist Party had widely propagated the idea of the working class. Even if workers did not believe wholeheartedly in this ideological narrative, neither these notions nor their associated dispositions have simply evaporated. It is because of this that doubt is so central to the analysis: it directs attention to what is left of the socialist mentalities, and how this is reflected in the construction of new working-class identities. Successful modernization or fake capitalism? Hard doubts and uncertain responses The Hungarian Wagon and Machine Factory, better known as Rába, was founded in 1896 in Győr, a city in the north-western and highly industrialized part of Hungary. The factory gradually expanded until it employed nearly 20,000 people in Győr in 1975 (about 15,000 of whom were blue-collar workers).7 The economic success of Rába received wide media coverage: it was held to be a model socialist factory which exported not only to the Soviet Union but also to the United States, paid its workers well and was the chief sponsor of various sporting and cultural activities in Győr. The enterprise built a huge stadium, sponsored the local football team called Rába ETO and launched many training and scholarship programmes. It also had a technical library, a cultural centre, a brass band, a choir, a dance group and a sports’ club. In 1990, with the collapse of the Comecon market, Rába immediately accumulated heavy debts which only the government could guarantee. In 1991 the factory was taken under the control of the State Property Agency (SPA) and a new manager was appointed, under whose leadership the company implemented a programme of deep restructuring, including layoffs. The closure of the Motor and Vehicle Limited works was planned and further layoffs were anticipated. The factory had around 4,000 employees at the time of interviewing.

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Figure 10 Closed and abandoned factories in Budapest.

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The central aim in the following sections is to explore how workers interpret the socialist past and new capitalist regime differently, and how essentially similar experiences are translated into different political ideologies. The social and cultural homogeneity of the working class has been long called into question (see for example Kemeny 1990). Based on life-history interviews I have identified three different types of responses to the loss of the ‘grand illusions’ of both socialism and capitalism, which I analyse in relation to the respondents’ family background, education, career in the two regimes and political sympathies. I speak of responses rather than political identities precisely because political ideologies are so fragile and unstable in post-socialist Hungary. My real concern is to identify the factors that nourish uncertainty and trigger a continuous oscillation between hope, illusion and doubt among the working people, which renders them blind to the possibility of independent political action. 1. The ex-Communist executives People who held executive positions during the Kadar regime often preserved their socialist sympathies, even if they were also – to varying degrees – critical of the state’s socialist past. Most former executives argued that the planned economy had reached its limits, and that from a technological point of view, socialism was doomed to failure. However, they clearly differed in their assessment of the capitalist regime, proffering opinions ranging from sharp criticism of the increasing exploitation of the working class to wholehearted support of the newly established democracy. The real difference, then, lay not in the evaluation of the socialist system as such but in the labels with which the former executives identified themselves after the change of regimes. Géza (a 73-year-old retired manager) had a ‘typical’ socialist career. He was trained as an iron worker. Early on in his career he was offered a job as a foreman but he refused: ‘I said that it was not my kind of thing. As a skilled worker, I earned 5,000 forint, which was a large sum at that time. You could buy a flat for 30,000 forint, and not some kind of temporary lodgings but a really good flat. As a foreman, I would not have been able to

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make that much money. Skilled workers were highly rewarded at the time.’ Géza eventually accepted an offer to undertake a degree programme at the workers’ university,8 and he was appointed manager in the production department, a position he held until he retired in 1990. Although he had an upwardly mobile career in Rába, he spoke with irony about the Communist past and the awards and titles he had received: ‘Once I told my grandson: “if I put on all of my decorations, I look exactly like comrade Brezhnev” [he laughs].’ When comparing his own career with his son’s life, Géza stressed that he used to be certain that he would keep his job while his son had temporary and poorly paid jobs, and had to work much longer hours to make ends meet. The son was also less successful financially than his father had been: Géza bought his first flat when he was 24, while his son and his wife still lived in the house of his parents. Géza also expressed concern for other working people in the new, capitalist regime. ‘As we were taught in the party school,’ he added with a gesture of resignation: Our age group would not have been mentally prepared to bear the uncertainties that young people are facing today. … I can tell you [an] example. A friend of mine told me that he got a call from his boss: ‘you don’t need to come to work tomorrow.’ He did not even bother to tell him personally that he was dismissed. Something like this could never happen under socialism … Everybody had a safe existence. People were treated more humanely back then. Even if you were a boss, you could not do whatever you wanted.

Géza resigned his party membership in 1989: ‘I told to the party secretary [sic] that I couldn’t agree with the proposed reforms, full-scale privatization and the reorganization of the party.9 … They even dropped the term worker from the name of the party.10 I’m done with it, and I won’t join any other parties or religious groups.’ In Géza’s judgement the regime change made little difference to his life: since he finished his active career shortly afterwards, for him it no longer mattered that the factory was privatized. He

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complained, though, that the changes had deprived pensioners of part of the funds that had been collected under socialism: ‘We were told at the time that 30 per cent of our wages would go to the state social fund. In 1989 this democracy arrived, and they announced that this 30 per cent is lost. … I think that the people, who built this country from the ruins after the Second World War, really deserve to live a bit better in their old age.’ Géza argued that he was disappointed with the socialist party because they failed to represent working-class interests. Although he did not consider himself a committed comrade (as his irreverent comment on his socialist awards showed), he continued to harbour a consistent ‘workerist’ ideology.11 Géza spoke with anger and regret about the loss of thousands of jobs in Győr, which he attributed solely to the greed of the rival capitalist companies and the short-sightedness of the Hungarian political elite, who sold the ‘property of the people’ for foreign capital: How many people were affected? Nearly 20,000 people worked in Rába, and 6,000 in Richards textile factory [where his wife worked]. Now you can see car shops, supermarkets and restaurants in the place where Richards stood. But how many people can these new services employ? And what will happen to those who were made redundant? When this democracy came in, they sold everything that was movable in this country.

Géza argued that workers had more rights under the Kádár regime than under capitalism: they had a secure existence; they received more social benefits and were held in higher respect in their workplace.12 He said that the representation of labour interests practically ceased to exist after the regime change and the new trade unions were left fragmented and powerless: The first thing that this democracy did was to destroy the trade unions. They said that they were under the control of the party. I can tell you that they had more say in the management than these new organizations have today. I heard that in Rába there are a number of different trade unions. What’s the point? Do

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they want to organize a strike with ten people? Ridiculous! No wonder that they are totally dependent on the management. … The organized working class has disappeared, and the trade unions are powerless and insignificant.

As we can see from the above, Géza did not have a high opinion of the new system, which destroyed Hungarian industry and robbed pensioners of their savings. In his opinion the situation of the working class deteriorated in all important aspects: material rewards, social prestige and political power. He spoke of ‘plundering capitalism’ and openly expressed his disappointment with the new political regime. While Géza made a point of speaking in the name of the Hungarian working class, Károly (a 58-year-old manager) spoke from a different position. He worked as a manager at Rába until privatization. He disagreed with the plans of the new proprietors, who had no long-term plans for strategic development and he found a new managerial position with Audi. Károly spoke of the decline of Rába with bitterness: he argued that restructuring was successful in the company, and it was only due to financial mismanagement that Rába failed to attract investors. Károly explained his left-wing sympathies with reference to his family history: Today it is a fashion to glorify the pre-war era because Hungarians are always going from one extreme to the other. In the old times they claimed that everything started with socialism, now it is fashionable to speak badly of everything that the Communists have done. My mother was a servant girl in the pre-war era, and I don’t think that this [period] should be glorified. There was a rift between the social classes, and family contacts mattered much more than individual talent. I don’t think that the situation is as bad today as back then but [in any case] poor people had more opportunities under socialism. (Károly, 58, manager)

Károly did not consider himself a member of any party cadre: he was first and foremost a technical manager, whose task was to provide for continuous production. He told me anecdotes about

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the legendary rigorousness and work discipline of Ede Horváth (the director of Rába from 1963 to 1990), who devoted his life to the prosperity of the factory, but also demanded the same commitment from his managers. To be sure, Károly greeted 1989 with enthusiasm: he did not believe that the socialist system was economically sustainable and appreciated political freedom as an important achievement. Although he had a good life under socialism (for which he had worked very hard), he stressed that he felt freer in the new system. He also stressed that his children have much more choice and opportunity (including travel) than he and his wife had. Károly had supported the socialist party because ‘they were leading the country towards Europe’. Successful modernization and expertise were the chief slogans of the socialist party, which found a responsive ear among the technocratic strata, who were socialized in the Kádár regime. Like Károly, many were suspicious of (and resistant to) any populist political ideology; but the socialist party’s plea for entrusting experts with the management of the country was in line with their technocratic, problem-solving way of thinking. Károly remained loyal to his leftist ideas, but his view of the post-1989 working-class predicament is very different from Geza’s, as the following quote illustrates: I think that the [post-1989 communist] Workers’ Party is out of touch with reality. [The Kádár regime] could not have been continued. There was a large surplus of personnel. Ede Horváth once tried to dismiss people, who did not produce anything, but there was political pressure on the enterprises [to keep them employed]. People were far less motivated to develop themselves … Why should I work hard if I get the same money as my friend, Feri, who does not do a thing? I agree that unemployment is bad but you should also take into consideration: who are [the] unemployed? Skilled workers are in high demand everywhere. If you take the example of Győr, you will hardly find skilled workers among the unemployed.13

As the above accounts show, even former executives, whom we can count among the beneficiaries of the socialist regime,

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responded differently to the regime change. Géza, who retired in 1989, identified himself closely with the ‘workerist’ ideology of the Communist party. While he observed that the transition severely reduced working-class jobs, he did not observe similar processes occurring in Western countries, because, in his view, they did not have a ‘traitor’ socialist political elite. When I asked him directly whether he wanted the Kádár regime back, after some hesitation he gave a negative answer. When Géza compared the two regimes, there was a strong ambiguity in his evaluation of socialism. On the one hand, he argued that workers were socially secure in the old regime, while in the new one they were powerless and exploited by the managers and capitalist owners. This exploitation manifested itself in low wages, managerial tyranny and the demand for strong work discipline. On the other hand, however, he argued that workers were not well paid under socialism either, Ede Horváth supported an autocratic leadership style and ‘the Wagon Factory was famous [for] the rigorous work discipline’. Later in the interview he added that workers have more choices in the new system than in the old one because there are more small- and middle-size companies and because it is easier to start an enterprise. Working-class ambiguity towards socialism is illustrated in another example. The 78-year-old Mihály had an exemplary Communist career: from a Stakhanovite he became a factory manager. Mihály proudly told me that as a skilled worker, who worked in a shift system, he earned very good money and considered himself materially satisfied. He bought a house, and his wife ordered all the furniture from a carpenter because Mihály could afford the craftsmanship and the expensive material. Similarly to Géza, he said that the working class was held in higher esteem under socialism than under capitalism. Nonetheless, when he compared the two regimes, he concluded that he would have had a better life had he lived in an advanced capitalist country: ‘When the [1956] revolution broke out, my friend invited me to settle in the US and start working in his business. I tell you the truth: I decided to immigrate but my daughter got sick. I was an outstanding worker but I would have had greater opportunities in the US.’

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Even within the individual narratives we can find recurring doubt about the workers’ evaluation of the ‘workers’ state’. It is important to stress that all interview partners measured the achievements of the old regime primarily by the standard of living that it offered to the workers. The regime change brought different opportunities for the ex-Communist executives. Károly was the most consistent in his criticism of the old regime. He, however – as he admitted – belonged to the new elite with his family, and he identified himself with the emerging bourgeois strata and not with the working class. His ambition to become fully integrated into the new elite is shown by the fact that he consistently argued that the working class lived better under capitalism than under socialism – which is in line with the legitimating ideology of the new elite. Sometimes, however, he also expressed doubts about this ideology, admitting that ‘a large part of the working class lost the material security that they enjoyed under socialism’. However, this price, he insisted, had to be paid in order to develop the Hungarian economy. The comparison of the two regimes raises further questions about the new political commitments of the ex-Communist executives. Géza supported the Workers’ Party, of which Károly was intensely critical. Nonetheless, the argument that ‘foreign capital robbed Hungary’ nicely fits in with the rhetoric of far-rightist, nationalistic, anti-Roma and anti-Semitic parties of which Jobbik is the most prominent in contemporary Hungary. Its alarming success in the parliamentary election of 2010 (12 per cent of the vote) suggests that people who wanted ‘radical social change’ chose to support right-wing rather than left-wing populism (the Workers’ Party did not make it into the parliament). 2. The socialist old guard The label ‘old guard’ refers to the skilled core of the large industrial working class, which was fully integrated into the middle class under socialism. One key factor to understand their disappointment with the new regime is the devaluation of their skills, which were once highly appreciated in the Wagon Factory. All of the accounts reflected a sharp contrast between the glorious

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socialist past of the factory, when ‘there was a lot of work’ and Rába was held in high esteem, and the post-1989 situation associated with decline. Even though Rába was privatized, there were no visible signs that the factory was successfully integrated into the global market. On the contrary, without the governmental subsidies that the factory previously received, the decline continued: all Rába workers spoke of the loss of the old prestige of Rába products, the drastic shrinking of production, the fear of continuing lay-offs, the selling of the valuable estates of the factory and the failure to modernize the factory buildings and infrastructure. Sándor described the experience of transition in the factory as ‘fake capitalism’, and this opinion was shared by the overwhelming majority of the Rába workers interviewed. The presence of a new Audi factory in Győr rendered the contrast even more painful: while many workers spoke of Audi with resentment because it had enticed the best Rába workers, they added that it had been their mistake to remain loyal to a factory in decline. Sándor’s main response to the disintegration of the factory and the disappearance of the old guard seemed to be one of passivity and resignation. During the interview he repeatedly stressed that he no longer cared for what was going on in the factory; he was just waiting for his pension. Whereas in the old times he had enjoyed going to work, he said that ‘today I am happy when I can go home’. From his point of view there was no perspective in the factory leadership: privatization meant that the valuable workshops were sold and mismanagement caused the remaining production to deteriorate. He spoke of ‘fake capitalism’ not only with respect to what he experienced in the Wagon Factory but also in relation to the wider national economy: I was happy when this socialism collapsed because I hated that stupid ideology. … It was a ‘bread-and-butter’ democracy because everybody had to get the same piece of bread and if you worked more, you might have not received a bigger slice. When I was a foreman, I had to make all kind of tricks so that the workers could get money for overtime work. I really hated it. After having struggled with the [bureaucracy] I resigned

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from this post and became a blue-collar worker again. So I really think that the change of regimes was necessary, and it was a good thing. What bothers me is the appearance of these new politicians, who are only interested in enriching themselves. One day they say this, the second day exactly the opposite because they change their opinions according to their interests. … Here everybody wants to be a millionaire from one day to the next, the main business is selling, buying, consulting. They don’t produce anything, they keep on talking, talking, talking … giving advice, selling, buying … The politicians and these ‘selling–buying’ people live from the money of the tax-payers. And the tax system is totally dysfunctional because if you don’t cheat the state, you can’t even live from your work.

While Sándor expressed no desire for the Kádár regime to return, he was equally critical of the material difficulties in the new environment. He and his wife raised three children, each of whom went to university. Sándor said that on his present wage he would not have been able to cover the expenses of his children’s education. In the old regime, apart from educating his children, he bought a house and a summer cottage. He did not consider this a very big achievement; nonetheless, he argued that in today’s Hungary young people have little chance to establish their own home if they live on ‘normal’ wages and can’t rely on parental support. He said that he was lucky that he no longer needed to support his children, which enabled him to keep his former standard of living. His colleagues, who still had dependent children, were forced to give up many of their former luxuries: ‘they stopped going on holidays, they had to sell their cars, they can’t buy new clothes, the beginning of the school year is a catastrophe because everything is so expensive …’ In spite of his doubts about ‘fake capitalism’, Sándor regarded democracy as an important achievement. He was a liberal voter because if capitalism functioned properly it would bring prosperity to the country and the majority of the people. He argued that the fall of the Communist regime was inevitable: ‘Socialism was a balloon. How long did it last? For 11–12 years they robbed

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the rich of all of their possessions. And after they exhausted the internal reserves, they started to borrow money. And when they received no more credit, the whole system collapsed like a house of cards. This was socialism in Hungary.’ Workers gave different responses to the decline of the social and material recognition of the working class. While Sándor recognized that the situation of the working class deteriorated in relation to the new ‘bourgeois’ strata (managers, new entrepreneurs, employees of the financial and commercial sectors, referred to as ‘selling–buying people’), he remained pro-capitalist. Others like Judit (administrator, 50) were outraged by the social injustice that they and their families experienced in the new regime, which led them to question the legitimacy of the new regime. Judit’s material situation was particularly difficult due to the fact that she had two teenage children, whom she wanted to educate at any cost. As we have seen from the above accounts, all respondents agreed that the standard of living of the working class declined in comparison with the new ‘bourgeois’ middle class. Those with dependent children, moreover, were confronted not only with the loss of their middle-class status but also with the fact that their children were now disadvantaged in comparison to the children of the wealthier social strata. The growing material hardship of ordinary workers and the increasing social inequalities reinforced the feeling that the working class had been abandoned by the new elite and all the political parties: I don’t want the Kádár regime back even though I did have a much better life back then. I could spend my holidays abroad, at the beaches of Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. I had a very active social life. I could go everywhere, to concerts, cinema and theatre … I think that [the changes] benefited only a narrow group of people: managers, economists and lawyers. My sister works as an accountant and she makes a lot of money. I am not envious but I don’t think that such differences in the wages are justified. Perhaps people were not very rich in the Kádár regime, but real misery was also rare. … And I

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am really afraid that this will affect my children … Both are clever [and] I am so proud when their names are listed among the excellent students. My son studies in an elite high school and the parents of his classmates are all managers, lawyers and bankers. My children are not demanding and they fully understand that we can’t afford as much as others. But I really feel guilty because they are left out of so many things … When there is a school excursion and we pick up my son, I always tell my husband: leave the car at the back of the car-park so that the other children won’t see that we have such an old car.

Judit said that she could have studied when she was young but at the time she liked her factory job and her colleagues, which she did not want to leave. She regretted this decision very much because ‘without education you have absolutely no chance in this new system’. Judit was determined to send her children to university. She said that she did not know how she would manage it financially but she ‘would never let them miss the chance’ to qualify for good jobs. Judit spoke of the increasing costs of higher education with understandable bitterness: she related how her sister’s son, who never liked studying, left three university degree programmes without earning a degree while her own children, who are excellent students, have to fight much harder to find their way in life. The above accounts reflect the main grievances of the skilled, urban core of the large industrial working class. Although this layer was considered to be the social base of the Communist regime, many of them said that they were happy when it collapsed because the relative material security did not compensate for the political and economic constraints and the suppression (or limitation) of individual initiative. To be sure, they would have wholeheartedly supported a differentiating wage system because they believed that a more qualified or productive worker deserved a higher reward. Nonetheless, the new regime essentially failed to fulfil these expectations of ‘normative’ capitalism (similar to the Weberian concept of the Protestant work ethic).

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What rendered this group particularly disappointed was that the new regime highly valued those sectors that the workers held to be unproductive (finance, commerce, service industries). The large fortunes which the new elite accumulated were seen as particularly unjust to workers, who had to be content with a lower social status and declining paycheck. Their political responses varied, however. Judit was fully aware of the fact that the socialist party had called for further privatization, but she argued that a socialist government was more likely to defend the interests of the ‘little man’ than a right-wing, conservative party. Sándor spoke of ‘fake capitalism’ but he said that he would stick to his liberal sympathies. Disappointed in both regimes, the political choice of left-wing and liberal voters was motivated by a new illusion: that the observed excesses would be eliminated in the future and that Hungary’s membership of the European Union would finally fulfil the 1989 promise to bring about higher levels of welfare. Left-wing sympathies could, however, easily be converted into support for right-wing, nationalistic political ideologies. Many workers argued that the decline of the factory was the result of a conscious design: the managers destroyed production deliberately because the new owners were only interested in selling the valuable estates of the factory. This opinion was represented by Imre (a 51-year-old skilled worker), whose account explains why the workers saw the interests of the financial and productive sectors as essentially contradictory: We started the production of buses in 1998 … and then [after two years] the new management said that there is no market for our buses and the business is not profitable. So they decided to terminate the whole project and stop production. I did not understand this. No new product can be made profitable in two and a half years. Nowhere in the world does it work like that. I think that the problem is that the new financial investors are only interested in making immediate profit. They don’t even listen to the opinion of technical experts. The owners want to get back their money now, and

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they don’t mind what is going to happen to the factory and the workers in 10–15 years time.

The belief that the new elite utterly failed to represent the interests of the Hungarian economy was shared by many workers. New wealth was linked with the financial sector and the multinational companies, both of which were dominated by global capital. Workers blamed the new elite for selling the large Hungarian factories to their Western rivals, who had no interest in investing capital in the development of Hungarian industry and happily closed these factories in order to get rid of business competition. It was widely believed that Hungary was exploited by global capital: workers pointed out that Audi paid much less to its employees in Győr than to those employed in Germany. The illusion of welfare capitalism which thrived around 1990 was replaced with a new, anti-globalist rhetoric: the West was only interested in acquiring Hungarian markets for their products and in exploiting the country’s cheap labour force. This assessment rendered many workers susceptible to right-wing, nationalist ideologies: The world economy has already decided that Hungarian labour is too expensive. They cannot make a big [profit] on us regardless of the fact that they pay here one-seventh of what they have to pay to the German workers in Ingolstad [Audi headquarters]. I am not a nationalist but … the Hungarian people should respect their own country; now they’re taking us for nothing. That is the truth. We don’t get any respect. (János, skilled worker, 50)

The narrative of János is a typical example of how left-wing ideas can be reconciled with support for right-wing, populist parties. As he explained, János was a member of the party in the Kádár regime, and he passionately spoke against the increasing exploitation of the working class in the new system. He was, however, deeply disillusioned with the socialist party because they supported full-scale privatization and selling Hungarian

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factories to Western competition. János stressed that he was not a Communist but insisted that capitalism should be regulated, and the government should support Hungarian industry much more firmly than did the socialist-liberal coalition, whom he held to be traitors to both working-class and national interests. Workers’ resentment of the financial sector, which allegedly destroyed production in Hungary, proved to be a further attraction for the far right. The rumour that an Israeli real estate agency would buy the central estate of the factory triggered full-fledged conspiracy theories: It is Jewish capital that is robbing this country. This is the general opinion here. And I agree, because it is my own factual experience. I stress that I am not an anti-Semite. I have no personal problem with Jews at all. [But] now they are selling [the factory] to Israeli capital. (József, skilled worker, 51)

Similarly to the ex-Communist executives, the socialist old guard spoke of socialism with ambiguity. On the one hand, Sándor argued that workers could afford more in the old system than in the new one; on the other hand, he clearly expressed his strong dislike of the socialist regime (especially the pointless and dysfunctional rules, the ‘fake’ Marxist-Leninist ideology and the constraints on political freedom). The feeling of political powerlessness, however, persisted. Sándor spoke of apathy and resignation: he lost his interest in his work environment because he felt unable to influence it. Contrary to Zigon’s interviewees in Moscow, for whom hope was a future-oriented internal disposition (Zigon 2009), for the socialist old guard hope, if it was expressed at all, had external referents: although the expectation of a better life under capitalism failed to materialize, people like Judit continued to hope that the government would make steps to improve the situation of the people. Resignation was expressed in many other life-history interviews with Rába workers. They repeatedly asserted that Rába fell victim to ‘fake capitalism’: the managers sold the most valuable parts of the factory, they failed to find new markets and the new

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proprietors did not want to invest in technological development. The trade unions that operated in Rába were divided and weak. Shop stewards stressed that the socialist trade union used to have more power and influence than the new, fragmented organizations of which only a relatively small percentage of employees was a member. As is reflected in the interviews, people withdrew from any collective action to improve their situation. Active hope for them meant improving the life chances of their children. Many workers like Judit saw the education of their children as their only opportunity to advance. There was, however, no attempt to strengthen working-class identities in the new social and cultural milieu. Rather, workers would argue that they wanted ‘something better’ for their children than a working-class life. Ambiguity and doubt about the socialist past can be explained through this remarkable erosion of socialist working-class consciousness. On the one hand, workers were aware of having been downgraded in the new regime, which was expected to bring them a better life. On the other hand, many were doubtful about the factual social achievements of ‘actually existing’ socialism, and they continued to hope that their children would have more opportunities in a capitalist system, where national interests play a greater role. I speak of passive hope because the interviewees saw no direct link between their actions and the change of their wider environment. Under the Kádár regime people expected the government to provide for the continuous increase of their standard of living. This attitude persisted even if the socialist utopia of a workers’ state was replaced with the expectation of welfare capitalism. Right-wing parties were keen to exploit the deeply rooted disappointment with post-socialist society felt by the many losers of the change of regimes. The feeling that the working class was downgraded in the new system reinforced the belief in a different, ‘national’ model of capitalism, which was expected to give justice to the people, who were robbed of the national property after 1989. The new illusion of national capitalism was in line with the sharp criticism of the ‘corrupt’ political elite, which benefited from the change of regimes. Since

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many workers believed that the Communist elite had been able to convert their political privileges to economic capital in the new system, they would also support (partial) redistribution of property, re-nationalization and the punishment of those guilty of corruption. In the absence of a viable left-wing alternative, disillusionment with ‘actually existing’ capitalism translated into resentment against the rule of global capital and the subordinated position of Hungarian industry, and into support for a strong state, which could regulate multinational companies and the operation of the transnational financial sector in the country. The feeling of powerlessness and frustration because of the fundamental social and material injustices that workers experience under capitalism therefore strengthened populist parties and failed to translate into the criticism of the capitalist system. 3. The ‘committed’ anti-Communists As the above life-histories show, a ‘Communist’ past rarely resulted in the support of Communism after 1989. An antiCommunist family history, however, was often an indicator of very persistent political commitments in the opposite direction. Some of my interview partners proudly declared that under no circumstances would they vote for left-wing political parties, and stressed that these parties, which they considered to be corrupt by definition, never do any good to the nation. As far as can be determined, these strong political views were not motivated by great catastrophes in the family history: the narrators came from poor peasant families, whom the Communists could not have robbed of considerable property. Interestingly, their post-1989 experience was similar to the previously discussed accounts and they evaluated the situation of labour in post-socialist Hungary in much the same way. Nonetheless, they continued to harbour strong resentment against the Communist regime, and this feeling overruled any other considerations. Miklós (skilled worker, entrepreneur, 51) was born in a village, the late son of a peasant family. He explained his choice of trade through his parents’ wish that he should leave the village:

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[My father] did not believe in this community work and communal existence that the Communists propagated. He told me that it’s hardly possible to make a living in the cooperative farm. … This is how I decided to be a plumber. I started working in the Wagon Factory. Professionally, it was a very good choice. They had a highly trained team there, I learnt many skills. But work was overregulated like everything under Communism. You had to start at six in the morning, if you were one minute late, there was no excuse. Trains were often late, especially in winter, [so] I would have to get up at 3.30 to catch an earlier train.

The post-1989 career of Miklós started as a capitalist success story. He expanded his business and in the best years he employed more than 15 people. Unfortunately, he explained, he failed to make the right choice of people, could not maintain discipline and felt enormously stressed because he held himself responsible for the delays, bad work and personal problems of his people. Since he wanted to satisfy both his clients and his employees, he felt under constant pressure, which led to a serious illness. After that, he became a maintenance man in an enterprise, which he described as ‘a very relaxed job’ and which allowed him to accept small orders to do alone in his free time. It reminded him of the time when he was a socialist entrepreneur – as he observed with self-irony. Miklós’s evaluation of the changes agreed with the opinion of the socialist old guard in two important aspects. Firstly, his experience of working as an entrepreneur in both regimes reinforced the perception that contrary to his previous expectations, Hungarian capitalism failed to appreciate productive work and individual initiative. In fact, string-pulling, corruption, and dishonest and unlawful entrepreneurship were more prevalent in the new system than in the old one: It was the dream of my youth to be self-employed, to be as they now say an entrepreneur. But I hate this new term because it is applied to practically anything today. There is no respect for individual skills or good craftsmanship anymore.

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… If you have money, you don’t need to know anything, you just employ people who know the business. But I would never equate this with the entrepreneurs of the past, who mastered their profession. I think that entrepreneurship underwent a huge dilution … It is a very superficial system, with very superficial values …

Like Sándor, Miklós contrasted a somewhat idealized view of capitalism with a reality in which Hungarian industry was downgraded and the employees of the financial and commercial sectors benefited at the expense of producers among whom Miklós counted himself. Although he did not consider himself a ‘loser’ of the changes – in fact, he argued that his standard of living had not changed much since socialism – he agreed that most working-class people belong to the losers of transition: Everyone had a registered workplace even if production was not profitable. But [most workers] did not notice this. After [1990] many lost everything. In Győr you can see homeless people in the streets … [There are so many] workers who lost their jobs, lost ground, started drinking, got divorced, and eventually ended up in the street … but I think that there are a lot more losers, who are not on the streets or in the tunnels. [They] lost the secure existence that socialism guaranteed to everybody. Even if they have work, they can’t pay their bills, they can’t modernize heating, they can’t buy new clothes … They used to be the middle class but after the change … they fell out of it.

Although the changes failed to fulfil their expectations of a ‘just’ capitalism, where people are rewarded according to the work that they perform, workers in this group would typically attribute the observed anomalies to the legacy of Communism. Bence (skilled worker, social worker, 58) explained his committed anti-Communism through his education in a Catholic high school and his subsequent exclusion from higher education under socialism: ‘There was an opportunity to apply to the workers’ university. I applied and at first I was accepted because they

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failed to notice that I graduated from a Catholic school. But when they realized that I was a “class enemy”, they immediately kicked me out. And I think that they did me a service because at that time they could have totally misled my soul, I was so keen on studying.’ Bence argued that moral education was key to later success, and he blamed the Communists for neglecting the moral (religious) upbringing of youth: ‘In that old system people were not taught to think for themselves. On the contrary, they were deprived of free will and free thinking.’ In Bence’s eyes Communism was essentially linked with the persecution of religion, the ideological fight against morality, suppression of free will, deception and the exploitation of the working class. It was also a materialistic society; thus, contrary to the ‘old guard’, he did not believe that human relations were better under socialism. Bence was critical of the role of transnational capital in Hungarian economy but he argued that the ‘Hungarian character’ and conscious education would overcome the overall harmful legacy of Communism: I am not worried about Hungarian youth. Hungarians are diligent people. They will learn, they will think for themselves and they will set up their own businesses … It was important that Western capital had come in because it modernized Hungarian factories but I am sure that Hungarian people will regain control over their economy … Hungarian people will always preserve their national identity and they will find a way to live as an equal nation in the middle of Europe.

I called this group ‘committed’ anti-Communists; however, even in their narratives there is a certain ambiguity about the evaluation of the socialist system. Miklós argued that social security was much better in the old system than in the new one. Everybody had a guaranteed workplace and pension, all children received a nursery and a kindergarten place, and everybody had access to free health care and education. This had all changed, certainly for the working class. Many narrators mentioned that the appearance of homeless people in the streets was a shock for

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them, and they felt very uncomfortable with them being socially excluded and deprived of organized help. Miklós spoke of another kind of misery: when people struggle to maintain their former standard of living but have to make numerous budget cuts in order to make ends meet (renouncing trips, restaurants, movies, the theatre, cars, visits to the hair dresser) and still end up with unpaid bills and broken fridges and vacuum-cleaners that they can’t afford to replace. However, both Miklós and Bence overcame their scepticism of the present when asked directly to evaluate the old regime. They despised the omnipresent Marxist-Leninist ideology, and blamed socialist education for depriving people of independent thinking, which meant that Hungarian workers were ill-prepared for operating in a capitalist society. It is interesting to observe how a strong emotional disposition can overrule rationalist arguments. Although Miklós’s argument of the downgrading of the working class and his criticism of ‘actually existing’ capitalism resemble the leftist position, because of family reasons he associated any left-wing party with the hated Communists. This mechanism of overcoming doubt can be observed in many other life-history interviews. Although Géza (the retired manager who figured in a previous section) did not want the Kádár regime back, he based his argument of working-class exploitation under capitalism on the ‘workerist’ ideology of the party, which was formulated in an industrial society. The new, capitalist society did not fulfil the hope of a prosperous Hungary. I speak of passive hope again because even people like Miklós, who were proud of their individual efforts, strictly separated their individual solutions and interests from that of their wider community. They essentially argued that Hungarian society is in a ‘transitional’ stage, and that it takes time to ‘rebuild’ the Hungarian national character, which the Communists sought to eliminate. However, if under socialism the system could be blamed for low standards of living, attributing poverty to the legacy of Communism 20 years later no longer sounded convincing. As we can see in the above account, nationalistic sentiments were frequently invoked to explain the economic

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backwardness of the country, which was rendered painfully obvious by the comparison between the domestic sector and the multinational companies. Tradition and the glorious Hungarian history were evoked to strengthen national self-consciousness, which suffered a serious injury when the workers compared their own situation with the standard of living of the workers of the advanced capitalist countries. Nationalist sentiments could therefore give rise to a new illusion: that the national ‘re-conquest’ of history would effectively influence contemporary social and economic conditions, and allow for a glorified national past to be converted into a glorious future for the Hungarian people. Conclusion The narratives of Hungarian workers revealed the centrality of ambivalence and doubt in their comparison between socialism and capitalism. On the one hand, it was a widely held view that a large part of the working class belonged to the losers of the new system. On the other hand, people were hesitant to express a desire for the return of the Kádár regime. Only the most deprived group of interviewees (unskilled female workers, who lived in rural areas and could not count on the higher income of a husband) said explicitly that they wanted the socialist regime back. The ‘workers’ state’ was perceived by most interlocutors – with the exception of some ex-Communist executives – as a failed historical experiment. Many workers expressed their revulsion for official Communist ideology, which had declared them to be the ruling class even though they never gained real rights to exercise power either in the factory or in political life. The Kádár regime had de-politicized the working class by supporting a consumption-oriented policy towards labour. This policy effectively shifted working-class political consciousness towards materialism. While people would speak of the decline or loss of human values in the new regime (nearly everybody argued that they participated in a more intense community life under socialism than in the new system), when asked to compare the two systems, material criteria dominated in the

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evaluation. By the late 1980s people were disillusioned with socialism because the standard of living stagnated, and deteriorated in the final years. The changes of 1989 marked the era of a new hope which turned out to be an illusion – namely that Hungarian workers would be able to ‘catch up’ with Western standards of living within a reasonable time. Indeed, the working-class experience of systemic change raised serious doubts about this expectation of modernity. The overwhelming majority of my interview partners argued that the working class had been downgraded in the new system. Workers had two major grievances in this respect. The first was that their standard of living had declined and that many had to give up activities that were linked to their former middle-class status: going on holidays, keeping a car, eating out, attending the theatre and the cinema and purchasing durable consumer goods. The decline of the factory was also equated with the devaluation of their skills: all of them stressed the contrast between the former prestige of the enterprise and the subsequent chapter of disintegration and decline of production. This experience was generalized to the level of national economy: workers argued that global capitalism had destroyed Hungarian industry because Western companies were only interested in the acquisition of Hungarian markets for their products and they deliberately destroyed their local competitors. There was a general suspicion that the financial sector was unfairly privileged at the expense of the productive sector and the producers. Workers typically argued that only productive work creates new value; therefore, if a state weakens its industry, it acts against the interests of the people. How can we explain the fact that these serious doubts about the capitalist system failed to translate into political action and that people responded to the downgrading of the working class with passivity and apathy? There are two answers to this question. Firstly, there is an essential tension between the two kinds of doubt that I distinguished in the introduction. The painful experience of systemic change rendered workers disillusioned with capitalist society. However, answers to the question of ‘what is to be done’ wavered between, on the one hand, the new

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illusion of a national capitalism expected to bring prosperity and social justice, and, on the other hand, romantic notions of the socialist past, which ‘should be brought back without socialism’. The second answer can be found in the ways in which doubt was overcome. My interlocutors were conscious of the fact that Hungary had entered a post-industrial age; still, many continued to harbour a ‘workerist’ ideology, which was detached from the social realities of post-industrialism. They realized that it was illusory to believe that a Western type of welfare capitalism could be established in Hungary; but they continued to hope that a ‘national’ government could successfully stand up against the ‘exploitation’ of global capital. The same argument is used to relieve people of individual responsibility for their wider environment. People complain that trade unions are weak and divided because of the manipulation of the management, but one reason for this weakness is that many people refuse to pay trade union fees. The argument that ‘something went wrong with capitalism’ because it was wrongly implemented reflects the crucial distance interviewees perceive between ordinary people and politics. This is not only an expression of powerlessness but is a comfortable way of distinguishing between individual solutions (such as doing black work, taking up seasonal jobs in Austria) and collectivist action, which is held to be unattainable because it is beyond the control of the ‘little man’. Notes 1 The article was supported by the Hungarian Bolyai Fellowship. I also would like to thank Mathijs Pelkmans for his critical comments. 2 In agreement with the interview partners, pseudonyms are used. The gender, job position and age of the narrator is indicated after their name. 3 Rába MVG (Magyar Vagon-és Gépgyár: Hungarian Wagon and Machine Factory) was the official name of the factory. 4 Transition theory was widely criticized in the literature, especially after the economic reality in most Eastern European countries showed a very different picture from what had been anticipated. For critical assessments see Gowan (1995), Lessenich (1999), Lomax (1998) and Nowotny (1997).

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5 For a critical re-evaluation of left-wing alternatives in Hungary see: Krausz and Márkus (1995), Szalai (2003), Thoma (1995). 6 Official ideologists included in this typology the working class, the peasantry and the intelligentsia. Despite sensitivities, this simplistic concept was widely criticized by leading Hungarian sociologists such as Zsuzsa Ferge, who developed a more sophisticated model based on the occupational hierarchy and working conditions. For a discussion in English see Ferge (1979). 7 On the history of the factory see Tabiczky (1977). 8 Workers’ universities were intended to increase the proportion of working-class leaders and managers. They offered part-time teaching and distance-learning courses to enable workers to keep their jobs and study at the same time. 9 The reformist wing of the party called for marketization, privatization and democratization from below. Many grass-roots members and lower executives thought that this economic programme made too many concessions to capitalism. Földes (1989) gives a good analysis of the social and economic context of the reform debates and the democratizing attempts of the party. 10 The party bore the name Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party (Magyar Szocialista Munkáspárt – MSZMP). On 7 October 1989, at the 14th Congress of MSZMP, the party was dissolved. 11 The term ‘workerist ideology’ is used by Pittaway (2010b) to draw attention to the complex relationship between the workers and the postwar Communist regime in which the state’s legitimacy was largely based on a programme of social emancipation of the skilled urban working class, even if this did not always translate into higher living standards. 12 János Kádár was the first secretary of the party between 1956 and 1988. His name indicated the era of ‘goulash communism’ in Hungary, which was characterized by relative material welfare and increasing liberalization in the economic and political spheres. 13 Registered unemployment was below 5 per cent in Győr at the time of interviewing.

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Bryant, Christopher and Edmund Mokrzycki (1994) The New Great Transformation? Change and Continuity in East Central Europe. London, Routledge. Burawoy, Michael (ed.) (2000) Global Ethnography: Forces, Connections, and Imaginations in a Postmodern World. Berkeley: University of California Press. Burawoy, Michael & Katherine Verdery (eds) (1999) Uncertain Transition: Ethnographies of Change in the Postsocialist World. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Ferge, Zsuzsa (1979) A Society in the Making: Hungarian Social and Societal Policy, 1945–1975. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin. Ferguson, James (1999) Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt. Berkeley: University of California Press. Földes, György (1989) Hatalom és mozgalom 1956–1989. Budapest: Reform Könyvkiadó-Kossuth Könyvkiadó. Hann, Chris (ed.) (2002) Postsocialism: Ideals, Ideologies and Practice in Eurasia. London: Routledge. H. Sas, Judit (2003) Közelmúlt: rendszerváltások, családtörténetek. Budapest: Új Mandátum Könyvkiadó. Kalb, Don (1997) Expanding Class: Power and Everyday Politics in Industrial Communities, the Netherlands, 1850–1950. Durham: Duke University Press. Kalb, Don (2009) ‘Conversations with a Polish Populist: Tracing Hidden Histories of Globalization, Class, and Dispossession in Postsocialism (and Beyond)’. American Ethnologist 36(2): 207–23. Krausz, Tamás & Márkus, Péter (eds) (1995) Önkormányzás vagy az elitek uralma? Budapest: Liberter. Lessenich, Stephan (1999) ‘Strukturwandel in Transformationsgesellschaften: Vom Süden zum Osten und zurück’, in W. Glatzer and I. Ostner (eds), Deutchland im Wandel: Sozialstrukturelle Analysen. Opland: Leske und Budrich. Lomax, Bill (1998) ‘A tranzitológia válsága’, in Tamás Krausz (ed.), Rendszerváltás és társadalomkritika. Budapest: Napvilág.

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Losonczi, Ágnes (2005) Sorsba fordult történelem. Budapest: Holnap Kiadó. Nowotny, Thomas (1997) ‘Transition from Communism and the Spectre of Latin-Americanization’. East European Quarterly 31(1): 69–91. Ost, David (2005) The Defeat of Solidarity: Anger and Politics in Postcommunist Europe. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. Pittaway, Mark (2007) ‘The Revolution and Industrial Workers: The Disintegration and Reconstruction of Socialism, 1953– 1958’. Hungarian Studies Review 34(1–2): 115–54. Pittaway, Mark (2010a) ‘Workers and the Change of System’, paper presented at the After twenty years conference, held in Budapest, 15–16 January 2010, ELTE-Politikatörténeti Intézet. Pittaway, Mark (2010b) ‘The Workers’ State. Industrial Labour and the Making of Socialist Hungary, 1944–1958’, unpublished manuscript. Szalai, Erzsébet (2003) Baloldal - új kihívások előtt. Budapest: Aula. Szalai, Erzsébet (2004) ‘Tulajdonviszonyok, társadalomszerkezet és munkásság’. Kritika 9: 2–6. Tabiczky, Zoltánné (1977) A Magyar Vagon és Gépgyár története. Győr: Széchenyi Kiadó. Thoma, László (1995) Alternatívák nélküli társadalom. Budapest: Gondolat Kiadó. Zigon, Jarrett (2009) ‘Hope Dies Last: Two Aspects of Hope in Contemporary Moscow’. Anthropological Theory 9(3): 253–71.

9 DOUBT AS A DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD: UNANSWERABLE QUESTIONS AND PRACTICAL SOLUTIONS AMONG NEWLY PRACTISING SOMALI MUSLIMS IN LONDON Giulia Liberatore

Occasionally, newly ‘practising’ Muslims can be uncertain about the aspects of their selves they seek to alter in order to become ‘fully practising’.1 Although such doubts and the concomitant anxieties can steer them away from faith, they may also energize their quest for it.2 This chapter has two aims. First, it explores the complex nature of these doubts, and second, it seeks to unravel the entire process of doubting. By researching the ways in which these doubts are articulated, interpreted and given meaning in terms of ‘low iman’ (low faith), it identifies a way that anthropology can uniquely contribute to the study of doubt. Experiences of ambivalence may trigger feelings of uncertainty, which are subsequently discerned and addressed cognitively through thought and language. The latter enables an expression and a rationalization of doubt, which encourages a quest for interpretation and for practical solutions to these uncertainties. Cognitive realization of doubt allows one to access, learn and employ appropriate linguistic devices and conceptual tools to address these uncertainties. ‘Low 225

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iman’ becomes the idiom by which these doubts are made sense of and managed, yet also demonstrates how, through the process of rationalization, they are sidelined, depersonalized and never fully addressed. Instead, by interpreting doubts as intrinsic dimensions of the system of faith, they are in turn transformed into objects that can be acted upon. Whilst browsing the clothes aisles of New Look in Stratford Shopping Centre, Maryam and I were catching up on our weekend.3 In recent months, she had decided to stop listening to music and wearing make-up to work, but in the last week, the implementation of these changes in her day-to-day life was proving to be quite challenging. Much of the blame lay with her nonpractising friends with whom she had spent the weekend. She explained: I forget all about religion when I’m with them … I always feel so bad when I go home. I started listening to music again … just been singing, dancing all day. Music just makes you have all these desires you know? [I have] all these worldly desires and it’s really bad.

Maryam had been, in her own words, a ‘party girl’, until she began ‘practising’ Islam more seriously two years ago, but she has struggled ever since in breaking free from her previous lifestyle. As we drove around London, she would often point out the nightclubs and high street shops which she used to frequent with her non-practising Somali friends. That afternoon I asked her whether she regretted becoming a practising Muslim, and missed her previous lifestyle? ‘I wasn’t in control,’ she replied, ‘God did it for me, so I can’t regret it, I didn’t have [a] choice in the matter.’ I probed slightly further, ‘but do you miss it?’ ‘Yes, sometimes I do.’ A brief silence ensued as we stepped outside the congested shopping centre, until she continued: You know what though? I’m freaked out paradise will have restrictions … I’m worried I’ll be disappointed. I know I shouldn’t be saying this but I’ve given up so much stuff here

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and I just want to make sure it’s all worth something. I know they say there are no rules, no restrictions, but I’m not sure, I need to find the evidence for it. I’ve asked lots of people, but I haven’t really got a good answer for it, I’ve done a bit of searching myself but nothing.

Intrigued by her concern about what she should expect in the afterlife I probed further, and she explained: Most people don’t care what’s in paradise. They love worshipping God so much it doesn’t matter to them and [for them] there’s no point thinking about it. And lots of people love worship so much [that] it’s not difficult for them. But I’m giving up so much here. I just want to make sure it’s worth it. I shouldn’t be saying this I know … but I’m worried [that] I’ll be let down. Do you get what I mean? It’s like a bad iftar (evening meal during Ramadan) after you’ve been fasting all day!

It was clearly disconcerting for Maryam to even enunciate these thoughts out loud, but I tentatively asked one final question about which restriction was of most concern to her: Shame, I’m worried there will be shame in paradise. There is [shame] here and that’s why we cover up, be modest, not wear make-up, [don’t] listen to music, control desires, have to be careful with things … but what if paradise is like that too? I just don’t get how a place can work without rules … but they say paradise is completely different beyond imagination … I’m so bad, doubting all these things. I just want to make sure I’m rewarded for all the things I’ve given up.

The tone of the conversation shifted after that, as we joked and imagined what paradise would look like without rules and regulations. Maryam’s thoughts drifted back to her love for R & B music and she pondered the types of songs she would have playing as she entered. However, these thoughts remained somewhat unsatisfactory because they pointed to an epistemological void. Acknowledging our common ignorance

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about decorum, etiquette and other such organizational matters in paradise, we agreed to pursue the matter further, perhaps by ‘googling it’ or asking a Sheikh (Islamic scholar) at one of our next lessons. Maryam was uncertain about the religious practices she had begun to implement and embody in an attempt to fashion a newly practising self. Enacting these practices had instigated in her a series of uncertainties and self-doubts concerning the nature and reward of paradise, the relation between faith and action, the efficacy of her actions and her own ability to be a practising Muslim. Although her concern about the nature and reward of paradise did not, in her view, threaten her belief in God, her doubts were inadvertently causing her to question fundamental aspects of her faith.4 Paradise is described in the Quran and hadith and treated in Islamic orthodox theology as something beyond comprehension; believers are therefore discouraged from employing their imagination to conjure it. According to this view, paradise is unimaginable and incomprehensible to the human intellect (akl ); reason alone will be unable to comprehend it.5 But such explanations do not, of course, pre-empt the wish to gain a firmer footing. Maryam’s search for ‘evidence’ illustrates an almost involuntary desire to gain solid knowledge and to rationally understand that which cannot be experienced in this life. She asserted that for some people reason was unnecessary, but she had not fully grasped or accepted this herself. Failure to appreciate the limits of reason revealed she had not yet acquired the skills to apply reason ‘correctly’ to her doubts. However, her uncertainty regarding paradise also troubled her because she feared paradise might be an unsatisfactory reward for the sacrifices she was making. As she revealed to me that afternoon, her friends who had mastered ‘love … [for] worshipping God’ did not share her utilitarian notion of faith. Throughout our conversation that morning, Maryam had begun to articulate and reveal the complexity of her doubts concerning the efficacy of her practices and the extent to which forgoing her previous lifestyle was necessary in order to achieve a pious disposition for which she would ultimately be rewarded.

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Expression of these doubts unravelled further anxieties and unanswerable concerns regarding the relationship between faith and action, about herself as a practising Muslim and her own success in securing a place in paradise. However, her uncertainties were at that moment inchoate; she had experienced them but had not fully interpreted or made sense of them. Maryam has only started ‘practising’ Islam in the last two years following months of panic attacks and bouts of depression. Sessions with a psychologist proved fruitless and soon her family suspected she might have a jinn (in this case a bad spirit or genie). Her uncle proposed reading the Quran to her; slowly she witnessed some improvement in her condition and eventually he referred her to a specialist Sheikh who helped her ‘flush out’ the jinn. Following a long period of recovery, Maryam started donning the hijab as one of the first changes she implemented on herself.6 Prior to her transformation, she labelled herself as ‘anti-religion’, claiming her change had been unexpected and ‘against [her] will’, as God had taken her over and she had had very little choice in the matter. Her lifestyle before the panic attack was, in contrast to her current pious disposition, one of clubbing, partying and aspiring to financial success. She frequently depicted her spiritual change as drastic and sudden, but considered herself fortunate for having been ‘chosen by God’. The spiritual changes that Maryam underwent are not unusual amongst young Somali women and other young British Muslims in London. Like many of her Somali peers, Maryam, who is in her mid-twenties, is university educated and is currently employed as a community worker. As the literature on the global Islamic resurgence indicates, a renewed interest in religion has not only prompted young Muslims to ‘veil’, but has encouraged a ‘cultivation of piety’ by actively seeking knowledge and applying it to one’s self (Brenner 1996; Deeb 2006; Huq 2008; Jouili 2008; Mahmood 2005). An engagement with religious knowledge through scholarly texts and theological reasoning has encouraged young Muslims to practise their newly acquired knowledge, and distance themselves from practices deemed ‘cultural’ or ‘traditional’, such as those of their parents. Thus,

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it was common for young Muslims to criticize their parents’ understandings of prayer and hijab as lacking in awareness and knowledge of ‘proper religious conduct’. However, especially in the early stages of change, ‘proper conduct’ and understanding did not come easily. Shifting lifestyle, implementing new acts of worship such as prayer and hijab and changing friendships were frequently described as a struggle. Although many young women felt they ‘knew this was the right thing’ for them, the actual implementation of practices was a different matter and one with which they wrestled on a daily basis. Practising Islam in London Many of my interlocutors were young Somali women whose parents had migrated to the UK in the last 10–20 years as a consequence of civil strife in Somali territories. These young women had been raised in the UK by their immediate families or extended kin. What drew a large number of them together was their newly developed interest in learning and practising Islam. Although all were at different levels of commitment, they had become acquainted by attending Islamic courses and lectures and had begun socializing together. Whilst the majority had attended madrasas (Islamic schools) with other Somali children, and had therefore been raised with an awareness of religion, others learnt about Islam only later in life.7 Throughout my research I observed that the shift towards practising is increasingly common amongst Somalis between the ages of 16 and 30. Traumatic incidents, experiences of death or depression, or simply a heightened interest in religion often encouraged by friends or acquaintances were provided as reasons for these transformations. Often, the initial incentive to change is not a thoroughly deliberated decision. Like Maryam, who felt that God had ‘forced her’ into it, many of my interlocutors mentioned the spontaneity and suddenness of becoming a practising Muslim. More likely to occur amongst young women brought up in a religiously minded household, Maryam’s experience of change was an exception to this rule: no one in her

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immediate family was practising religion nor, unlike many of her friends, had she been raised with an awareness of religion or sent to a madrasa as a child. However, in London Somali women’s engagements with religion are diverse. Whilst some might practise but not necessarily seek knowledge to increase their awareness of religion, others might not practise at all and understand religion as ‘private’ or ‘internal’. Others still may justify their decision not to practise as temporary, without excluding the potential for practising in the future. Interestingly, amongst the latter group, those who often expressed a disinterest in religion also tended to voice an intention to engage with religion seriously later in life, perhaps after marriage. Examples also exist of young Somalis starting to practise and then abandoning their commitment supposedly due to an inability to maintain the rigorous self-discipline they impose upon themselves. These changes experienced by Somalis, as well as by other young Muslims in Britain, take a variety of forms depending on an individual’s interpretation of Islam, or affiliation with particular groups. Salafi or Wahabi influences amongst British Muslim youth cannot be underestimated, fuelled by the proliferation of books, pamphlets and audio-visual material distributed on university campuses, mosques and Islamic bookshops. However, my informants did not fit comfortably into any particular group, hence endeavouring to understand their religious practices through group affiliation is perhaps unfruitful as they remained non-political and refused to identify with any particular interpretation of Islam.8 Furthermore, it would be inaccurate to present these young women’s ethical self-work and their intellectual and practical engagement with Islam as the sole determining feature of their lives. Although religious concerns were crucial aspects of their daily lives, they were also actively involved in a range of non-religious activities.9 Within this group, the implementation of new modes of conduct and thought was often a gradual process that required rationalization, learning the ‘correct’ place of reason in Islamic pedagogy and also included a spiritual experience of religion. As Zaynab, a 30-year-old teacher explained:

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When I started practising I really had to question a lot of things. I’m quite a rational person and I couldn’t accept Islam if it didn’t make complete sense to me. So I tried to understand it that way. You can’t understand Islam by pinpointing one aspect of it; you have to see it as a holistic system. But there’s a limit to our rationalization after a bit … We think we can figure out everything through our intellect. If you follow that, you’ll never make sense of God. You have to accept that you can’t understand the wisdom behind certain things.

As part of her change, Zaynab had taken shahada (the profession of faith) again, not because she had lost iman (faith), but because she felt she hadn’t ‘known what it was to have faith’. In her words, she had previously ‘preferred the club to the mosque’. Like many other informants she frequently commented on the gradual development of her change – on how adopting one practice at a time without overburdening one’s self was crucial to success. Initially, she had started praying once a day, then five times a day, followed by donning the hijab and Islamic clothing and avoiding clubs, pubs and parties. Changing friends and learning to correct her character, manners and behaviour (adab) was what she was working on at that moment. Increasing acts of worship (ibadah) would perhaps follow. Being a practising Muslim requires a careful management of the relation between iman (faith), practices and knowledge (‘ilm).10 Most of my informants had always had faith, but in earlier years were not practising – that is, not implementing the required religious obligations such as prayer, wearing hijab, fasting or abstaining from behaviour deemed immoral such as listening to certain types of music, clubbing and so on. Whilst faith is said to fluctuate, it can often be increased by acts of worship, by good deeds or by increasing knowledge that is then embodied or applied to one’s self. However, this worship must be endowed with sincere (ikhlas) intentions (niyyah); otherwise it is thought to have little effect on faith.11 A ‘proper’ Muslim not only has internal faith, but must also act piously, without which faith becomes redundant. As Sheikh Ibrahim Osi-Efa stated in

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one of our classes, ‘it’s not about what you know, it’s about how you are, how you embody this knowledge’.12 Islam, he explained, is about struggling, about ‘moving swiftly to good deeds’ regardless of their outcome in the hereafter. ‘Good’ actions and correct implementation of acts of worship such as praying on time and dressing and acting modestly are considered crucial to practising correctly as a Muslim. Maryam’s doubts concerning the reward of paradise and the efficacy of her practices revealed her insufficient knowledge of religious language and her improper use of reason in matters of faith: not only had she failed to accept the limits of reason in relation to unknowable dimensions of belief, but she had unsuccessfully applied it to comprehend and articulate the relationship between practice and faith in expressing her doubts. Whereas doubts are seen as inevitable in the initial learning processes, it is less common to hear individuals express uncertainties in later processes of self-transformation. Not only did our conversation that afternoon reveal a range of uncertainties, but the way in which they were articulated was distinctively different to the linguistic devices employed by other informants to voice their doubts. As I proceed to demonstrate in this chapter, on that afternoon Maryam had lacked the tools to interpret her experience of ambivalence, as she had begun to express initial thoughts of uncertainty. She had experienced ambivalence and uncertainty but had not yet assigned meaning to it. Doubting and wavering: experiences of ambivalence and uncertainty13 Why was Maryam uncertain and what led her to have these doubts? The literature on the Islamic revival has emphasized the role of self-disciplinary techniques in constituting pious dispositions, portraying piety as a systematic unilinear process (Mahmood 2005). Few studies depict pious individuals experiencing contradictions and ambivalences, or struggling with social meaning.14 Many of my interlocutors present personal change as a gradual, continuous transformation of faith and practice.

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However, this masks their actual experience of implementing practices, which is often imbued with contradictions, hesitations and inconsistencies. Their trajectories can, as Maryam’s case highlights, be both forward-moving and recursive in nature. Her shift from a lifestyle of music, short dresses, make-up, clubbing and dating to one that she characterized as restrictive epitomized this. Her experience of practising involved a constant uncertainty as to the benefits of the change, and she struggled with maintaining consistency in her practices and behaviour; doubts were therefore constitutive of her religious transformation.15 Below, I endeavour to demonstrate the manner in which Maryam’s experience of doubting, initiated by her actions the previous day, was embodied prior to its articulation. She had spent the evening with her non-practising friends and had acted ‘impiously’ by listening to music. This confrontation with her previous lifestyle placed her in an ambivalent, conflicting situation. She was torn between her friends’ lifestyle and her commitment to religion, which gave rise to feelings of uncertainty. Being in the ‘right environment’, with the ‘right friends’, something for which practising Muslims such as Maryam often strive. Many recognize the importance of having Muslim friends who encourage one to practise, draw attention away from worldly things and desires and who stress the connection with God. An experience of ambivalence, in this situation where she was wavering between contradictory ideas of selfhood, unable to reconcile the two, gave rise to feelings and eventually thoughts of uncertainty. As I illustrate below, in our conversation Maryam had not drawn on the appropriate Islamic linguistic and interpretive tools, often employed by her friends, to articulate and make sense of her doubts and hesitations. Our conversation represented a momentary ‘slippage’ in which Maryam had unsuccessfully applied religious language and coping strategies, which provided ‘a space for self-examination and religious legitimization’ (Engelke 2005: 805). The previous day, she had engaged in conflicting, ambivalent practices (wearing hijab in a non-pious context) which had not conformed to her notion of piety, resulting in feelings of uncertainty which she had not had time to rationalize. It was my

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observation of her in this moment of pre-rationalization which allowed me to catch a glimpse of her embodied uncertainties and initial experience of doubt. Maryam’s comments, ‘I shouldn’t really be saying this’ or ‘I’m so bad doubting’, demonstrate the embarrassment and the guilt she felt as a consequence of experiencing doubt. Whereas the words ‘doubt’ and ‘uncertainty’ were rarely employed by my other informants, they often spoke of ‘low iman’ (low faith) as a way to express their low level of commitment to certain practices. ‘Low iman’ was an acceptable idiom to express uncertainties, and complaints of feeling ‘low’ (in iman) were typically employed to explain inconsistencies. One young woman, for example, justified her smoking habit as a consequence of ‘low iman’, while another complained that music had made her feel ‘low’ or ‘disconnected’. Zaynab, the 30-year-old newly practising woman I introduced earlier, explained to me on one occasion: ‘It’s a constant battle with iman, even after years and years, you get ups and downs … a constant battle. There are times when I’m like: why are you bothering? Take off your hijab, go clubbing, why do you care?’ Couched in terms of ‘low iman’, inconsistencies in actions and practices are made sense of and tackled in direct ways as I explain in more detail below. Therefore, whilst fluctuations in iman are common concerns for my interlocutors, these are not spoken of as ‘doubts’; instead the idiom of a ‘fluctuating iman’ provides a way of voicing uncertainties. However, it also authorizes a mechanism for managing and hence pushing aside feelings and thoughts of uncertainty, turning them into objects that can be understood and addressed rationally. Furthermore, as anxieties about uncertainties are shared with others, doubts are de-personalized, thus reducing the initial experience of isolation and vulnerability. Focusing on the embodied experience of doubt, as triggered by actions that generate ambivalence, sheds light on the entire process of doubting that is often ignored when doubt is conceptualized solely as a cognitive process. Because many of my informants claimed to always have had faith (iman), they never directly expressed doubts about God, the hereafter and

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other ‘unknowable’ aspects of faith. However, the implementation of Islamic practices was a novel experience for many of them and often the source of anxiety and uncertainty. Even though they had cognitively justified why they deemed it necessary to embody certain practices, the implementation of these was not without hesitations and concerns. Yet the performance of pious actions can at times lead to experiences of ambivalence, as Maryam’s incident demonstrates. They can act as catalysts for feelings and thoughts of doubt, even before these are recognized or spoken of as such. The embodied practice of wearing hijab in a contradictory context (with her nonpractising friends) had led Maryam to experience feelings of unease, before she rationalized it as doubt. Throughout our conversation she had begun to discern her experience and to cognitively recognize and express it as doubt. Her experience had been transformed from an embodied feeling triggered by an action to a recognition of doubt that now needed to be addressed. Managing doubt A few months after these initial conversations about ambivalence, hesitation and doubt, I attended a talk by Sheikha Fatima bint Ebrahim Gani on ‘hope’ (al-raja) and ‘fear’ (al-khauf ) with Maryam and a group of both Somali and non-Somali practising friends.16 Amongst other things, the Sheikha (female Islamic scholar) spoke about the uncertainty of death and on not knowing what our chosen destiny will be. She stressed the importance of ‘good’ actions and acts of worship, but highlighted the fact that only God’s mercy would ultimately get us to paradise. Muslims should live their lives hoping to attain jannah (paradise) whilst also fearing the consequences of their bad deeds. Following the talk, Maryam and I sat outside waiting for others to finish their prayers. I asked her if she had found it interesting and whether she had pursued her research on the topic.

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I’ve asked scholars and stuff and did some research but to be honest I’ve decided to stop looking into it. I think it’s the kind of thing that no matter how much you research we just don’t know. It’s probably bad for me to keep wanting to know more you know? I shouldn’t be so keen to keep wanting to know, it’s a bit selfish maybe.

By answering in this way Maryam asserted her own agency in the sense that it was up to her to either ask more impossible questions or to accept the limits of human understanding and reasoning. As I was also intrigued by her suggestion that it would be selfish to want to know more, I asked her to reflect on that. It’s bad. I should just accept and trust paradise will be as great as God says. That we can’t even imagine it … [Hesitating, she added] but you know … sometimes I feel like I really need to know. Especially when I hit rock bottom, I really need something to keep me going, when my iman is down.

I asked her when she was likely to ‘hit rock bottom’ and experience ‘low iman’ and she explained this normally occurred when she was neglecting her obligations – for example, when she was not concentrating during her prayer or praying at the required times. She continued: Or when I’m just thinking: why on earth am I doing all these things?! Sometimes it’s really bad, I feel I don’t want to do [all those things], like why am I bothering kinda thing. Sometimes Shaitan [Satan, devil] can whisper things to you … So I need motivation, something to make sure that it’s all worth it. If not it just feels so abstract sometimes, like I’m relying on something abstract that I can’t understand.

Maryam had grown accustomed to a fluctuating ‘iman’. The first couple of times she hit ‘rock bottom’, she failed to understand why God was punishing her despite all the sacrifices she had made. She felt frustrated by having abandoned, to no avail, an enjoyable lifestyle by embodying practices and obligations

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of self-transformation. She had begun doubting the efficacy of, and the need for, her practices and her ability to become a pious practising Muslim. By conversing with others she had learnt that uncertainties were common and constitutive of the nature of iman, and had realized she could interpret her situation differently. Her doubts were de-personalized and transformed into objects through her acquisition of religious language and concepts of iman. I think it’s God’s way of giving me a push in the back … I’ve realized now, when I’m in the lowest of the lowest, I have to reflect on what God’s trying to tell me. I asked a Sheikh about this and he told me to do this, cause I used to doubt everything so much. He told me to use the time to reflect on myself, to think hard about what I could’ve done to displease God … so now I use it as a time to be self-critical, to analyse my actions … I’ve still a long way to go and these periods really teach me that, they make me a better person … I need those kicks!

The second conversation I had with Maryam about her uncertainties is illustrative of another stage in the process of doubt. Having experienced ambivalence and uncertainty through the practices she was attempting to implement and embody, she had thought through, rationalized and articulated this experience to herself and to others. Once her feelings had been expressed through language, she was driven to seek coherence, pull herself ‘out of doubt’ and learn to apply the appropriate religious linguistic and cognitive tools. She learned to understand the ‘signs’ of low iman and of Shaitan, and to interpret her experience through this lens. One of the first steps Maryam took in order to account for her experience was to consult scholars (Sheikhs) and more pious friends and acquaintances. In our first conversation she had made reference to those who ‘love worshipping’, and it was to one of these individuals that Maryam turned to for guidance. In a context where religious knowledge is readily available on the Internet, on TV, in books and pamphlets in mosques and Islamic bookshops, and religious authority is decentralized and

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democratized (Eickelman and Anderson 1999; Roy 2006), individuals are accustomed to relying on informal networks in order to gain an understanding of anything ranging from jurisprudence (fiqh) to aspects of faith (aqeeda). My interlocutors often called one of their more knowledgeable or pious friends, or asked a Sheikh or Sheikha (Islamic scholar, male and female) with whom they had established a close rapport. Alternatively, they might attend a lesson and, if impressed by the religious knowledge of that scholar, seek his/her advice on the matter. Many explained to me that whenever they had to form an opinion on a certain matter, they first sought multiple opinions both in person and on the Internet, and eventually chose what they felt was correct for them amongst the varying interpretations. As others have noted, the pluralization of knowledge has allowed believers to engage individually with religious traditions, yet has not led to a detachment from religious authority or from orthodox Islamic discourses (Jouili and Amir-Moazami 2006). Maryam confessed that having initially sought different opinions on the matter she had now decided to abandon her search. By conversing with others, she had learnt the limits of her intellect (akl ) and that the nature of paradise was not comprehensible to a rational mind. As I later discovered, Maryam had in fact consulted her Somali friend Layla on the matter. Layla had been raised in a religious home and had been practising for a longer period of time. Considered by Maryam and her closest friends as one of the most pious of their group, she had studied for several years at various institutes and with a range of scholars in London.17 She would often deliver halaqa (Islamic circles), teach tajweed (Quranic recitation) or bestow advice upon the other young women on religious matters. As Maryam recounted to me, Layla had advised her to stop worrying about heaven. She had told Maryam: It’s true there will be no obligations in Jannah (paradise) but it’s impossible for us to even imagine what it will be like, it’s beyond our imagination. I really don’t understand why you’re concerned, you should just trust God that it will be amazing.

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Instead of dwelling on the matter Maryam was advised to trust in God, to increase her acts of worship (ibadah), recite the Quran daily and reflect on God’s greatness and her relationship with Him. Layla explained ‘trust’ as maintaining a constant ‘awareness’ of God in everyday life and as a realization that all daily incidents were decreed by and known to God. Working on ‘trust’ was part of the process of learning to recognize His power and the signs of His presence in all things. On one occasion, Layla had made dua (supplicatory prayer) asking God to give her a place on a competitive postgraduate course. Reflecting back on this dua, she accused herself of arrogance and of failing to place her ‘trust’ in God. Instead of seeking guidance and asking Him to provide what He deemed best for her, thereby placing her trust in His power to choose correctly, she had made a request based on her own desires. ‘Trust’ for Layla signified a complete submission to God’s intent and a hope that He would do what was in her best interest. For Maryam, this signified an interpretation of her ‘low iman’ or periods of hesitation as signs from God: if she was struggling it could only be God punishing her for a bad deed and warning her to practise. A fluctuating iman, Maryam learnt, was an integral dimension of faith and one must learn how to recognize and manage it. In our second conversation, Maryam had deliberated over this and had attempted to comprehend her insecurities and hesitations as a sign from God – a ‘kick in the back’ telling her to work harder. Building trust was also about learning to read signs, and interpret one’s experience through a relationship with God. This required reflection, self-scrutiny and the employment of religious idioms and concepts – in this case the ‘correct’ employment of reason and an understanding of a ‘fluctuating iman’. Doubt could only be a sign of God’s dissatisfaction with one’s actions, and only through increasing ‘good actions’ and acts of worship could this be resolved. ‘Fluctuating iman’; practical solutions to doubt In our first conversation Maryam had not described her experience as a manifestation of ‘low iman’. Whilst familiar with the concept, she had been incapable of applying it to her hesitations.

Doubt as a Double-Edged Sword

At that stage, she had only begun to recognize and make sense of her experience of ambivalence. However, upon reflection and having spoken to others about her uncertainties, she subsequently referred to them as periods of ‘low iman’. She had begun to reason about her experience and, through the employment of language, initiated a search for coping mechanisms to address it, thereby turning uncertainty into an object that required a practical solution. ‘My iman is so turbulent … it goes up a little, then down, but it’s never really high and stays there,’ she described to me during the second conversation. Maryam had employed the idiom of ‘low iman’ to interpret and conceptualize her experience of ambivalence, and had identified its signs: feelings of uncertainty, depression, loss of hope and lack of motivation, laziness. These were all now treated as manifestations of a ‘low iman’, which required specific counter-actions. However, in the process of interpreting her experience through a ‘fluctuating iman’ – an understanding of faith as inconsistent – the doubts were marginalized and never fully addressed. A ‘fluctuating iman’ served not only as a linguistic tool to objectify doubts but as a conceptual device that allowed Maryam to reason about doubt in a particular manner. As I noted above, my informants often complained about states of ‘low iman’, and shared their feelings, experiences and coping strategies. Recognition of the fluctuating nature of iman was essential in order to overcome it. As Khadija, another young Somali friend who had been practising for many years, explained to me, I think you have to realize it’s a process … you’ll evolve, you’ll mess up, sometimes you’ll go back on something you wish you hadn’t … but it’s always good to surround yourself with good people, a good environment, and try to reconnect, increase your ibadhah (worship), go to lessons and courses for an iman boost!

Like Maryam, Zaynab (who was mentioned earlier) struggled with long periods of ‘low iman’, one of which triggered her to resume her smoking habit.

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It’s all up and down … but eventually you learn how to put those things aside. It’s Shaitan [Satan, devil] telling you not to do things, to take off your hijab, start smoking. I learnt to distinguish between my own thoughts, feelings, emotions and Shaitan’s, and I realised that Shaitan plays around with all those things the whole time. And of course he does it with me rather than with those who don’t practise. He already has those people on his side! As soon as you draw near to God, he comes. You just have to say: A’u’dhu billahi minash-shaitanir-rajim [I seek refuge with Allah from Satan, the cursed one] and that sends him away.

On numerous occasions I heard individuals attribute feelings and thoughts of uncertainty to Shaitan, which can be tackled through consistent recitation of the above dua (supplicatory prayer), thought to ‘scare him away’. Whilst walking, working or performing chores around the house, it was important to protect one’s self from evil thoughts that might cause doubts. Reciting dhikr and the Quran, or increasing acts of worship, were also suggested as a way of repelling Shaitan.18 In one of her halaqa Layla explained to us the importance of recognizing the signs of a ‘healthy heart’.19 Crucial for performing actions with sincere (ikhlas) intentions (niyyah), a heart could be ‘purified’ by worship (ibadah) and by performing good deeds. She advised us all to examine our hearts and learn to recognize the signs of an unhealthy heart. Shaitan could be responsible for making a heart ‘impure’ as could one’s own lower self (naf ). Learning to identify evil thoughts and feelings as signs of an unhealthy heart was fundamental to spiritual success.20 On the day of the halaqa, one of the women present interrupted Layla and asked her to elaborate on the signs of a ‘healthy heart’. ‘If you’re doing something bad and you feel a twinge in your heart – a feeling you shouldn’t be doing something and that stops you – then you have a healthy heart. It’s more than guilt, it’s preventative’, Layla explained. Learning to recognize hesitations and uncertainties as deriving from Shaitan, or from one’s self as manifestations of an unhealthy heart, is an integral dimension to becoming a practising Muslim.

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However, this process involves constant self-scrutiny and practice. Maryam only attributed her uncertainties to Shaitan or to her own failures to practice correctly during our second conversation, following our encounter in Stratford and after a period of reflection. Interpreting one’s experience of doubt through the idiom and concept of a ‘turbulent and fluctuating iman’ (as constitutive of faith) and learning to discern signs of doubt and implement coping mechanisms by applying reason ‘correctly’ are processes that one learns to master with practice and experience. This knowledge is part of the process of becoming a pious, practising Muslim. Uncertainties may arise out of actions that feel ambivalent, and cause thoughts and feelings of unease. Yet once these doubts are conceptualized as intrinsic to faith, a believer is able to use doubts as motivating forces to reflect on one’s self and to connect with God or increase acts of worship and ‘virtuous’ actions. Although doubts may appear to steer individuals away from faith, if interpreted and rationalized ‘correctly’, they may also invigorate their quests. On another occasion, Maryam explained to me she had complained to her friend about her low iman. As a consequence, they both devised a list of prohibitions to which they would commit in the following month. Watching TV, listening to music, excessive speaking, thinking bad things about people and looking at advertisements that would generate illicit desires were amongst some of the avoidances they were going to try to implement and monitor. By committing together, they were hoping to increase their own consciousness of their actions, but also to monitor and encourage one another, with the hope of countering any experiences of uncertainty. Through thought, conversation and reasoning with a practising friend Maryam’s doubts were transformed but also forced to the margins; interpreted as manifestations of ‘low iman’ and as constitutive of the system of faith, they were turned into an object that needed to be tackled. Doubt as distraction, doubt as stimulant Within Islamic theology, external practices are intrinsic to faith and crucial aspects for the cultivation of a pious Muslim subjectivity.

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However, both the efficacy of practice and one’s success in securing salvation are understood by my informants as uncertain and unknowable. Zaynab worries about ‘just not knowing’ if all these sacrifices and practices are going to ensure her a place in paradise. Like Maryam she fears her sacrifices will not be rewarded, as entrance into paradise is dependent on God’s mercy and can be neither calculated nor rationally understood. This triggers both the hope of eventual salvation and the fear of damnation. Experiences of uncertainty force individuals to oscillate between hope and fear. ‘Good deeds should be seen as hopes, not as definite answers,’ Layla explained to me on one occasion, ‘they act as provisions you have, to save you from hell.’ Yet the fear of hell is something informants frequently spoke and exchanged views about. They read books, attended lessons and watched DVDs in order to create vivid images of hellfire in their minds. Ifrah, a friend of Maryam who had been practising for two years, elaborated upon this one day as we sat in the mosque for an aqida lesson: I’m so scared about not knowing what’s going to happen to me – about what God’s going to do to me. I read a lot about it, and it freaks me out so much I want to be prepared … I read all about the different stages of hell. It makes me scared but that’s a good thing. At the same time it makes me hopeful that I might make it to jannah instead.

Doubt, hope and fear are integral to faith and work to motivate and encourage believers to act.21 Doubts concerning the efficacy of practices and one’s ability to practise, once comprehended through the idiom of a ‘fluctuating iman’, act as forces that urge the individual to oscillate between hope and fear. In doing so, a believer is discouraged from being complacent and compelled to strive continuously for self-improvement through increasing acts of worship and other practices. Because uncertainties are objectified, de-personalized and naturalized as fundamental dimensions of faith, a believer no longer feels isolated; anxieties are shared with others and made sense of collectively. Doubts in this way work to invigorate faith as they naturalize and rationalize – yet also marginalize – the unknowable, encouraging individuals

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to strive through both hope and fear for consistent and continuous practice. In an essay entitled ‘A kernel of doubt’, Goody (1996) explores how scepticism and agnosticism are not confined solely to ‘Western rationality’ but are widespread in the Near East, India and Far East. Scepticism, he contends, is ‘intrinsic to the nature of religious belief itself ’, although this is not to say that all people in all places doubt (ibid. 1996: 678). As I have argued in this chapter, doubt when interpreted and managed through a ‘fluctuating iman’ becomes integral to the system of faith and can be transformed into a motivating force. Goody argues that doubts most often emerge in the process of conceptualizing and representing supernatural agencies. Contradictions are embedded in the use of language, and because gods can only be understood and created through language, doubts are inherent in their linguistic representation (ibid. 1996: 679). Some of Maryam’s doubts are the result of ambivalence in faith itself, which requires adherence to cognitively contradictory ideas surrounding faith and practice – such as good practices providing access to paradise, although one can never be certain of this. As I suggest in this chapter, Maryam’s various concerns about the nature and reward of paradise, the efficacy of her actions and her own ability to be a practising Muslim, were perhaps due to her fragmentary knowledge of the appropriate linguistic and cognitive tools and her inability to fully grasp and apply ‘reason’ correctly to faith. However, this chapter has sought to demonstrate some of the non-cognitive processes of doubt that anthropologists are in a position to discern. Not only are we able to capture cognitive doubts as expressed by our informants, but we can also witness the entire process and experience of doubting as it unfolds and, through language, is transformed. Maryam’s initial conversation provides insight into these embodied experiences. Feelings of ambivalence and uncertainty arose whilst wearing hijab in a contradictory context (with her non-practising friends) or by listening to music and failing in her commitment to piety. Whilst enacting these practices, she experienced and embodied feelings of unease before she rationalized them as doubts. Only once these

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feelings were recognized – as Maryam did in our initial encounter – did they take the form of cognitive processes. Language enabled her to express her doubts, but it also forced her to interpret and rationalize them and search for practical solutions to cope with her uncertainties. As I have sought to demonstrate, some individuals, in seeking coherence, learn to employ religious idioms such as ‘fluctuating iman’ allowing them to naturalize and de-personalize doubt, by interpreting it as intrinsic to the system of belief. Whilst doubt is suppressed, it is also transformed into an object that needs to be addressed through practical solutions. The process of doubting – from its inception in action to its objectification through religious language – involves more than just cognitive contradictions. Embodied practices and feelings of uncertainty are integral to an ethnographic investigation of doubt. If anthropology is to contribute to the study of doubt, it is through revealing the entire experience and process of doubting. Notes 1 Practising is a term employed by my informants to identify Muslims who implement certain religious obligations and acts of worship (most importantly, prayer and modesty) in order to distinguish them from those who do not. Hereafter, references to practising refer to this understanding of the term. 2 The ethnographic material presented in this chapter is taken from 15 months of fieldwork, which I conducted in London with a group of loosely connected young Somali women. 3 Names, identities and locations in this chapter have been altered to protect the anonymity of individuals concerned. 4 Paradise and Hellfire (Jannah and Jahannah, literally the Garden and the Fire) are described in both the Quran and hadiths. They are also a fundamental part of Islamic aqidah (a branch of Islamic studies concerned with articles of faith). Although no specific mention is made of the absence of shame, my informants understood paradise as a place where all earthly desires are granted. 5 The use of reason in relation to faith has long been a topic of debate amongst Muslim theologians. For discussions on the role of reason within Islamic pedagogy see Asad (1993) and Mahmood (2001).

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6 Hijab is used in this context to refer to both the head covering and Muslim clothing. Maryam started wearing the head cover first and, a few months later, the abaya (a long black loosely fitted dress covering the whole body except head, hands and feet). Initially she used it only occasionally, but after a year it became the only item of clothing she wore outside the house. 7 The majority of Somali children are sent to madrasas (Islamic schools) at the age of seven, where they learn to read and recite the Quran. 8 Mahmood (2005: 81) notes a similar flexibility amongst her informants regarding religious doctrines. She identifies this ‘modern (form of ) religiosity’ as ‘talfiq’ (Hallaq 1998: 161), whereby individuals combine elements of different doctrines to create an entirely new doctrine. 9 Soares and Osella’s (2010: 11) concept of Islam mondain (Islam in the present world) is particularly pertinent to my informants’ ‘ways of being Muslim’. A concern with ethical self-fashioning is only one part of this ‘new kind of sociality’, which is also compatible with both modernity and the neo-liberal economy (ibid. 2010:11). 10 Islamic practices are classified as the following: obligatory worship (al-fara’id ), Islamic virtues (fada’il ) and acts of beneficence that secure God’s pleasure (al-a’maal al-saliha) (see Mahmood 2001: 830). In this chapter I employ practices, ‘good’ actions (a’amaal ) and acts of worship (ibadah) to refer to all of the ‘external’ dimensions of faith mentioned above. 11 See Mahmood (2005) for an explication of the importance of internal and external dimensions of the self in constituting a pious disposition. 12 Sheikh Ibrahim Osi-Efa is an Islamic scholar, born and raised in Liverpool, England. Having studied for three years in Syria and Mauritania and for six years in Tarim, Hadramaut, Yemen, under al-Habib Kazim al-Saqqaf, al-Habib ‘Ali al-Jifri and al-Shaikh ‘Umar Husain al-Khatib, he currently lives and works primarily in the UK. He is the founder of several Islamic initiatives including the Ibn Abbas Institute, Starlatch Press, Badr Language Institute and the Greensville Trust and is particularly well regarded amongst my informants. The lesson mentioned above was delivered in London as part of a course on The Book of Numbers by Muhammad bin Umar Vahraq al-Hadrami. 13 It is important to distinguish between ambivalence and doubt/ uncertainty. Ambivalence refers to an experience of mixed feelings and contradictory ideas. Although in this situation it leads to feelings, thoughts and expressions of doubt, it is not equivalent to doubt nor does

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it necessarily lead to doubt. In this chapter I treat doubt and uncertainty interchangeably and seek to unravel the entire process of doubting as triggered by an action that creates an experience of ambivalence. 14 Recent work has focused on the struggles and contradictions individuals experience in leading moral lives. For example, Simon (2009) attends to the phenomenological experience and the problems and uncertainties of enacting Islamic practices such as prayer. Schielke (2010) highlights the ways in which individuals, influenced by the ideals of the Islamic Revival, may not necessarily lead coherent lives, but instead live by contradictory values and expectations. In comparable fashion, Marsden’s (2007) study explores the ways individuals may be both pious and partake in events that encourage seemingly contrasting dispositions. 15 Engelke (2005) explores the ways in which uncertainty and selfdoubt play a constitutive role in the process of religious transformation. Transformation involves learning ‘to organize and express’ religion, by gaining competence in the language of a particular religious tradition. As I demonstrate throughout the chapter, Maryam learns with time to grasp and interpret her experience of doubt through the appropriate religious language. 16 Sheikha Fatima is an Islamic scholar who lives and works in the city of Middleburg, South Africa. Having completed her studies at the Madrasah Tarbiyatul Banaat in 1989, she teaches traditional Islamic sciences to Muslim women in the city. In 2010, as part of her first UK tour, she delivered various lectures and courses including the one mentioned above and a one-day workshop entitled ‘The Exquisite Pearls’ on the wives of the Prophet as female role models. 17 Some of the scholars she had studied with include Sheikh Ahmed Saad (imam of Finsbury Park Mosque), Sheikh Sulaiman Gani (imam of Tooting Mosque), Sheikh Abu Aliagh (director of Jawziyyah Institute, London). 18 Meaning ‘remembrance of Allah’, it is a practice that involves the repetition of words, usually of praise or supplication. 19 Most of my informants were familiar with and often discussed ideas about the heart and the diseases of the heart, derived from al-Ghazali (1995), and Yusuf ’s 2004 study was also, amongst the young women, a popular source of information on these topics. 20 In Islamic theology the concept of fitrah signifies a natural ‘disposition’ or ‘essence’ to know God. For individuals to understand the meaning of a ‘healthy heart’, they must rediscover their knowledge of God through self-realization.

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21 Similarly, Mahmood (2001: 839–44) describes the ways emotions of fear (al-khauf ), hope (al-raja) and love (al-hubb) are constitutive of an ‘economy of action’ in the larger system of Islamic pedagogy. For example, enacting and training oneself to experience fear through prayer serves as a way of instilling a spontaneous expression of that emotion within prayer. Fear therefore becomes both a motivation for and a modality of action that propels one to act but is also constitutive of that action.

References Asad, Talal (1993) Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Brenner, Suzanne (1996) ‘Reconstructing self and society: Javanese Muslim women and “the veil”’. American Ethnologist 23(4): 673–97. Deeb, Lara (2006) An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shi’i Lebanon. Princeton: University Press. Eickelman, Dale F. and Jon W. Anderson (1999) ‘Redefining Muslim Publics’, in D. Eickelman and J. Anderson (eds), New Media in the Muslim World: The Emerging Public Sphere. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Engelke, Matthew E. (2005) ‘The early days of Johane Masowe: self-doubt, uncertainty, and religious transformation’. Comparative Studies in Society and History 47(4): 781–808. Al-Ghazali (1995) On Disciplining the Soul and Breaking the Two Desires: Books XXII and XXIII of the Revival of the Religious Sciences. Translated from Arabic by T. J. Winters. Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society. Goody, John R. (1996) ‘A Kernel of Doubt’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 2(4): 667–81. Hallaq, Wael B. (1998) ‘Talfiq’, in T. Bianquis, C. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W.P. Heinrichs (eds), The Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. 10, p.161. Leiden: Brill. Huq, Maimuna (2008) ‘Reading the Qur’an in Bangladesh: The Politics of “Belief ” amongst Islamist Women’. Modern Asian Studies 42(2–3): 457–88.

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Jouili, Jeanette S. (2008) ‘Re-Fashioning the Self Through Religious Knowledge: How Muslim Women Become Pious in the German Diaspora’, in A. Al-Hamamah and J. Thielmann (eds), Islam and Muslims in Germany. Leiden: Brill. Jouili, Jeanette S. and Schirin Amir-Moazami (2006) ‘Knowledge, empowerment and religious authority among pious Muslim women in France and Germany’. The Muslim World 96 (4): 617–642. Mahmood, Saba (2005) Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton: University Press. Mahmood, Saba (2001) ‘Rehearsed Spontaneity and the Conventionality of Ritual: Disciplines of Salat’. American Ethnologist 28(4): 827–53. Marsden, Magnus (2007) ‘All-Male Sonic Gatherings, Islamic Reform, and Masculinity in Northern Pakistan’. American Ethnologist 34(3): 473–90. Roy, Olivier (2006) Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah. London: C. Hurst. Schielke, Samuli (2010) ‘Being Good in Ramadan: Ambivalence, Fragmentation, and the Moral Self in the Lives of Young Egyptians’, in B. Soares and F. Osella (eds), Islam, Politics, Anthropology. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Simon, Gregory M. (2009) ‘The Soul Freed of Cares? Islamic Prayer, Subjectivity, and the Contradictions of Moral Selfhood in Minangkabau, Indonesia’. American Ethnologist 36(2): 258–75. Soares, Benjamin and Osella, Filippo (2010) ‘Introduction: Islam, Politics, Anthropology’, in B. Soares and F. Osella (eds), Islam, Politics, Anthropology. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Yusuf, Hamza (2004) Purification of the Heart: Signs, Symptoms, and Cures of the Spiritual Diseases of the Heart, 2nd edn. Bridgeview, IL: Starlatch.

10 AFTERWORD: IN THE AFTERMATH DOUBT

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The chapters in this volume attest the importance and centrality of doubt to everyday life. Doubt affects social relations and political commitments. It shapes – and is shaped by – religious action. Doubt and uncertainty, several authors have demonstrated, can challenge cosmological conceptions, co-constitute the efficacy of ritual, or be intimately implicated in epistemological and ontological frameworks and categorizations. The ethnographic material in these chapters illustrates that doubt is something that all our interlocutors experience and are ultimately forced to resolve – or not, as some authors assert that doubt can be ‘managed’ by avoiding, accepting or ignoring it. Doubt, it seems, is everywhere and one wonders how as anthropologists we got along without closely examining it. Perhaps we have been too busy erasing doubt. As indicated in the introduction, the very presence of doubt in the lives of our interlocutors – and therefore in our ‘research’ – may have unsettled our own intellectual and professional ability to make clear-cut claims, forcing us to ignore or expunge their doubt in order not to cast any upon us and our assertions. On a more personal level, we tend to downplay or erase the role indecision and uncertainty plays in our own daily lives, minimizing it in our self (re)presentations in order to avoid being seen as weak, 251

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indecisive or easily persuaded. The implicitly negative connotations of these words speak volumes about our own cultural constructs. Our desire for certainty – a world without doubt – is revealed in our near-obsessive need to protect those around us through the hyper-risk management of society (Low 2003), in our investment in bureaucratic governing structures which will ideally produce total transparency, efficiency and rationality (Strathern 2000) and in the belief in markets so efficient that they should make redundant the very arbitrageurs who believe in and exploit them (Miyazaki 2003). Though such assurances of certainty are no more than a chimera, our collective and individual craving for them is not. Generally speaking, we do not like doubt and we are constantly trying to elude it. The erasure of doubt in anthropological texts produce smooth portrayals, but these are not entirely reflective of the situation researched and, moreover, they leave unconsidered key processes involved in the creation of truth and certainty and the ability to continue on in the world (see also Driessen, Chapter 6). The contributors to this volume have drawn attention to these hiatuses. They have shown us that our interlocutors are not always sure of what they know, what they believe or what they (should) do. Moreover, when our interlocutors do present their ideas in a straightforward and convinced fashion to us, we may fail to appreciate the hesitation and wavering that led to their ‘certain’ positions and the role we may have played in their emergence. The authors of the volume thusly argue for doubt as a necessary and/or contingent force in projects of truth, hope and certainty – rightly so. But those actually involved in doubt, even if they recognize its necessity, rarely embrace it – as all the chapters illustrate. Save for Bloch’s ‘agnostic’ forest dwellers, doubt appears to demand action (including the mental action of decision or believing). Even when some are able to live in ‘half belief half doubt’ for some time, as Binder argues, there is often a moment in which the stakes become too high to prolong one’s ambivalence and doubt must be suspended. Pelkmans asserts that this push towards resolution is a quality of doubt itself. Without the push for resolution the phenomenon in question may not

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be doubt – it may be contemplation, speculation, scepticism or wonder. It is doubt only when the subject feels pressure to take a stance, make a choice or act. Thusly Pelkmans’ arguments points to the unsettling quality of doubt and its genesis and occurrence in unsettling moments and places. Doubt often arises in situations in which people describe their lives and their worlds as hallmarked by worry and fear (see for example High, Chapter 3). Nonetheless, the visceral and emotional qualities of doubt remain under-analysed in this volume. This is not to say that the emotional dimension of doubt is wholly absent. For example, the word ‘push’ as employed by Pelkmans makes us think that the doubters are being pressed ahead – they feel a force, which Pelkmans in one instance labelled ‘emotive’. Likewise, his description of some of doubt’s motivators as ‘unsettling confrontations’ points in the same direction. For example, he intimates that doubt is more than intellectual when he asserts that Descartes’ systematic doubt is not quite lived doubt because ‘[Descartes] is considering this possibility intellectually but not intimately’ (emphasis added). The other chapters too are riddled with verbs that evoke emotion, sensation and feeling. But doubt as an emotional experience is not problematized. Hope – one of doubt’s counterparts – is likewise associated with emotion, but should not be reduced to it. Crapanzano, for example, argues that hope should not be seen as an emotion, but rather ‘as an emotionally and morally toned descriptor of an existential stance or attitude’ (2003: 26, footnote 6). No one would reduce doubt to the status of an emotion – in fact it is rarely considered as one. But doubt is likewise not merely intellectual, even if it tends to be categorized as an epistemological dilemma, as evidenced in phrases often connected to doubt: ‘I do not know what to do’ or ‘I do not know what is right/true/best’, where resolution is often sought through decision. Both epistemological dilemmas and the act of deciding are commonly located as occurring in the mind, through deliberation – a quality Pelkmans indicates when in his description of doubt he employs the phrase ‘an active state-of-mind which is directed at a questioned object’. My contention is that doubt is more embodied than that; the experience of doubt is intensely emotionally textured.

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Even the weighing of options – perhaps the most intellectual component of doubt – does not necessarily occur solely in the mind, and incomplete knowledge is not the only thing that constrains choice in doubtful situations. Even when a clear logical choice presents itself, the bodily pull may be intense enough to act as a counterweight to logic, creating a situation of doubt. Love, for example, may powerfully interrupt logical choices. As, in Shakespeare’s words, ‘reason and love keep little company’, a choice between them can incite tremendous doubt. Emotion can likewise play a role in doubt’s resolution. Fear, for example, may produce intense visceral reactions which force action and decision in a situation that was otherwise tolerably ambiguous. Appadurai (2006) points to the role that fear of the outsider and fear of incompleteness play in pushing for a highly emotive form of resolution to uncertainties about ethnic minorities – that is murderous ethnic cleansing. Emotion is constitutive of doubt and it is often emotion – or reaction to, for or against it – which is what drives one to doubt’s end. This book opens a new vein of research by directing attention to this experience of doubt. Connected to this is the question: what is it about doubt that pushes and unsettles? The authors in this volume have shown that the process of doubting foregrounds underlying notions of truth and being, which in turn triggers reflection and questioning – a situation similar to what Zigon, building on Heidegger, has called moral breakdown (2007: 134–8). Prolonged doubting pushes subjects towards resolution, which allows a return to nonreflection, to everydayness, a situation in which they feel at relative ease or peace in the world. The subjects in this volume crave a world in which social relationships are clear (Shah, Chapter 7), in which rituals can be properly enacted so that a Christian self is cultivated (Naumescu, Chapter 4), or in which the meaning of past tragedies and one’s place in it is certain (Driessen, Chapter 6). But one must ask why explicit confrontations with our own ontologies and epistemologies are unsettling. Geertz pointed to a craving for certainty, order and sense in his definition of religion (1973). These chapters have indicated likewise.

Afterword: In the Aftermath of Doubt

Another field of inquiry regarding doubt that these chapters have opened up is the role of time in doubting. Naumescu (Chapter 4) engages with multiple temporalities, the role of uncertainty and doubt in each and how they came together to form a particular moment of doubting in the lives of Old Believers. The different temporal ordering systems – an internal, Christian one and an external one of politics and economy – generate different kinds of doubt, thereby making the Old Believers’ uncertainties difficult to trace, untangle and explain. Time is likewise addressed by Pelkmans when he argues that ‘hope, belief, doubt and disillusionment may over time feed into and give way to each other’. In doing so he suggests that although this volume focuses on doubt, the people figuring in the chapters may no longer be doubters, or, conversely, they may have become them. Doubt and hope, doubt and certainty – doubt and the absence of its unsettling emotion, a state which can perhaps be called serenity, peace, tranquillity, rest or more commonly just ‘normality’ – go hand in hand; no one lives perpetually in either. But it seems that the temporal element in processes of doubt is more than just cyclical. As Bartha (Chapter 8) showed, waning conviction in socialism and experience of its downsides made room for the dream of capitalism. When in turn the realities of capitalism became clear, disillusionment followed for many. We can view this as evidence of the cycle – which it is. The temporal nature of doubt of which Pelkmans spoke was the reoccurrence of the cycle in time – the cycle of hope in a grand political philosophy occurring at least twice in the lifetimes of Bartha’s interlocutors – as well as about people’s individual movement from conviction to doubt to faith or the internal role of doubt–hope in the efficacy of ritual in Old Believer Orthodoxy (Naumescu, Chapter 4). The cycle Pelkmans sketches shows that processes of doubt and its various others are far from static – since we exist in time it is important to treat the cycle as a process unfolding in it. But there are other ways in which time is bound up with disillusionment, doubt, hope and certainty. Cycles of doubt– disillusionment–hope–belief affect people over time, so even if doubts about specific experiences, notions or ideologies resurface

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‘time and again’, the doubting person has been changed by her former uncertainties and convictions. The circumstances in which she lives – her citizenship, her body, her language, culture or social relations – have altered in time. The very knowledge and experience of these previous doubts and convictions likewise bear in conscious and subconscious ways upon the new one. For example, the disillusionment amongst those who lived through the ‘transition’ from socialism to capitalism understandably often resulted in disenchantment with grand ideologies in general. The process of doubting and disillusionment may have continued – from socialist to capitalist to nationalist ideology – but the ‘doubters’ had become different persons in the process. Similarly, Shah’s revolutionary convert (Chapter 7) may eventually become disillusioned with his new ideology, but his experiences as a Maoist will continue to impact him profoundly. In short, the analytical characteristics in each cycle may stay the same, but the people going through this cycle will have changed. If we continue with the image of the circle to represent the dynamism of doubt, when deployed as an analytical tool in a specific ethnographic investigation it may be better to see it as a spiral – at least if one is working from within a forward-thinking, linear temporality. When viewed from above, the depth of a spiral is erased and it becomes a circle to the viewer – Pelkmans’ cycle. But from the side the spiral moves forward, reflecting progression and change in time. Importantly, the spiral is also actually a twisting line whose texture, shape, colour, material and density alter as time passes, as the line moves in space, reflecting at least some of the discontinuities inherent in change, if only partially. The metaphor of the spiral has its own limitations, however, as it fails to show how the past and future are connected to and impinge on the present, and how present imaginations of other times shape the thoughts and actions of the only ever present now. The spiral never comes in contact with itself at other nodes, thus the metaphor misses the ways in which past and present events, relationships and reflections intersect. I want to suggest another way in which time and doubt are intertwined. Uncertainty, doubt, hope or conviction affects the way people

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experience, imagine and move in time itself. This then has repercussions for how they conceive of and act in the present. In order to accomplish this I focus on the ‘aftermath’ and present an afterword on the aftermath of doubt. I consider an incident of ethnic violence and its aftermath in my primary field site, Bazar-Korgon, located in southern Kyrgyzstan. Doubt, uncertainty and the push for purity played a central role in the three days of violence between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in June 2010. As urgently important as investigations into the ethnic violence itself may be, my interest lies in what happened afterwards – how the process of doubt–hope had altered residents and impacted on the way they considered the future and planned the everyday in the light of it; how as changed actors they encountered the next cycle of doubt and how the previous one forever altered their (imagined) futures and thus the present in which they lived. Doubt and uncertainty in ethnic violence No one imagined and no one anticipated the violence that erupted in June 2010. Certainly, ever since an episode of violence between ethnicities in the summer of 19901 and the collapse of the Soviet Union the following year, plenty of academics and Western policy-makers predicted that the region would erupt into waves of ethnic feuding2 – the assumed consequences of what was understood to be a whim of Stalinist border-drawing, the failure to produce a true homo sovieticus and the disappearance of a strong state that allegedly kept latent ethnic tensions suppressed.3 But two decades had passed and nothing had happened – not even in 2005 when the already weak Kyrgyz state was further destabilized by revolution did ethnic tensions seem to pose a real social or political threat. The first instances of violence occurred in Osh, Kyrgyzstan’s second largest city, and then quickly spread to Jalal-Abad, BazarKorgon and a few other urban settlements. In all cases, the towns were ethnically mixed but with predominantly Uzbek populations, a trait differentiating them from the surrounding villages whose populations were mostly Kyrgyz.4 It remains unclear what

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exactly triggered the violent eruptions. The then-acting interim government indicated that the violence was initiated in an act of revenge by the recently ousted president Kurmanbek Bakiyev (Weir 2010) and, more implausibly, that he may have been aided by ‘international terrorist organizations’ (Karimov and Karabayev 2010). Others have pointed to the role of criminal networks, an alleged university campus rape and a shooting at a casino (Walker 2011). But whatever may have motivated the first attacks, once underway, it was ethnicity that was mobilized to mark targets, to find allies and to serve as a rallying cry in the violence. Kyrgyz murdered, maimed and raped Uzbeks. Uzbek men and boys fought back, killing and wounding Kyrgyz, but Uzbeks were the majority of the victims (Kyrgyzstan Inquiry Commission 2011). Some 111,000 Uzbeks – mostly women and children – fled to Uzbekistan seeking refuge during the three days of violence and another 300,000 were internally displaced (Kyrgyzstan Inquiry Commission 2011). Just over 400 people were killed. In Bazar-Korgon, a town with 30,000 inhabitants, approximately 400 buildings were destroyed, the majority of which were homes (UNITAR 2010). When the news about the violence reached me in Amsterdam, I immediately began trying to contact friends to check on their wellbeing. I had worked in Bazar-Korgon as a teacher and a researcher for three years and had extensive social networks in the Uzbek and Kyrgyz communities. The communications I received during the days of violence were marked by fear and above all uncertainty. I distinctly remember two. One was with a young Uzbek man in his early twenties. He was in Turkey at the time but his parents, brother and sister were in Bazar-Korgon when the violence began. We communicated via Facebook. His mother and sister had made it to Uzbekistan. His father and brother had locked themselves inside their home – hiding from the violence that was spreading while hoping to protect their property. Another family I reached had tried to flee to Uzbekistan, but was turned back at the border. They could hear gunfire, they could see smoke. They had no idea when or if the violence would reach them.

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What sparked the violence at that particular time may always remain a mystery, but the atmosphere that allowed for, even precipitated, such an event is clearer and it is directly related to doubt. Succinctly put, the Kyrgyz nation – both as a political body and as an imagined community – was understood as being in a state of uncertainty. The ‘transition to capitalism’ of the 1990s and the 2005 Tulip Revolution had failed to bring about the desired political reform and economic development. Indeed, the post-2005 Bakiev government failed to implement coherent policies and plans for governance and presided over a weakening economy and declining labour prospects. At the same time there was a growth of nationalist rhetoric with the reinvigoration of patriarchal, masculine discourses (Kandiyoti 2007). The concomitant rises in political action by the Uzbek minority, their push for more equality and their perceived economic success in trading and enterprise were likewise both actual and symbolic elements in the perceived destabilization of the nation. The rise in political participation of the Uzbek minority and its very public-ness, combined with perceived Uzbek economic prosperity, may have sparked what Appadurai has called the anxiety of incompleteness, suggesting that ‘majorities can become predatory and ethnocidal with regard to small numbers precisely when some minorities (and their small numbers) remind these majorities of the small gap which lies between their condition as majorities and the horizon of an unsullied national whole, a pure and untainted national ethnos’ (2006: 8). Following Appadurai, it was precisely this insecurity about the continuance of the ‘nation’ as a political and ethnic community that led to an environment in which violence was imaginable and ultimately possible. Though much work still needs to be done on the specificities of the scope and form of violence to confirm this, it seems in many ways that the aggression of the Kyrgyz was a violent act of boundary drawing. As the violence raged on for three days it became absolutely certain for the perpetrators who was Kyrgyz and who was Uzbek. But while ethnic violence creates certainty regarding identity, purity and power, uncertainty marks the terrain of

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the experience of violence – at least for those under threat. My communications with non-aggressors in Bazar-Korgon were characterized not by statements but by a profusion of questions: Will the violence spread to our neighbourhood? Can I get out? How long will it go on? Where will I get food and water? How can I get money? There was another set of more painful queries (usually) left unspoken: Will my Kyrgyz neighbour shelter me? Will the aggressors find those Uzbeks I’ve hidden? Will I lose my child, my husband, my friend? What will the pain be like? How much did she suffer? Will I die? While who was Kyrgyz and who was Uzbek became painfully clear, everything else was awash with agitated, terrifying uncertainty. And then, after three days, it stopped. An aftermath (of violence) like an afterword (of a book) is that which follows – and which is, somehow, not the same as what went before. Speaking of what has already occurred, it gives the feeling of a spatio-temporal distance. An aftermath is also the consequence of what came before, encountering the future in a new way because of what has happened. I began considering the role of emotion and time in doubt precisely because the contributors to this volume had first drawn my attention to doubt itself, opening up a new conceptual space I had not previously considered, triggering questions that I had not asked before. Afterword and aftermath both point to time. Every ethnography ends but the end of the account is never the end of the ‘unit of study’ – people live on (or not); they divorce, convert, move or sometimes even seemingly stand still, stamping endless stacks of paper at a minor bureaucratic office in a small town in the middle of nowhere. Governments, ideologies and religious communities rise and fall. An anthropological account is what it is partly because of where we start and where we end it. An ethnography of doubt is about doubt – and not, say, hope, certainty or resolution – because of where we choose to start and stop the cycle – doubt, disillusion, hope, belief, doubt. But what if we start, or end, elsewhere? And what happens when we move forward following neither (primarily) the analytical cycle nor the specific objects of doubt, but rather

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the lives of people in uncertain circumstances and the impact of their experience with doubt/hope over time? Hope, before and after violence In spring 2004 I was in the bazaar chatting with traders I had known for quite some time. We were discussing the relative benefits and disadvantages of living as an Uzbek in either BazarKorgon or in neighbouring cities across the border in Uzbekistan. The Uzbek traders were happy to be living in Kyrgyzstan. They expressed satisfaction with the relatively free political and economic environment of Kyrgyzstan and contrasted this to the situation of their friends, family and business partners across the border. This satisfaction was relatively new. Over the course of the 1990s, ‘authoritarian’ Uzbekistan appeared to be growing economically while ‘democratic’ Kyrgyzstan floundered. But by the early 2000s, the picture had changed. Authoritarian rule in Uzbekistan had become increasingly oppressive while in Kyrgyzstan living standards improved and more civil liberties were afforded. My Uzbek acquaintances at the bazaar said that they were glad to be in Kyrgyzstan, especially because the future of their businesses looked good. The sentiments of the traders in Bazar-Korgon were largely borne out by events. Over the course of the decade, the success of Uzbek traders increased further. Labour migration – to Bishkek but also, importantly, to international destinations like Russia and China – began to rise (Marat 2009) and wages from abroad became key elements in household survival strategies. In the years leading up to 2010 the politically marginalized Uzbek minority had become increasingly involved in regional and national politics, and began to make more vocal demands for equal treatment and opportunities. At the same time, their economic possibilities – like those of nearly all Kyrgyzstanis – began to shrink. By 2009, the effects of the international economic crisis were being felt in Kyrgyzstan; remittances from labour migration had dwindled. But despite declining wages and increased difficulties for migrants abroad, the labourers and traders were still going.

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One of the Uzbek migrants who left was Nozim, a BazarKorgonian in his early thirties. He’d gone to Russia to work in construction in early 2010, leaving his wife and three children behind. This was not uncommon; two of his wife’s four sisters had husbands who worked abroad, returning for the summer months in one case, or for a few shorter visits every year in the other. His wife, Feruza, supported his decision to go, though she knew she would miss him terribly. She never considered leaving Bazar-Korgon to live with Nozim. She was, in her own perception, not an adventurous person, preferring those things close and familiar. Her one attempt at living independently in Bishkek prior to her marriage had proven that to her. She was also terribly attached to her mother and sisters. In addition, as a woman who wore a headscarf in a style that is internationally known as the hijab, she was unsure whether she would be able to continue this lifestyle abroad and, importantly, feared how she would be perceived. Thus she was in town when the violence broke out that summer. Nozim was not. In early autumn I received a call from Feruza. She and her children wished to join her husband in Russia. I asked her why, knowing her previous trepidation about such a move. She answered rather indirectly, beginning with a story about what should have been a happy event. She’d taken her young son to enrol in school. He had just turned six and it was to be his first year. She had brought him to the same school she had attended, the same one her daughter has been attending as well. It was a Russian language school, the only one in town. The school refused to admit her son, reportedly on the grounds that she wore a hijab. I asked my acquaintance for more information about the atmosphere in town. It had become harder, in general, to be Uzbek in her town, she said. Her husband had considered returning home, she said, but there was little work. ‘And I am afraid for his safety,’ she said. ‘It’s very difficult to be a young Uzbek man in these times.’ It is difficult to judge the veracity of the more specific claims, but that is not the point. Feruza’s story poignantly conveys the contradiction between the perceived opportunities for Uzbeks

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and the increased risks involved for them in Kyrgyzstan, despite the fact that their town is approximately 80 per cent Uzbek. These increased risks pushed many Uzbeks to rethink the way they were viewed and treated by others in town. ‘Rethinking’ may not be the right word, though. In many cases this kind of conscious evaluation of how being Uzbek factored into one’s ability to succeed in life in one’s hometown may never have happened, never been ‘thought’ before. While ethnic stereotypes, jokes and basic inequalities abounded before the violence, it is my contention that they were part of the ‘background’ of life – the accepted situation in which everyday life took place. The violence ruptured ‘taken-for-granted-ness’ and, as was the case for Shah’s interlocutors (Chapter 7), it threw the nature, viability and security of social relationships into question. The ways in which these doubts are intertwined with physical security is apparent – the widespread and indiscriminate violence against all Uzbeks had stopped after June 2010, but a low-level targeting of individual Uzbeks, especially young men, has continued. How the disruption of social relationships impacts feelings of trust and security beyond this sense of physical safety may not be as obvious. Social relationships in a multi-ethnic environment, especially for a minority, impact one’s ability to imbue life with meaning, dignity and security in political, cultural and, importantly, economic spheres as well. The post-violence moment in which Feruza was located at the time of her call was surely one of doubt and one in which formerly accepted ontologies were thrown into question. This existential doubt impacts not only the way one understands the world, but the way one acts in it as well. In the case of Uzbeks living in post-violence southern Kyrgyzstan, this reorientation of thought and action in the light of an uncertain social and political environment was impacting the very real choices they were making about work and economic strategies. Thus, despite the fact that wages had been decreasing, work was hard to find and racism in Russia and other labour migration destinations was rampant; many Uzbeks were leaving (cf. Ibraimov 2011; Radio Free Europe 2011).

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The distinction Pelkmans made between doubt and uncertainty is important here. Life’s terrain had become uncertain for Bazar-Korgonian Uzbeks, thereby triggering many doubts. Doubt was involved in, for example, Feruza’s personal reflections on how to act within this new environment – where is the best place to secure a good future for my children? Where can my husband find work and be safe? Doubt was spurred by insecurity in social relationships; doubt lay in one’s incumbent ability to succeed educationally, politically and economically as an Uzbek in a post-ethnic violence situation. Leaving for work was one way that these post-violence doubts were resolved. The aftermath of ethnic violence extends beyond mourning, physical and emotional healing, reconstruction and population resettlement. It carries on in the way those involved began to understand and imagine their lives, the way they orient themselves to and envision their future and thus, the kinds of choices they make about when, where and how to make their livelihood. Migration from Kyrgyzstan has always been tied up with fantasies about a better life that went beyond economic enrichment – living in a ‘modern’ place, where everything worked, opportunities abounded and equality reigned. These were the typical dreams of those desiring to escape the economic hardships of post-Soviet life. But discourses about escaping difficulties encountered due to ethnicity were either absent or at least highly uncommon. What this means is that the insecurity and doubt that hallmarked Uzbeks’ experience of the post-violence moment likewise marked the terrain of their fantasies, how they planned for, calculated and – importantly – imagined the future. The violence shattered the present, calling everything into question – activating doubt or, to continue with Pelkmans’ and Zigon’s use of Heidegger, initiating a breakdown in the normal flow of being-in-the-world. It likewise affected how the Uzbeks in Bazar-Korgon conceptualized past and present. In the aftermath of violence, past and future became suddenly closer and more intimate. Attempting to make the best choice when the choices no longer fit the everyday parameters meant cycling through the remembered past and imagined future more fervently and

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creatively than previously, in order to discern patterns, look for clues or find ‘truths’ upon the basis of which action could be taken when the formerly understood patterns no longer worked. As a result, the past and the future came to impinge upon and bear down more forcefully on the present than in more ‘normal’ times. Precisely how one could imagine the future directly affected the actions one took in the present. The ethnic violence, in throwing into doubt the ability of Uzbeks to expect a viable future in their own hometown and therefore fantasize and plan for it in a more or less everyday fashion, sliced open a new future, one not previously conceived or envisaged. It created, in fact, a whole new series of futures that were linked to both the new post-violence reality and reconceptualizations of the past. It may have also closed doors to things previously imaginable – career choices, educational opportunities or the continuance of ‘the norm’ – making them closed not only to conceptualization but to possible fruition in action as well. Things could not and would not be the same. The Uzbek traders I met six years before the violence expected the future would bring continued modest prosperity; their daily work would pay off. These possibilities were rent by the ethnic violence and ensuing insecurity; so too were the traders’ abilities to realistically imagine that future. Even if, in the aftermath of violence and the doubt and disillusionment that ensued, the wheel turned and the traders returned to a moment of hope in the cycle – hope of economic prosperity, hope of the happiness and success of one’s children, hope of being physically safe – or even to a relative sense of certainty, it would never exactly be a return. It could only be the hope of a new future built on new constructions of the past, new imaginations of the future and perhaps even new experiences with and evaluations of hope and doubt themselves. The Uzbeks of Bazar-Korgon had not yet constructed new certainties and were not yet able to imagine much hope when I last spoke with them about their experiences during and after the ethnic violence. I imagine that at least some of them will, though the texture and forms that hope might take remain to be seen. But if the contributors to this volume are right, as I believe

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they are, then these hopes and truths will be built in part from the doubt that arose during and after the violence. Doubt plays a vital role in projects of truth, hope and certainty, and investigations seeking to understand these projects must pay attention to its force. My aims in this afterword have been to build upon this central claim of the volume and to show how the consideration of emotion and time can open further avenues for investigations into doubt and its others. Notes 1 See Tishkov (1995) for an insightful analysis. 2 For an overview and critique of the literature on ethnic tensions in Central Asia, see Megoran (2007). 3 For examples of this kind of reasoning in reference to the 2010 ethnic violence see The Economist, 17 June 2010; Associated Press, 13 June 2010, and Fedynsky (2010). 4 According to the 2009 census, 71 per cent of Kyrgyzstan’s total population is Kyrgyz and 14 per cent is Uzbek (http://www.stat. kg/stat.files/tematika/демограф/Кыргызстан%20в%20цифрах/ демо6.pdf ), last accessed 17 June 2011.

References Appadurai, Arjun (2006) Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Associated Press, The (2010) ‘More than 75,000 Flee Ethnic Violence in Kyrgyzstan; More than 100 Killed, Hundreds Wounded’. 13 June 2010, http://www.foxnews.com/ world/2010/06/13/ethnic-rioting-spreading-southernkyrgyzstan-dead-wounded/ (accessed 17 June 2011). Crapanzano, Vincent (2003) ‘Reflections on Hope as a Category of Social and Psychological Analysis’. Cultural Anthropology 18(1): 3–32. The Economist (2010) ‘Stalin’s Harvest’. 17 June 2010, http:// www.economist.com/node/16377083, last accessed 3 August 2011.

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Fedynsky, P. (2010) ‘Southern Kyrgyzstan Gripped by Ethnic Violence’. VOAnews.com, 14 June 2010, http://www.voanews. com/english/news/Tens-of-Thousands-Flee-Ethnic-Riots-inKyrgyzstan-96274668.html (accessed 17 June 2011). Geertz, Clifford (1973) Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books. Ibraimov, B. (2011) ‘Kyrgyzstan Continuing Ethnic Tension Speeds Exodus from Kyrgyzstan. Report’. Transitions Online, 3 June 2011, http://reliefweb.int/node/405771 (accessed 17 July 2011). Kandiyoti, D. (2007) ‘The Politics of Gender and the Soviet Paradox: Neither Colonized, Nor Modern?’ Central Asian Survey 26(4): 601–23. Karimov, A. and A. Karabayev (2010) ‘Islamic extremists, Bakiyevs blamed in Kyrgyz violence’. Central Asia Online, 24 June 2010, http://centralasiaonline.com/cocoon/caii/xhtml/ en_GB/features/caii/features/main/2010/06/24/feature-03 (accessed 26 June 2011). Kyrgyzstan Inquiry Commission Report (2011) http://www.kic.org/en/home.html (accessed 15 June). Low, Setha (2003) Behind the Gates: Life, Security, and the Pursuit of Happiness in Fortress America. London: Routledge. Marat, E. (2009) ‘Labour Migration in Central Asia: Implications of the Global Economic Crisis’. Silk Road Paper Series. Washington, DC: Silk Road Studies Program. Megoran, Nick (2007) ‘On Researching “Ethnic Conflict”: Epistemology, Politics, and a Central Asian Boundary Dispute’. Europe Asia Studies 59(2): 253–77. Miyazaki, Hirokazu (2003) ‘The Temporalities of the Market’. American Anthropologist 105(2): 255–65. Radio Free Europe (2011) ‘Emigration From Kyrgyzstan “Up Sharply” In 2010’. Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, http://www.rferl.org/content/emigration_kyrgyzstan_up_ sharply/2267946.html (accessed 17 July 2011). Shakespeare, William (1988) A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, Act III, Scene 1, in S. Wells and G. Taylor (eds), William Shakespeare: The Complete Works. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Strathern, Marilyn (2000) Audit Cultures: Anthropological Studies in Accountability, Ethics and the Academy. London: Routledge Tishkov, Valery (1995) ‘“Don’t Kill Me, I’m a Kyrgyz!”: An Anthropological Analysis of Violence in the Osh Ethnic Conflict’. Journal of Peace Research 32(2): 133–49. United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) (2010) Bazar-Kurgan damage assessment by UNITAR/ UNOSAT, 22 June. http://www.unitar.org/unosat/node/44/ 1460 (accessed 14 June 2011). Walker, M. (2011) ‘Kyrgyzstan: The Scars of Ethnic Conflict Run Deep’. Guardian.co.uk, 10 June 2011, http://www.guardian. co.uk/world/2011/jun/10/kyrgyzstan-ethnic-conflict-oshuzbekistan (accessed 26 July 2011). Weir, F. (2010). ‘Kyrgyzstan riots led to ethnic cleansing; government blames Bakiyev’. 16 June http://www.csmonitor.com/ World/Asia-South-Central/2010/0616/Kyrgyzstan-riots-ledto-ethnic-cleansing-government-blames-Bakiyev (accessed 17 June 2011). Zigon, Jarrett (2007) ‘Moral Breakdown and the Ethical Demand’. Anthropological Theory 7(2): 131–50.

INDEX action, 31–33, 54, 69, 70, 104, 167, 265; armed, 170; collective, 29, 78, 213; collectivist, 221; committed, 2, 26, 27, 134; conviction and, 24, 25; doubt and, 4, 5, 15, 23, 26, 28, 29, 31, 33, 36n5, 129, 144n8, 236, 246, 247n13, 252; dubious, 18; economy of, 249n21; ethical, 103, 193; and faith, 228, 229; and fear, 249n21; 254; haphazard 15, 27; and inaction, 4, 15, 23; mental, 252; moral, 183; political, 3, 27, 199, 220, 259; questions of, 2, 35n1; rebel, 166; religious, 251; ritual, 86–88, 103–105, 109, 110n3; thought and, 50, 263; thoughtless, 28. See also inaction agency, 3, 17, 61, 68, 89, 165, 237; purification of, 88 ambiguity, 1, 2, 12, 16, 62, 123, 134, 182, 183, 204, 212, 213, 217 ambivalence, 2, 5, 10, 28, 126, 130, 216, 236, 245, 252; lukewarm, 21; and certainty, 26, 186; concept of, 37n13, 248n13; erasing, 11, 130; experience of, 225, 233–236, 238, 241 ancestor worship, 50

ancestors, 19, 46; dead, 50, 51, 55, 56, 127, 128. See also ghosts anthropologists, 8–11, 16, 19, 44, 45, 50, 53, 54n3, 57, 77, 86, 103, 109, 112n17, 140, 143, 152, 156, 160, 176, 245, 251 anthropology, 4, 12, 13, 56, 61, 79n14, 79n15, 87, 151, 152; and doubt, 5, 8, 44, 76, 225, 246; of Christianity, 112n17; of moralities, 103; of religion, 87, 104; research methods in, 152 anxieties, 95, 99, 160, 167, 185, 225, 229, 235, 236, 244 apathy, 2, 3, 15, 30, 212, 220 Asad, Talal, 87, 104, 246n5 Augustine of Hippo, 6, 43 authenticity, 21, 119, 121, 124, 128–130, 135, 136, 139, 140, 143, 144n7 authorities, religious, 21, 25 authority, 7, 11, 43, 53, 54, 119; absence of, 100; canonical, 91; discourses of, 119; ethnographic, 161n3; figures, 51, 52; priestly, 99; religious, 100, 238, 239; scriptural, 110n3; structures, 16, 100, 111n13 belief, 9, 26, 32, 34, 55–56, 76, 123, 127, 134, 233, 252; and action, 32, 86, 144n8; acts, 34

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belief cont. 124; Christian, 86, 103, 106; cycles, of, 3, 4, 29–31, 149, 255, 260; and disbelief, 2, 4, 9, 15, 24, 36n3, 86, 122, 124, 126; and doubt, 2, 4, 24, 29–31, 77, 79n15, 86, 130, 134, 228, 245; half, 21,122, 124, 130, 134, 142, 252; inner, 87–89; intuitive and reflexive, 24, 55; and knowledge, 10, 24; language of, 124; and ritual, 86, 104, 105; statements, 124; and superstition, 120; system, 61, 246 believers, 18, 43, 88–90, 105, 110n3, 120, 129, 228, 239, 243–245; in science, 133, 136– 139; non-, 140; Orthodox, 89; practical, 123. See also Old Believer betrayal, 177, 183–186 Bible, 106, 107, 110n3 biblical truth, 19 boundaries, 34, 171, 173, 179; drawing of, 259; straddling, 9 Buddhist lamas, 69, 71 burials, 97–100, 108. See also funeral capitalism: ‘actually existing’, 194, 214, 218 ; arrival of, 29; bureaucratic 171; dream of, 255; fake, 192, 197, 206, 207, 210, 212; global, 193, 220; grand illusion of, 195; millennial, 65; national, 213, 221; neo-liberal, 193, 195; normative, 209; real, 192; transition to, 192, 256, 259; welfare, 211, 213, 221 capitalist: enemy, 34; modernity, 2; regime, 192, 199, 200; system,

213, 214, 220; utopia, 196 certainty: absence of, 17, 25; absolute, 13–15, 24; desire for, 252, 254 and doubt, 14, 17, 55, 255, 260, 266; epistemological, 5, 180; fleeting, 2; lack of, 25; ontological, 26; as pretence, 12; scientific, 12; search of, 86, 165, 178, 180, 186; and uncertainty, 26, 55, 86, 103, 108, 149, 167, 168, 180, 185, 186. See also uncertainty challenge, 30, 32, 35, 63; and doubt, 25–26, 31, 33; external, 25–26, 33–35, 38n19; internal, 26, 33 Christ, 85, 88, 90, 98, 108; body of, 88; death of, 90, 93,99, 109; Anti-, 91, 92; crucifixion of, 92, 109; incarnation of, 88; passion 91, 108, 109 Christianity, 18, 87, 88–90, 104, 106, 108, 111; anthropologists of, 103; Eastern, 88, 91; ethnographies of, 108 postReformation, 88. See also Old Believer; Orthodoxy Civil War, Spanish, 10, 149, 152–162 class, 24, 159, 196; consciousness, 165; differences,160; 159; enemies, 170, 217; low, 139; middle-, 159, 165, 174, 195, 196, 205, 208, 216, 220; ruling, 195, 219; war, 155, 159, 195; working-, 191–220, 222n6, 226n8, 226n11 Comaroff, Jean and John, 60, 61, 65, 180, 181 communism, 3, 171, 194, 214, 215, 217; anti-, 216; goulash,

index

communism cont. 222n12; legacy of, 216–218 communist, 214, 215, 217, 218; anti-, 214, 217; career, 204; elite, 214; executives, 199, 205, 212, 219; ideology, 34, 219; leadership, 34; past, 200, 214; project, 29, 194; regime, 194, 207, 209, 214, 222n11; rhetoric, 29; supporters, 181 Communist Party, 34, 197, 204; of India (Maoist), 170, 171, 186n3; of India (MarxistLeninist), 170; Spanish, 156; Workers’ Party, 203 continuity, 106, 112n17, 113n21. See also discontinuity conversion, 9, 103, 180, 184, 185 conviction, 1–4, 15, 19, 23–26, 28–30, 34, 35, 59, 124, 134, 143, 186, 255, 256; and action, 24; ambiguous, 2; and doubt, 1, 15, 26, 62; fragility of, 26; imperfect, 2; moral, 184; political, 26, 184; religious, 1, 77; unstable, 35 Crapanzano, Vincent, 4, 12, 22, 32, 35, 36n2, 37n10, 110n5, 253 credibility, 3, 143 crisis: economic, 261; moment of, 86, 95, 99, 106–108; of religious transmission, 99, 101, 110 death, 50, 67, 95, 99, 108, 157, 171, 177, 230, 236; Christ’s, 85, 90, 93, 99, 109; good, 97; register of, 154; scared to, 120; squads, 159 Descartes, René, 6–8, 13, 37n11, 150, 253 disbelief, 24, 74, 86, 87, 122, 126, 185; and belief, 2, 9, 15, 24,

36n3, 86, 124; suspension of, 8, 9 discontinuity, 79, 112n17, 113n21 disillusionment, 3–5, 17, 29–31, 149, 214, 255, 256, 260, 265 distrust 3, 185. See also trust doubt: as activated uncertainty, 4, 16, 17, 19; Cartesian 13, 150; as challenge, 31–34; cyclical aspects of, 3, 28–30, 149, 255–257, 260; deactivated, 19, 20; definition of, 3, 4, 248n13; domesticating, 22, 34, 143; effects of, 17, 23, 24, 28, 33; embodied, 27, 235, 253; energizing quality of; 15, 17, 23, 28, 33, 35, 225; entertained, 7, 8, 36n6; ethnographic, 152; ethnography of, 1, 6, 16, 44, 48, 107; experienced, 1, 14, 16, 103, 108, 235, 243; external; 18, 108; instrumental use of, 6, 8; internal, 21, 26, 34, 86, 108; lived, 2, 7, 16; marginalizing, 241; methodological, 43, 150; object of, 16, 20–22, 28, 29, 33; overcoming, 6, 13; 20, 22, 33, 135, 218, 221; radical, 6, 8, 12–14; revolutionary, 28, 35; scientific, 56, 57, 150; shared, 43–46, 48, 49, 54; sidelining of, 2, 11, 16, 20, 27, 124, 134, 226; suspended, 1, 24, 128, 143; systematic, 5, 7, 16, 131, 149; theologies of, 5, 6, 15, 86, 90; unstable qualities of, 15 doubting: act of, 4, 15, 16, 19, 33; approach, 23, 32, 108; game of, 14; moment, 4, 255; process of, 8, 86, 103, 225, 235, 246,

271

272

index

doubting cont. 248n13, 254, 256; Thomas, 5, 35, 36n3 dreams, 7, 19, 31, 46, 52, 120, 215, 264; the dead in, 50, 51, 52; capitalist, 29, 255 dubious: actions, 18; objects, 15, 16, 20, 122 education, 45, 62, 142, 195, 196 199, 207, 209, 213–218, 216; religious, 100, 102 emotion, 23, 93, 242, 249n21, 253, 254, 255, 260, 266 emotive force, 32, 253 enemy, 34, 38n20, 159, 173, 178, 186; class, 170, 217; internal, 196; within, 34 energizing quality of doubt, 4, 15, 23, 28, 33, 35, 225 Engelke, Matthew, 10, 12, 88, 89, 104, 110n3, 151, 167, 180, 234, 248n15 ethnic minorities, 254 ethnic violence, 257, 259, 264, 265 ethnicity, 258, 264 ethnographer, 10, 11, 108, 159 ethnographic: doubt, 152; evidence, 12, 151; fieldwork, 149, 151; knowledge, 13; research, 12, 16, 32, 123, 150, 193 ethnography, 8, 9, 12, 13, 30, 44–46, 55, 56, 103, 108, 112n17, 149, 160, 260; of doubt, 1, 6, 16, 44, 48, 103, 246, 260 evidence: anecdotal, 59; empirical, 48, 49; ethnographic, 12, 151; of doubt, 48; fragmentary, 11;

search for, 228; sensorial, 49, 51; supernatural, 36n3; and truth, 14 faith, 15, 25, 88, 89, 108, 143, 226, 228, 232–236, 239–241, 243–245, 247n10; and action, 228, 229; Christian, 106, 107; and doubt, 5, 6, 34, 36n3, 225, 255; inner, 88, 104, 110n2; leap of, 6; low, 21, 22, 225, 235 (see also iman); and reason, 247n5; subdued, 35; and uncertainty, 15 fear, 18, 55, 71, 76, 155, 165, 177, 179, 181–183, 185, 206, 236, 244, 249n21, 253, 254, 258; culture of, 181; and hope, 244, 245 fieldwork. See research Franco, Francisco, 153, 162n5; dictatorship, 159, 162n12 funeral, 95, 97–100, 102, 107 future: doubts about, 65, 76, 99; imagined, 257, 264, 265, precarious, 98; uncertainty of, 103; unknown, 31; unpredictability of, 18; vision, 186n3 Geertz, Clifford, 108, 151, 254 ghosts, 79, 127, 143n1; infant, 119, 120 God, 8–10, 15, 24, 25, 36n5, 37n11, 88–90, 98, 105–107, 110n1, 110n3, 111n5, 226– 230, 232, 234–240, 242–244 gods, 120, 123–125, 127–136, 145n12, 245, 247n10, 248n20 gold, 62, 64, 66, 70–74, 76; miner, 63, 66, 74; mines, 59, 76; mining, 17, 62, 65, 72;

index

gold cont. power of, 72–75; rush, 59–60, 62–64, 73, 75, 76; traders, 66 government, 3, 31, 65, 78n8, 125, 139, 172, 197, 212, 213, 221, 258–260; officials, 25, 59; parallel, 171; socialist, 210 Heidegger, Martin, 19, 37n14, 254, 264 hope: active, 213; concept of, 193; and doubt, 3–5, 18, 29–31, 86, 107–109, 199, 244, 253, 255–257, 260, 261, 265, 266; and fear, 244, 245; loss of, 243; method of, 109; passive, 213, 218; project of, 134, 143; of salvation, 92, 244; theology, 109 icon, 85, 88, 89, 97, 106 identity, 38n20, 160, 185, 197, 199, 213, 217, 259 ideological, 103, 150, 194; cause, 2; commitment, 168; force, 170; movement, 1; narratives, 193, 197; resources, 194; structure, 34; superstructure, 34; system, 3, 34 ideology, 1, 29, 31, 162n5, 165, 167, 173, 185, 186n3, 195, 205, 206, 255, 260; communist, 221; grand, 3, 30, 256; Maoist, 168; MarxistLeninist, 212, 217; nationalist, 211, 256; political, 30, 196, 199, 203, 210; revolutionary, 169; semiotic, 88, 89, 105, 106, 108; ‘workerist’ 201, 204, 218, 221, 222n11 ignorance, 23, 37n14, 79n14, 136, 155, 227

illness, 68, 7, 75, 138, 215 illusion, 29–31, 193, 210, 211, 213, 219–221; of certainty, 14; and doubt, 191, 194, 199; grand, 194, 195, 199; of truth, viii iman, 21, 232, 235, 237, 238, 240; boost, 241; fluctuating, 235, 237, 240, 241, 243–246; low, 225, 226, 235, 237, 238, 240, 241, 243. See also faith inaction, 4, 15, 23 instrumentality, 61, 62, 77 Islam, 30, 230–233, 247n9; practising, 226, 229, 230 Islamic: bookshops, 231, 238; clothing, 232; courses, 230; leaders, 25; pedagogy, 231, 246n5, 249n21; practices, 236, 247n10, 248n14; resurgence, 229; revival, 233, 248n14; scholar, 228, 236, 239, 247n12, 248n16; theology, 228, 244, 248n20 Kapferer, Bruce, 8, 61, 62 Kierkegaard, Søren, 6, 13, 15, 22 knowledge, 6, 136, 150, 228, 232, 256; and anthropology, 79n14; and belief, 10, 24; and conviction, 25; and doubt, 4, 8, 23, 56; embodied, 8, 233; ethnographic, 13; expert, 123; and faith, 6; foundations of, 8; fragmentary, 10, 245; of God, 105, 107, 248n20; incomplete, 254; limitations of, 19, 22; mystical, 90; patchy, 25; production, 13, 77, 107; propositional, 78n4, 79n13; relational, 11; religious, 129, 144n4,

273

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knowledge cont. 229–230, 233, 238, 239, 243; scientific, 43; sensory, 8; system 137, 138 Kyrgyzstan, 2, 25, 34, 257, 258, 261, 263, 264, 266n4 labour, 211, 214, 219, 259; force, 211; interests, 194, 201; migration, 95, 261, 263; politics of, 193 labourers, 64, 73, 261 liturgy, 94–96, 106–107, 112n20; Orthodox, 89, 106, 109, 110 Madagascar, 19, 45, 46, 50, 53, 127 Malagasy, 45, 46, 49, 51, 55, 127 Mao Zedong, 169 Maoism, 170 Maoist, 165, 166, 171, 179, 180, 182, 185; Communist Centre, 170; ideology, 168; movement, 166; revolutionary, 2, 26. See also Communist Party of India (Maoist) market, 29, 64, 179, 206, 210–212; belief in, 252; economy, 62; free, 2, 64, 65; Hungarian, 220; of protection, 166, 171, 173, 180 materiality, 88, 89, 108, 109, 110n1, 110n2, 110n3; and immateriality, 89, 107; of religion, 88 memory, 46, 149, 154, 155, 156, 158–160, 181 migration, 95, 102, 261, 263, 264 missionary, 25, 26, 110n2 modernity, 2, 194, 220, 247n9 modernization, 194, 195, 197, 203 Muslim: British, 229, 231; converts, 2, 25; pious, 244;

practising, 21, 22, 25, 225– 236, 238, 243, 245, 246n1; proper, 232; theologians, 247n5; young, 229–231 mystery, 21, 38n16, 89, 90, 92, 93, 98, 106, 107, 137, 138, 142, 183, 252; of the cross, 90, 93, 109; of the Eucharist, 94, 107; language of, 86, 89, 108; of resurrection, 18 nationalism, 1 nationalist discourse, 63, 205, 259 nationalist ideology, 34, 210, 211, 256 nationalist sentiment, 218, 219 occult, 61, 78n3; economy, 60–62 Old Believer: bishop, 99, 100, 106; Christianity, 18; community, 94, 95, 99, 100, 102, 105, 111n10, 111n13, 112n15; Orthodoxy, 255; priests, 94, 111n14; ritualism, 102, 104, 109 offerings, 72, 75; to ancestors, 128; blood, 60; to the dead, 50; to spirits, 60 ontological certainty, 26, 167, 168, 180, 185 ontology, 167, 254, 263 Orthodox Church, 91, 99, 100, 111n10. See also Russian Orthodox Church Orthodox liturgy, 89, 106, 109, 110 Orthodox rite, 92; ritual, 107 Orthodox theology, 90, 112n18 Orthodoxy, 86, 91, 102, 105, 106, 108, 111n10, 112n20, 255 paradise, 226–229, 233, 236, 237, 239, 244, 245, 246n4

index

Peirce, Charles, 13, 14, 22, 24, 36n6 Pelkmans, Mathijs, 103, 122, 123, 134, 252, 253, 255, 256, 264 philosophy, 5, 6, 8, 13, 36n6, 43, 44, 56, 150, 255 piety, 229, 233, 234, 246 populism, 1, 193, 205 populist, 30, 193, 194, 196, 203, 211, 214 possession, 120, 128; rituals, 126, 128; spirit, 78n9 post-socialist, 29, 74, 86, 93, 103, 108, 192–195, 199, 213, 214 post-Soviet. See Soviet prayer, 85, 106, 158, 230, 232, 236, 237, 246n1, 248n14, 249n21; supplicatory, 240, 242 priest, 18, 85, 86, 91, 94–102, 111n11, 111n14, 136, 154, 157, 158 priesthood, 91, 94, 99, 100, 102, 106 priestless, 91, 111n13 Quran, 228, 229, 239, 240, 242, 246n4, 247n7 rationality, 8, 21, 56, 77n2, 134, 139, 150, 192, 245, 252 relational approach, 4, 196 religiosity, 247n8; modes of, 122 research, 46, 54, 151, 251, 254; anthropological, 151; design, 150; ethnographic, 12, 16, 32, 150; process, 12, 123; social science, 32; subjects, 9; techniques, 10, 12 resurrection, 18, 31, 36n3, 85, 90, 93, 107, 109, 111n8 revolution, 35, 169, 170, 181,

182, 204, 257; Tulip, 259 revolutionaries, 2, 33, 38n17, 165, 166, 168, 169, 175, 176, 183 rite: of black magic, 75; correct practice of, 87; Old Orthodox, 91, 92, 105; Old Slavonic, 85; of passage, 161 ritual, 18, 19, 50, 51, 93–109, 112n19, 123, 254; and doubt, 93; efficacy of, 88, 103, 107, 251, 255; failure, 104; incomplete, 101–103, 106; and language, 113n21; possession, 126–130; practice, 74, 75, 86– 88, 122, 138; transmission, 86 Russia, 91, 92, 95, 109, 112n15, 261–263 Russian Orthodox Church, 91, 105 Russian Orthodoxy, 102, 105 sacrifice, 18, 21, 91, 93, 111n5, 228, 237, 244; human, 59, 61, 65, 73, 74, 76 scepticism, 3, 9, 13–15, 47, 77, 77n3, 107, 136, 161n2, 218, 245; and doubt, 4, 79n13, 86, 253; organized, 150; of science, 43, 150 shrine, 119–126, 128–142, 144n4, 144n6, 144n7, 144n9, 144n11, 145n13 social relations, 26, 103, 167, 168, 180–182, 185, 251, 254, 256, 263, 264 Soviet: communities, 92; post-, 92, 264; rule, 34; -supported, 62; Union, 3, 29, 197, 257 spirit, 51, 127, 229, concept of, 67; soldiers, 123 spirit-medium, 20, 125, 143; –ship, 121, 124, 125, 126, 130, 140,

275

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spirit-medium cont. 144n4; shrine, 119, 139, 142 spirits, 9, 18, 19, 52, 59, 60, 62, 67–76, 78n9, 79n11 subjectivity, 15, 151, 167, 185, 244 supernatural: agency, 121; agents 121, 122, 128, 133, 135, 137; evidence, 36n3; gifts, 143; phenomena, 137; powers, 143; the, 138 temporality, 86, 89, 107–109, 112n17; linear, 256; multiple 106, 255 terrorism, 26, 27 terrorist, 27, 33, 38n17, 171, 173, 258 theology, 5, 6, 89–91, 105, 109, 110n1; of doubt, 86; Eastern Christian, 89; Islamic 228, 244, 249n20; Orthodox, 90, 112n18; pre-Reformation, 88; Western Christian, 90, 105, 108, 112n18 transition, 195, 204, 206; to capitalism, 192, 256, 259; losers of, 216; to market economy, 62; political, 153, 154; theory, 194, 222n4; years, 63 trust, 3, 48, 129, 136, 182, 183, 185, 237, 263; in God, 239, 240. See also distrust 3, 185 truth, viii, 2, 6–9, 11, 19, 21, 25, 26, 36n1, 43, 44, 45, 49, 54, 61, 127, 138, 161n3, 169, 176, 252, 254; Biblical, 19; claims, 10, 44; fragile, viii, 13; indifferent, 15; language of, 110;

objective, 15; projects of, 5, 6, 252, 266; subjective, 22 truths, 8, 9, 14, 16, 22, 37n8, 43, 265, 266 uncertainty, 30, 31, 55, 76, 86, 95, 104, 107, 131, 168, 178, 192, 199, 228, 235, 236, 242, 259, 260; activated, 16–17, 19; and certainty, 26, 55, 86, 103, 108, 149, 167, 180, 185, 186; and Christian thought, 110n5; concept of, 4; and doubt, 16–17, 29, 150–152, 167, 180, 196, 248n13, 248n15, 251, 255–257, 264; epistemological, 167, 180, 185; experience of, 233–235, 238, 243, 244; and faith, 15; and fear, 182, 183, 258; feelings of, 99, 225, 234, 241, 245, 246; ontological, 167, 168, 180, 185; in social relations, 180–183; in writing, 11 violence, 162n6, 162n7, 171, 173, 182–184, 257–266; aftermath of, 260, 261, 265; economy of, 181, 182; ethnic, 257, 259, 264, 265, 266n3; post-, 263– 265; shadows of, 182; threat of, 173 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 2, 6, 13, 14, 19 Zigon, Jarrett, 3, 103, 193, 212, 254, 264