Book Chapters by Fiona Bowie
La Violence Insidieuse: Anthropologie et psychologie de la sorcellerie et du harcèlement moral, 2023
One angle from which to investigate witchcraft and bullying is that of intention.
Witchcraft can... more One angle from which to investigate witchcraft and bullying is that of intention.
Witchcraft can be regarded as conscious or unconscious, but there is an assumption that it reflects something about the heart or desires of the witch towards a person, object, or situation. When negative psychic energy is directed towards this object of attention there will be a corresponding negative effect upon the target unless remedial action is taken. In a circular process, the aggressor might also be a victim of psychic attack, as protective actions can cause violent intentions to rebound. The role of negative intention and the energy it generates in human society and in individuals will be examined briefly in three ethnographic contexts. In Paul Stoller’s (1987) work on sorcery in Niger, West Africa, witchcraft/sorcery is culturally normative and part of everyday discourse. Specialists in sorcery are well-known figures within their communities. In Jeanne Favret-Saada’s (1980, 1981, 2015) studies of witchcraft accusations among peasant farmers in northwestern France, witchcraft is generally hidden and referred to obliquely. Its full workings are only apparent to those ‘caught up’ in it. In the third example, Fiona Bowie’s work among spirit release practitioners and health professionals in the United Kingdom, notions of witchcraft, sorcery, possession and psychic attack are culturally marginal and their intrusion into people’s lives is generally shocking and unexpected. Contrasting these three examples allows us to explore the role of cultural discourses concerning witchcraft in relation to the processes, techniques and outcomes for aggressor and victim.
Trans Life and the Catholic Church Today, 2024
In this chapter we have sought, as husband and wife and as parents, to reflect
on our individual... more In this chapter we have sought, as husband and wife and as parents, to reflect
on our individual and shared experience of bringing up a young person who
happens to be trans. We are both (retired) academics. Oliver, a Roman
Catholic and lay Dominican, studied modern languages and literature
before taking up a chair in Christian theology. Fiona is an Anglican and an
anthropologist with a speciality in the anthropology of religion. Being alongside a child, now an adult, who is trans has continually challenged and expanded my thinking on personhood, gender, and identity and the ways in which these are reflected in social and religious norms.
Explanation and Interpretation: Theorizing About Religion and Myth. Contributions in Honor of Robert A. Segal. Edited by Nickolas P. Roubekas & Thomas Ryba. Brill: Leiden. Supplements to Method and Theory in the Study of Religion., 2020
This essay explores the tension between the study of religion as an exercise in phenomenological ... more This essay explores the tension between the study of religion as an exercise in phenomenological bracketing on the one hand, and as engagement with a world of transpersonal forces on the other. I argue that certain experiences of encounters with spirits, non-human others, and with what are perceived as diving beings, have cross-cultural features that transcend specific cultural interpretations. One reason for their ubiquity could be their origin in direct human experience. The ontological force of anomalous and transpersonal experience has been debated by anthropologists for well over a century, gaining recent visibility via explorations in the anthropology of ontology.
The Insider/Outsider Debate: New Perspectives in the Study of Religion, eds.George D. Chryssides & Stephen E. Gregg, 2019
In this chapter I look at some ethnographic examples in which the boundaries between insider and ... more In this chapter I look at some ethnographic examples in which the boundaries between insider and outside have become blurred and then at some of the methodological considerations that arise. My position, while similar to many of those associated with the ‘ontological turn’ in anthropology, is not identical to it. My interests in the paranormal, mediumship and the afterlife have drawn me more towards parapsychology and the experiential source hypothesis (Hufford, 1982), and in some ways have more in common with the critical realism proposed by David Graeber (2015). I note that refusing to bracket out certain tabooed phenomena (practising methodological agnosticism), presents a particular challenge when studying in Western contexts. Engaging with entranced mediums in Singapore or in Brazil is exotic and exciting. To do so in England or Germany can be regarded as perverse and academically compromising. I suggest, that we do have tools that enable us to tackle ontological questions in ways that open up the field, questioning the boundaries between Self and Other, Insider and Outsider, privileged versus forbidden knowledge, religion and interpretation versus science and hard facts.
The Insider/Outsider Debate in the Study of Religion, Eds. George Chryssides and Stephen Gregg, 2018
The boundaries between being an insider and an outsider in the study of religion are seldom clear... more The boundaries between being an insider and an outsider in the study of religion are seldom clear-cut. This is in part because fieldwork or any type of qualitative research involves a process of increased knowledge, familiarity and, one might hope, acceptance by those being studied. This can be the case whether one is studying a group of which one was not initially a member (making the strange familiar) or negotiating new relationships as a researcher rather than just a member of a particular community (making the familiar strange). With any work with human subjects relations are dynamic and fluid, and the communities being studied are not necessarily coherent uniform entities. There will be degrees of membership according to one's positionality, whether one is initially an insider or outsider. This chapter examines some of the ways in which fieldwork relationships are negotiated, and the blurred boundaries between the terms 'insider' and 'outsider'. The author uses examples from her anthropological fieldwork with two communities in a number of settings: the Focolare Movement and the Bangwa people of Cameroon. The first setting is the Cameroonian 'town' of Fontem where the Focolare and Bangwa live as neighbours, and where the author has conducted long-term fieldwork. The other settings are the UK, Europe and the United States, where members of the Focolare and Bangwa also interact with one another, and with the researcher (separately and together). Bowie concludes that methodological approaches to studying religious communities based on dialogue, empathy and respect are similar whatever one's status and relationship to those studied. Description The boundaries between being an insider and an outsider in the study of religion are seldom clear-cut. This is in part because fieldwork or any type of qualitative research involves a process of increased knowledge, familiarity and, one might hope, acceptance by those being studied. This can be the case whether one is studying a group of which one was not initially a member (making the strange familiar) or negotiating new relationships as a researcher rather than just a member of a particular community (making the familiar strange). With any work with human subjects relations are dynamic and fluid, and the communities being studied are not necessarily coherent uniform entities. There will be degrees of membership according to one's positionality, whether one is initially an insider or outsider. This chapter examines some of the ways in which fieldwork relationships are negotiated, and the blurred boundaries between the terms 'insider' and 'outsider'. The author uses examples from her anthropological fieldwork with two communities in a number of settings: the Focolare Movement and the Bangwa people of Cameroon. The first setting is the Cameroonian 'town' of Fontem where the Focolare and Bangwa live as neighbours, and where the author has conducted long-term fieldwork. The other settings are the UK, Europe and the United States, where members of the Focolare and Bangwa also interact with one another, and with the researcher (separately and together).
The Insider/Outsider Debate: New Perspectives in the Study of Religion, eds. George Chrysiddes and Stephen Gregg, 2016
As I sat in a darkened séance room, holding the hands of my neighbours and singing along to popul... more As I sat in a darkened séance room, holding the hands of my neighbours and singing along to popular songs on a cassette recorder, I felt a mixture of foolishness and nervous expectation. Neither 'believer' nor 'sceptic' I was open to experience whatever the evening had in store. The physical/trance demonstration was part of my research into mediumship and afterlife phenomena. Spirit possession and mediumship are not unusual topics for an anthropologist of religion, but by studying paranormal phenomena in the UK I had crossed a disciplinary boundary of academic probity, and risked being seen as gullible and academically unsound. A second boundary crossing involved the body of the medium. The discrete boundary we like to think unites our physical body with whatever other elements make us human (soul, spirit, consciousness, mind) was suddenly called into question. Assuming the séance was not simply an elaborate hoax, was it perhaps evidence that we live simultaneously on more than one plane of existence, and that direct communication between planes and their inhabitants is possible? This discussion is about boundary crossing, methodologically, in terms of subject matter, and ontologically, in seeking to understand how the world is constructed.
See Papers for details and links.
Indigenous Religions: A Companion, edited by Graham Harvey, 2000
In the chapter I argue that Bangwa notions of witchcraft (and methods for dealing with it) are be... more In the chapter I argue that Bangwa notions of witchcraft (and methods for dealing with it) are best understood in the context of a specific cultural history. The Bangwa of South West Cameroon (West Africa) are not and never have been an isolated group, and their beliefs and practices have much in common with those of neighbouring peoples, which in turn reflect particular cultural and historical experiences. Witchcraft is a flexible and adaptive phenomenon. It is not a sacred or hidden 'tradition', but part of the way in which many contemporary Bangwa, whether living in Cameroon or overseas, conceive of themselves as individuals and as social beings. Although concerned with the occult and forces of the night, witchcraft is at the same time a necessary concomitant of power and success, spoken of openly and acknowledged as a fact of life, as ordinary as breathing or eating.
(Bibliographical references are given at the end of the volume as a whole and are not reproduced here. For details readers will need to access the volume in which this paper appeared).
The coming deliverer: millennial themes in …, Jan 1, 1997
As human beings we live with paradox. We are conscious and self-reflective,
aware of our existen... more As human beings we live with paradox. We are conscious and self-reflective,
aware of our existence, assured of our position as
hunters rather than prey, without predators in the world in which
we live, and yet we remain ignorant of the world - of our place in
the delicate ecological balance which holds our existence in its
thrall - and powerless before the reality of death, the great
equalizer which puts paid to our specious notions of superiority.
Human societies and individuals have historically come to two
broadly contradictory conclusions concerning our predicament.
These contrasting emphases may be present within each person,
but the stress on each element varies from one culture to another,
across time and within individuals. The first approach is to
conceive of the world (the limits of which are culturally
determined) as existing in a delicately balanced state of
equilibrium, to which human beings, through their social and
religious actions, contribute. The forces of nature and human
misdemeanours threaten to upset this ideal harmony,
as may the actions of destructive gods or spirits, who must be
constantly opposed if chaos is to be averted. Such a view may be
combined with a notion of endless cosmic cycles of growth and
decay, mirroring the experience of life itself within a time-scale
set between the life-span of creatures on earth and the stars on
which they gaze. The main thrust of such a vision tends to be
this-worldly and life-affirming. Through constant struggle and
vigilance human beings can and must play their part in the great
drama of life on whi'ch fhe continued existence of the world
depends. By way of contrast we have the solution of those whose
eyes are set on a future utopia, or perhaps on a golden past which
they seek to recreate in a transformed world. The present
constraints of existence are eschewed in favour of a new world in
which suffering and chaos are finally overcome. This new world,
whether for the few or the many, recreated on this earth or in
some future existence, demands the destruction of the old order
and is therefore life-denying and transcendental. The notion of a
coming deliverer belongs to the latter scheme of things - a human
or divine (or divine-human) saviour will come who is stong
enough to take on the forces of chaos and evil and defeat them
once and for all, leading the chosen few to the new world beyond
the boundaries of the present age.
Cross-Cultural Approaches to Adoption, Jan 1, 2004
Preface to volume:
Adoption is currently subject to a great deal of media scrutiny. High-profile... more Preface to volume:
Adoption is currently subject to a great deal of media scrutiny. High-profile cases of international adoption via the Internet or other unofficial routes have drawn attention to the relative ease with which children can be obtained on the global circuit, and have brought about legislation which regulates the exchange of children within and between countries. however, a scarcity of research into cross-cultural attitudes to child-rearing, and a wider lack of awareness of cultural difference in adoptive contexts, has meant that the assumptions underlying Western childcare policy are seldom examined or made explicit. the articles in Cross-Cultural Approaches to Adoption look at adoption practices from Africa, Oceania, Asia, South and Central America, including examples of societies in which children are routinely separated from their biological parents or passed through several foster families. Showing the range and flexibility of child-rearing practices that approximate to the Western term 'adoption', they demonstrate the benefits of a cross-cultural appreciation of family life, and allow a broader understanding of the varied relationships that exist between children and adoptive parents.
The uploaded document includes the Preface and Contents, Glossary, Chapter One and Editor's Introduction to Chapter 2.
Encounter, Transformation and Identity: Peoples of the Western Cameroon Borderlands, 1891-2000. Edited by Ian Fowler and Verkijika G. Fanso, Pp.184-198, 2009
In an interview conducted in cambridge in 1982,r Audrey Richards contrasted her own training and ... more In an interview conducted in cambridge in 1982,r Audrey Richards contrasted her own training and fieldwork experience, which involved studying a rvhole tribe or society, with the more modest anrbitions of contemporary ethnographcrs, who generally take a single theme or a subgroup as their focus. For the first half of the twentieth century, the concern of anthropologists was to fill in the blanks on the nrap. At the London School of Economics, Audrey Richards was a student of Malinorvski, who was actively promoting his new brand of anthropology based on prolonged residence and participant observation. She recounts how, when leaving to undertake fieldu,'ork among the Bemba of Northern Rhodesia in 1930, Malinowski ran along thc platform of victoria Station,'to my great regret carrying about fourtecn coloured pencils'that he thrust into her hand, saying, .Now remenrber, brown for economics, red for politics, blue for ritual!' when I was preparing for.my own fieldrvork in cameroon in t9g0 the situation was not so very different.: I knerv that I wanted to do .mud-hut'anthropology based on extended participant observation in a single location, preferably as rural as possible. I chose Fontem (Lebang),r in what was then Mamfe Division of Anglophone South west cameroon, for logistical reasons. I had a long-term interest in Fontem and the chance of supplementing my limited research grant witlr some paid rvork at the mission or Mariapolis run by a christian group known as the \Volk of Mary clr the Focolare Movenrcnt.a Locating the Field I had knou,n of Fontenr through regular upctates on the progress of the nrission 'to\\'n' or Mariapo lis frorn the early I 970s as a member of the young people's section of the Focolare Movcment. As a nrember of the Gen Movement (the second or new generation of the work of Mary), I had been involved in raising money Notes lbr this chapter bcgin on page 197 lrrr trrr,,,, r\l Iolltttltlllteltorrtl,rl,rrlt,'t'l;11111uotIslrtrlt:rrttrlrYtrtctrrlrcrsolllreIor',,lrrr. \l lltotttll I lorcrl llrt'sltrlt':ltorrs lttttl irccotlttts ol tlrc lllrrrgrvrr tlrlrt I lrclrrtl lrt lotol;rrc Ittcctittrs irr l{orrrc. I srrrrllly tlid rrot bclicvc that thc rclationslrrps tlcscribctl rrurc t;ttitc lts pcrfl'ct os p()rtritycd artd gucsscd tlrat tlrc story was rnuclt ntorc corrr;tlicittcd alrd intcrcsting than llre otflcial version ol'events. I did not attentpt to repeat thc cthnographic work of Robert Brain on tsangwa kinship and marriage. rvood carving and masquerades, although l certainly observec! asked questions, and sought to understand as much as I could about Bar.rgwa socicty and culture.s Robert Brain had arrived in Fontem shortly before the arrival of the first r.r.rcrnbers of the Focolare in the rnid 1960s, and therefore documented the society belore and during this period of initial contact, providing an excellent basis lionr which to judge changes anq! continuities instigated by the presence of the Focolare. He had lived near the mission site as a guest of a Chief lrobellah Nkeng, rvho also became a great friend of the Focolare and one of my own infonnar.rts. Mar.ry of the people Robert Brain had talked to were, not surprisingly, those I also found to be good interlocutors. Tlrey tended to havc a reasonablc krrowledge of English or Pidgin English, had often lived outside Lebialem (the name of the Division that encompasses the Bangwa and Mundani) and were likely to have becn educated to at least primary school level. ln other words, they had errough distance from their own society and sufficient contact with Western fbrrns of thought and education to understand and respond to the kinds of abstract models and obtuse questions that anthropologists insist on asking. I suspcct that I spent rnore time with wonren than Brain had done, but as Edwin Ardencr observed wourclt tend not to rxeet the prerequisites of the ethnographer's ideal infornrant. Thcy have less tin.rc ro spcnd talking to anthropologists, less access to education, and rrrorc likelihood ot'bcing monolingual. Above all, women are less likcly than mcn to modcl thcir knowledge of society in abstract ways (8. Ardener 2007).
Encounter, Transformation and Identity: Peoples of the Western Cameroon Borderlands, 1891-2000. Edited by Ian Fowler and Verkijika G. Fanso. Pp 93-109, 2009
Women and Missions: Past and Present. …
The chapter looks at the experience of the Mill Hill Missionaries (Society of St Joseph) among th... more The chapter looks at the experience of the Mill Hill Missionaries (Society of St Joseph) among the Bangwa and Mbo peoples of Cameroon, West Africa, from 1930s-1960s. Like other missionaries of the period, the Mill Hill Fathers faced the dilemma of how to form Christian families based on a Western model of monogamy in a society which practices polygyny.
Papers by Fiona Bowie
The Anthropology of Religion
The Anthropology of Religion
1517 Media eBooks, Jun 1, 2019
Anthropology of Religion
An anthropological approach to religion is characterised by engagement with the people studied th... more An anthropological approach to religion is characterised by engagement with the people studied through participant observation in the field. Although the ethnographer might be changed by this experience, the majority of anthropologists are constrained by academic and cultural conventions that prevent them from fully engaging with it. The challenge for anthropologists is to find a language that moves beyond the security of phenomenological or scientific approaches to religion, without becoming apologists for any one theological perspective.
Ritual and Performance
1517 Media eBooks, Jun 1, 2019
The Anthropology of Religion
Fortress Press eBooks, Apr 1, 2018
History of Cross-Country Adoption and Fostering
The movement of abandoned, neglected or surplus children from one family or group to another that... more The movement of abandoned, neglected or surplus children from one family or group to another that has a perceived shortage is a phenomenon widely documented from many different historical periods and cultures. What is relatively new is the way children now cross international borders. Surplus children might be created by, for instance, a culture that does not permit unmarried women to bring up their “illegitimate” babies, as with the movement in the 1950s of children from Catholic Quebec in Canada to Jewish couples in the United States. The Korean War in the early 1950s gave rise to a generation of Korean American babies, many thousands of whom were placed for adoption overseas. A similar process followed the Vietnam War in the 1970s. China’s one-child policy has produced a “surplus” of girls, many thousands of whom have been adopted by North American, European, and Australian families. International adoption is controversial, because underlying the humanitarian motivation to give disadvantaged children a better life there are issues of international politics, commercialization, and commoditization. Adoption can be a profitable business, and there is an underworld of kidnapping and child trafficking. As adoptees reach adulthood there is also reflection on the psychological challenge of growing up in a new culture, often with an unknown personal history. Similar issues are often faced by transracial adoptees, and a section on transracial adoption has therefore been included. Internationally recognized and local legal frameworks, in particular The Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption (1993), represent attempts to mitigate the worst excesses of unregulated international adoptions and to ensure that the interests of the children concerned remain paramount. Such frameworks are, however, predicated on a Western notion of the individual and of the nuclear family. They do not sit well with cultural practices in which child rearing is often shared, temporary, flexible, and pragmatic. Whether due to poverty, indigenous kinship norms, or attempts to maximize a child’s opportunities, in many parts of Africa, South America, and Asia, children are frequently reared for some or all of their childhood by people other than their biological parents. When these practices are mistaken for abandonment, or when an informal foster situation is translated into permanent adoption, there is an often painful clash of cultures. Anthropological accounts have therefore been included that enable social policy research to be seen within a broader cultural context.
The Journal of African History, Sep 22, 2014
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Book Chapters by Fiona Bowie
Witchcraft can be regarded as conscious or unconscious, but there is an assumption that it reflects something about the heart or desires of the witch towards a person, object, or situation. When negative psychic energy is directed towards this object of attention there will be a corresponding negative effect upon the target unless remedial action is taken. In a circular process, the aggressor might also be a victim of psychic attack, as protective actions can cause violent intentions to rebound. The role of negative intention and the energy it generates in human society and in individuals will be examined briefly in three ethnographic contexts. In Paul Stoller’s (1987) work on sorcery in Niger, West Africa, witchcraft/sorcery is culturally normative and part of everyday discourse. Specialists in sorcery are well-known figures within their communities. In Jeanne Favret-Saada’s (1980, 1981, 2015) studies of witchcraft accusations among peasant farmers in northwestern France, witchcraft is generally hidden and referred to obliquely. Its full workings are only apparent to those ‘caught up’ in it. In the third example, Fiona Bowie’s work among spirit release practitioners and health professionals in the United Kingdom, notions of witchcraft, sorcery, possession and psychic attack are culturally marginal and their intrusion into people’s lives is generally shocking and unexpected. Contrasting these three examples allows us to explore the role of cultural discourses concerning witchcraft in relation to the processes, techniques and outcomes for aggressor and victim.
on our individual and shared experience of bringing up a young person who
happens to be trans. We are both (retired) academics. Oliver, a Roman
Catholic and lay Dominican, studied modern languages and literature
before taking up a chair in Christian theology. Fiona is an Anglican and an
anthropologist with a speciality in the anthropology of religion. Being alongside a child, now an adult, who is trans has continually challenged and expanded my thinking on personhood, gender, and identity and the ways in which these are reflected in social and religious norms.
(Bibliographical references are given at the end of the volume as a whole and are not reproduced here. For details readers will need to access the volume in which this paper appeared).
aware of our existence, assured of our position as
hunters rather than prey, without predators in the world in which
we live, and yet we remain ignorant of the world - of our place in
the delicate ecological balance which holds our existence in its
thrall - and powerless before the reality of death, the great
equalizer which puts paid to our specious notions of superiority.
Human societies and individuals have historically come to two
broadly contradictory conclusions concerning our predicament.
These contrasting emphases may be present within each person,
but the stress on each element varies from one culture to another,
across time and within individuals. The first approach is to
conceive of the world (the limits of which are culturally
determined) as existing in a delicately balanced state of
equilibrium, to which human beings, through their social and
religious actions, contribute. The forces of nature and human
misdemeanours threaten to upset this ideal harmony,
as may the actions of destructive gods or spirits, who must be
constantly opposed if chaos is to be averted. Such a view may be
combined with a notion of endless cosmic cycles of growth and
decay, mirroring the experience of life itself within a time-scale
set between the life-span of creatures on earth and the stars on
which they gaze. The main thrust of such a vision tends to be
this-worldly and life-affirming. Through constant struggle and
vigilance human beings can and must play their part in the great
drama of life on whi'ch fhe continued existence of the world
depends. By way of contrast we have the solution of those whose
eyes are set on a future utopia, or perhaps on a golden past which
they seek to recreate in a transformed world. The present
constraints of existence are eschewed in favour of a new world in
which suffering and chaos are finally overcome. This new world,
whether for the few or the many, recreated on this earth or in
some future existence, demands the destruction of the old order
and is therefore life-denying and transcendental. The notion of a
coming deliverer belongs to the latter scheme of things - a human
or divine (or divine-human) saviour will come who is stong
enough to take on the forces of chaos and evil and defeat them
once and for all, leading the chosen few to the new world beyond
the boundaries of the present age.
Adoption is currently subject to a great deal of media scrutiny. High-profile cases of international adoption via the Internet or other unofficial routes have drawn attention to the relative ease with which children can be obtained on the global circuit, and have brought about legislation which regulates the exchange of children within and between countries. however, a scarcity of research into cross-cultural attitudes to child-rearing, and a wider lack of awareness of cultural difference in adoptive contexts, has meant that the assumptions underlying Western childcare policy are seldom examined or made explicit. the articles in Cross-Cultural Approaches to Adoption look at adoption practices from Africa, Oceania, Asia, South and Central America, including examples of societies in which children are routinely separated from their biological parents or passed through several foster families. Showing the range and flexibility of child-rearing practices that approximate to the Western term 'adoption', they demonstrate the benefits of a cross-cultural appreciation of family life, and allow a broader understanding of the varied relationships that exist between children and adoptive parents.
The uploaded document includes the Preface and Contents, Glossary, Chapter One and Editor's Introduction to Chapter 2.
Papers by Fiona Bowie