Feeling rules

Liberal democracies have a problem with witchcraft

It is more common to hear reports of violence against people accused of sorcery that causes illness and death in Papua New Guinea. People who are accused often have to flee their homes and go into hiding (Jorgensen 2014; see also Bouscaren 2018).
- It’s not just in PNG that this happens, either (The New York Times 2016; Oppenheimer 2010)
In 2018 and 2019, rumours circulated that the president of Nigeria had been replaced by a clone (The Guardian 2018; Gagliardone et al. 2023).
In recent years, several Indian state governments have passed laws banning religious conversion in response to Hindu nationalist conspiracy theories that say Muslim men marry Hindu women to convert them even though most agree this is completely false (Frayer 2021).
Rural, conversative whites in the US increasingly rely on a separate ecosystem of right-wing media, through which they often hear that the US government possesses secret alien medical technology called a “med bed” that can cure any disease (Saslow 2024).

Experts are worried about the health of global democracies

Some political scientists believe that all of these things are examples of a dysfunction or disease in societies that prevents its members from participating in politics as citizens with rights (J. L. Hochschild and Einstein 2015).
For them, people get swept up in whatever feels right emotionally. They would say that citizens all have to have the same facts and accept that facts are facts.

Is this the best way to think about these ideas?

People see the world differently. Is this a problem?

Like many other societies, Azande people in South Sudan say that every bad thing is caused by someone’s invisible magic, even if they do not intend it:

Witchcraft is mentioned every day, and invoked to explain any number of bad things, from minor incidents to death. “Witchcraft is not less anticipated than adultery” (which is also common) (Evans-Pritchard [1937] 1976, 19).
Witchcraft belief coexists with reason and logic. When the granary collapsed on top of a person, and people saw that termites had eaten away the posts, they reasoned that termites made the granary fall, but a witch made sure it fell on that person at that time (Evans-Pritchard [1937] 1976, 22).
“Azande say, ‘Death always has a cause, and no man dies without a reason’” (Evans-Pritchard [1937] 1976, 51). Specifically, people’s death is always the result of a latent or overt conflict. The witch is always motivated by this conflict.

Beliefs of this kind are not only very common, but very resilient and adaptable.

Many people say that the rich get richer because of their witchcraft, and that politicians win elections thanks to witchcraft (Bonhomme 2012; Comaroff and Comaroff 2018; Englund 1996; Newell 2007).

Liberal ideas of modern politics and citizenship are based on beliefs, too

Many societies call themselves modern, and they say that they organize themselves on the basis of rational thinking that is free of traditional ideas and cultural biases.

But these societies are, like all societies, based on social fictions.

The nation is a social fiction. We act as if there is a nation in a single territory.
A democratic system is based on a social fiction. We act as if there is a popular will of a single people, when it is really just the outcome of voting, representation, laws, and court decisions.

Social solidarity is a feeling

For Durkheim, if societies are wholes then each society is sui generis (Durkheim [1912] 2008, 27).

A society creates itself.
A society creates its own reality which its members accept unconsciously.

All societies have one thing in common. A society must impose one idea on its members: What is sacred and what is not.

A society defines some things that are “set apart and forbidden” (Durkheim [1912] 2008, 66). What counts as sacred is different in each society.
The sacred is not necessarily treated with great reverence, but it is distinct from the mundane, and so individuals cannot simply do what they want with sacred things.

Contact with the sacred is contact with society itself

Scholars often don’t appreciate one part of Durkheim’s ideas, society is something you feel.

He is famous for saying that society is a collective consciousness but he also argues that members of a society will experience belonging in their bodies.

When people come into contact with their society’s sacred things, they are in contact with the whole of which they are a part.
They feel a state of collective “effeverescence” in these moments, a heightened awareness of oneness with the social whole (Durkheim [1912] 2008, 457, 483).

Feelings have rules

Arlie Hochschild ([1983] 2012) adds to this idea of how people embody their place in society.

Hochschilds employs a dramaturgical metaphor to understand society:

Every person in every situation is playing a role, like playing a part on stage in a play.
Playing one’s role in a situation means going into character, like a method actor embodying the experiences of a character. It’s “deep acting” (A. R. Hochschild [1983] 2012, 38).

Feelings are a clue about one’s performance

Social roles come with normative emotional states called “feeling rules” (A. R. Hochschild [1983] 2012, 56).

I am at a funeral. I am playing the character of mourner. What would my character feel about being a mourner? I should feel sad, reflective, respectful. Ok, I’m going to cultivate that feeling, so my performance looks believable.
I am at the pub with my work mates. I am playing the role of colleague, or acquaintence—a peer and equal. So I should feel relaxed, unserious, perhaps playful. No talk about promotions, or money, or health issues! Makes people nervous.

Social life is hard work! Specifically, “emotion work,” which is a lot more effort than just conforming to normative patterns (A. R. Hochschild [1983] 2012, 56).

Nationalism has feeling rules, and requires citizens to do emotion work

Two provisional conclusions as a starting point for Wednesday:

Being a national citizen involves doing emotion work. The imagined national community has feeling rules.
- And upon closer examination in this perspective, we start to see why we should question Anderson’s ideas about the nation.
Some societies think they are rational and modern, and have systems that keep emotional attachments (or superstitious ideas) out of political decisions. But the social fictions of any society are accepted because they feel true, or have feeling rules that people apply to their own emotional reactions.

References and further reading

Bonhomme, Julien. 2012. “The Dangers of Anonymity: Witchcraft, Rumor, and Modernity in Africa.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 2 (2): 205–33. https://doi.org/10.14318/hau2.2.012.

Bouscaren, Durrie, dir. 2018. “In Papua New Guinea’s Sorcery Wars, A Peacemaker Takes On Her Toughest Case.” All Things Considered. National Public Radio. https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2018/05/24/612451247/in-papua-new-guineas-sorcery-wars-a-peacemaker-takes-on-her-toughest-case.

Comaroff, Jean, and John L. Comaroff. 2018. “Occult Economies, Revisited.” In Magical Capitalism: Enchantment, Spells, and Occult Practices in Contemporary Economies, edited by Brian Moeran and Timothy de Waal Malefyt, 289–320. Cham: Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74397-4_12.

Durkheim, Emile. (1912) 2008. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. Translated by Joseph Ward Swain. Newburyport: Dover Publications. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/usyd/detail.action?docID=1890174.

Englund, Harri. 1996. “Witchcraft, Modernity and the Person: The Morality of Accumulation in Central Malawi.” Critique of Anthropology 16 (3): 257–79. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308275X9601600303.

Evans-Pritchard, E. E. (1937) 1976. Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande. Edited by Eva Gillies. Abridged edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Frayer, Lauren. 2021. “In India, Boy Meets Girl, Proposes — and Gets Accused of Jihad.” National Public Radio, October 10, 2021, sec. World. https://www.npr.org/2021/10/10/1041105988/india-muslim-hindu-interfaith-wedding-conversion.

Gagliardone, Iginio, Matti Pohjonen, Stephanie Diepeveen, and Samuel Olaniran. 2023. “Clones and Zombies: Rethinking Conspiracy Theories and the Digital Public Sphere Through a (Post)-Colonial Perspective.” Information, Communication & Society 26 (12): 2419–38. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2023.2239890.

Hochschild, Arlie Russell. (1983) 2012. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. Berkeley: University of California Press. http://california.degruyter.com/view/title/556320.

Hochschild, Jennifer L., and Katherine Levine Einstein. 2015. “Do Facts Matter? Information and Misinformation in American Politics.” Political Science Quarterly 130 (4): 585–624. https://doi.org/10.1002/polq.12398.

Jorgensen, Dan. 2014. “Preying on Those Close to Home: Witchcraft Violence in a Papua New Guinea Village.” The Australian Journal of Anthropology 25 (3): 267–86. https://doi.org/10.1111/taja.12105.

Krishnan, Sneha. 2023. “Carceral Domesticities and the Geopolitics of Love Jihad.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 41 (6): 995–1012. https://doi.org/10.1177/02637758231212767.

Mankekar, Purnima, and Hannah Carlan. 2019. “The Remediation of Nationalism: Viscerality, Virality, and Digital Affect.” In Global Digital Cultures: Perspectives from South Asia, edited by Aswin Punathambekar and Sriram Mohan, 203–22. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press. https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.9561751.

Newell, Sasha. 2007. “Pentecostal Witchcraft: Neoliberal Possession and Demonic Discourse in Ivoirian Pentecostal Churches.” Journal of Religion in Africa 37 (4): 461–90. https://doi.org/10.1163/157006607X230517.

Oppenheimer, Mark. 2010. “A Nigerian Witch-Hunter Defends Herself.” The New York Times, May 21, 2010, sec. U.S. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/22/us/22beliefs.html.

Saslow, Eli. 2024. “Racked by Pain and Enraptured by a Right-Wing Miracle Cure.” The New York Times, July 28, 2024, sec. U.S. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/28/us/politics/far-right-miracle-cure-medbed.html.

The Guardian. 2018. “‘It’s the Real Me’: Nigerian President Denies Dying and Being Replaced by Clone,” December 3, 2018, sec. World news. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/03/its-real-me-nigerian-president-denies-dying-and-being-replaced-by-clone.

The New York Times. 2016. “Fighting Modern-Day Witch Hunts in India’s Remote Northeast,” February 24, 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/25/world/asia/india-assam-state-witch-hunts.html.

Udupa, Sahana, and Max Kramer. 2023. “Multiple Interfaces: Social Media, Religious Politics, and National (Un)belonging in India and the Diaspora.” American Ethnologist 50 (2): 247–59. https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.13117.

ANTH 1002: Anthropology in the world---A guide to the unit

Lecture outlines and guides: 1.1, 1.2, 2.1, 2.2, 3.1, 3.2, 4.1, 4.2, 5.1, 5.2, 6.1, 6.2, 7.1, 7.2, 8.1, 8.2, 9.1, 9.2, 10.1, 10.2, 11.1, 11.2, 12.1, 12.2, 13.1, 13.2.

Assignments: Module I quiz, Module II essay: Similarities among cases, Module III essay: Completeness and incompleteness in collective identities, Module IV essay: Nature for First Nations.