Events

There was a madman in the poor village of East Wind. A shaman was called to drive away the demons that lived inside him. She burned incense and set up colored flags to all upon the gods, all recognizable shamanic rituals. However, she imbued the text of her shamanic rituals with calls for Chairman Mao, Zhou Enlai, and Deng Xiaoping. She "incorporated political slogans and phrases from the Chinese national anthem" (505). "The shaman grafted national discourse onto local ritual structure in the context where there had formerly been a clear division between the state and the shamanic" (505). After the ritual ended, the collective reaction from the villagers can be described colloquially as "what the fuck is this shit?". Most villagers viewed her as a con woman looking to make a quick buck. Hell, she didn't even seem like the typical shaman they knew of. Not only was she not a man (lol), but she jammed nationalist propaganda into a village that wasn't that too into nationalism.

Notes

• Most rituals studied in anthropology are "routinely performed and dramatize shared meaning and visions of reality" (505)
• Failed rituals tend to not successfully reassert or transform the social order
• Failed rituals can be used as a tool to analyze how a ritual is made legitimate and authentic - by study what ritual is not, we can understand what ritual is.
• Rituals only exist & thrive in context, ie. when it knows its audience
• People don't like to continue a ritual if it comes with associations to a bad memory
• When you re-contextualize a ritual or try to evolve it to its next iteration, the jump needs to make sense in the context of the cultural members.
• The woman didn't know her audience, thus her shamanic ritual was not viewed as authentic
• Local cultures are stronger than state views
• Rituals can only live within their context and must be recognizable to cultural members. Essentially, the essence of it must be recognizable.
• There is an expectation in rituals by viewing community members.
• By combining shamanic discourse with state discourse, the woman made the ritual unfamiliar to viewing cultural members.
• "The failure of the ritual...directs us to analyze the various forces that inspired doubt" (513)
• "Processes of legitimization and authentication encompasses local dynamics, experiences of structural change, the significance of the ritual practice, and interpretations of new forms of power" (513)
• The same ritual can have a different meaning even within the same community
• Different experiences to the same event can spur different rituals
• Some rituals don't survive or become delegitimate as they invoke bad memories
• Your good memory can be my bad memory