Book
Heart drum: spirit possession in the communities of Belize
Cubola Productions • Belize • Published In 1986 • Pages:
By: Foster, Byron.
AbstractBrief abstract written by HRAF anthropologists who have done the subject indexing for the document
This work is focused primarily on one single aspect of Garifuna religion, that of spirit possession. It endeavors to show how spirit possession functions not only as an expressive symbolic action in itself, but also as a means of linking the living with the ancestral dead, and from a slightly different standpoint, as a performance of ethnicity. The first part of the source presents a brief socio-historical background on the Garifuna and discusses the attitudes of United States and European churches toward Garifuna ritual. The source continues with a study of the possession-illnesses or afflictions that are believed to have been caused by possession by the ancestral spirits, their diagnosis by the spirit mediums (or shamans), and their eventual treatment through the DUGU rituals. The source concludes with a discussion of spirit possession in the light of current prevailing theories on the subject and with comparative data on other societies.
- SubjectsDocument-level OCM identifiers given by the anthropology subject indexers at HRAF
- Religious and educational structures
- Magical and mental therapy
- Shamans and psychotherapists
- Eschatology
- Revelation and divination
- cultureCulture name from the Outline of World Cultures (OWC)
- Garifuna
- HRAF PubDateThe date HRAF published the document
- 2005
- RegionThe area the document pertains to
- Middle America and the Caribbean
- Sub RegionThe more specific area the document pertains to, which is located within the Region
- Central America
- Document TypeMay include journal articles, essays, collections of essays, monographs, or chapters/parts of monographs
- Book
- Evaluation
- Creator TypeThe type of person writing the document, e.g. Ethnographer, Missionary, Archaeologist, Folklorist, Linguist, Indigenous Person, and so on.
- Ethnologist
- Document Rating A ranking done by HRAF anthropologists based on the strength of the source material on a scale of 1 to 5, as follows: 1 - poor; 2 - fair; 3 - good, useful data, but not uniformly excellent; 4 - excellent secondary data; 5 - excellent primary data.
- 5: Excellent Primary Data
- AnalystThe HRAF anthropologist who subject indexed the document and prepared other materials for the eHRAF culture/tradition collection
- John Beierle ; 1989-1991
- Field DateThe date the researcher conducted the fieldwork or archival research that produced the document
- 1977-1979
- Coverage DateThe date or dates that the information in the document pertains to
- 1977-1979
- Coverage PlaceLocation of the research culture or tradition (often a smaller unit such as a band, community, or archaeological site)
- Hopkins, Belize
- NotesAdditional notes
- [by] Byron Foster
- Includes bibliographical references (p. 50)
- LCCNLibrary of Congress Control Number
- 89111773
- LCSHLibrary of Congress Subject Headings
- Garifuna (Caribbean people)