Women, Possession Trance Cults, and the Extended Nutrient‐Deficiency Hypothesis
(1977) has shown more clearly than I did, in Egypt and elsewhere where it occurs this cult is often associated with the embourgoisement of men and women--involving a curtailment of the latter's freedom (see also Ferchiou 1972:66; Lewis, forthcoming). Finally, while I have no quarrel with Kehoe and Giletti's characterization of my interpretation of possession cults as "political," I have never advocated a monocausal explanation of such protean phenomena. By the same token and contrary to their assertions, I have explicitly pointed out (Lewis 1966:325) that in this context the concepts "center" and "periphery" are relative and ambiguous. If authors choose to recycle the reductionist "explanations" of Marvin Harris and his school, they might at least take the trouble to get their facts right.
Shamanic gender liminality with specific reference to the NatKadaw of Myanmar and the Bissu of Sulawesi.
This piece of research sets out to discover why co-gendered shamans are flourishing in Myanmar but have all but disappeared on Sulawesi. A review of the literature, firstly, on shamanic liminality in general and, secondly, shamanic gender liminality in particular, reveals that there are three main ways of linking gender liminality with becoming a shaman. In the first the calling comes beforehand and becoming cogendered follows afterwards. In the second being co-gendered comes first and the calling follows. In the third, there is no intrinsic link between gender liminality and becoming a shaman. The first type seems no longer to exist. Fieldwork among the Bugis people on Sulawesi reveals that the second type is just surviving while fieldwork in Myanmar shows that the third type is flourishing but with co-gendered shamans now forming the majority. By interviewing NatKadaw, Burmese shamans, and studying the nature of society in Myanmar, it becomes apparent that there are many reasons to explain why co-gendered NatKadaw have become so numerous and so popular. Buddhism, however, is the over-arching factor. On Sulawesi, once again a combination of interviews and a study of the island’s history reveals the complexity behind the decline in numbers of the Bissu, the Bugis shamans. Again religion is the over-arching factor – in this case Islam. The study concludes, however, that in spite of the differences between the NatKadaw and the Bissu, there is a tendency for both to become entertainers albeit that the NatKadaw are popular entertainers while the Bissu were until recently involved largely in high art. At the moment, however, the Bissu are rejecting the entertainment route and are developing in two different directions.
Italian Influence on the Development of Calvinist Scholasticism
THIS ARTICLE TRIES to show that the rise of Calvinist scholasticism, which was the most important development in Calvinist theology during the second half of the sixteenth century, stemmed largely from several converging Italian influences, particularly from the writings of Peter Martyr Vermigli and Jerome Zanchi. Here Calvinist theology refers not only to the personal thought of John Calvin but also to the teachings of the founders of the Reformed or Calvinist tradition as it spread out from Geneva and Switzerland to France, Germany, England, Scotland, Poland, and the Low Countries. In this context Calvin emerges as the brightest star in a galaxy of Reformed theologians which includes Heinrich Bullinger, Pierre Viret, Theodore Beza and Wolfgang Musculus as well as Martyr, Zanchi and others. These theologians were often more influential than Calvin himself at a given place or time or on a given point of doctrine. Bullinger, Martyr, and Martin Bucer were all more important for spreading Calvinist ideas to Edwardian England than was John Calvin. Early Elizabethan Protestantism looked more to Zurich than to Geneva, as did early Polish Calvinism. German Calvinism owed more to Heidelberg than to Geneva.' These leaders developed their theologies sometimes in mutual dependence, sometimes with surprising independence. By no means was their relation to Calvin simply that of disciple to master, for each gave a personal nuance to his style of Calvinism. Thus the sixteenth century Jesuit Cornelius Schulting states on the opening page of his five volume polemic against Calvin and Peter Martyr that Martyr was clearer and far more learned than Calvin.2 Recently John Bray has pointed out that research in seventeenth century Calvinism leads "to the conclusion that the impact of Calvin upon the Calvinistic movement has been greatly over-rated. It may well be that some of