Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Maps, Tables, Figures and Illustrations
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Akha Transcription, Akha Pronunciation Guide, and CAW Comparison chart
- 1 Bearings
- 2 Moving Through History
- 3 Space and the Flow of Life
- 4 Spatializing the Upland Village Polity and its Alter, the Lowland Muang
- 5 Space and Fertility in House and Field
- 6 Chanting to Produce the Inside and Outside
- 7 Rethinking the Cosmic Polity
- 8 Space, Life, and Identity
- Appendix A Spirit Chanting of the Inside: Types of Ceremonies
- Appendix B Spirit Chanting of the Outside: Types of Ceremonies
- Akha Glossary
- Notes
- List of References
- English Language Index
- Akha Language Index
- Biographical Note about the Author
- Publications Series
6 - Chanting to Produce the Inside and Outside
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2021
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Maps, Tables, Figures and Illustrations
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Akha Transcription, Akha Pronunciation Guide, and CAW Comparison chart
- 1 Bearings
- 2 Moving Through History
- 3 Space and the Flow of Life
- 4 Spatializing the Upland Village Polity and its Alter, the Lowland Muang
- 5 Space and Fertility in House and Field
- 6 Chanting to Produce the Inside and Outside
- 7 Rethinking the Cosmic Polity
- 8 Space, Life, and Identity
- Appendix A Spirit Chanting of the Inside: Types of Ceremonies
- Appendix B Spirit Chanting of the Outside: Types of Ceremonies
- Akha Glossary
- Notes
- List of References
- English Language Index
- Akha Language Index
- Biographical Note about the Author
- Publications Series
Summary
In the beginning people and spirits (nέq) lived together in the same house and shared the same fields. They had the same mother. People nursed from the two breasts on the mother's front while nέq drank from the nine breasts on the mother's back. However, they fought and argued and ended up living in separate places. (Akha origin story)
Introduction
In the village chapter we have seen how the Akha separate and valuate uplanders (themselves) and lowlanders (others). Through spatial and other forms of totalization, the Akha village becomes a microcosmic totality that accesses cosmic forces of the universe. Being hierarchical in nature, this totality can be viewed as a political technology, supplying ranked positions both within Akha society and between the Akha and outsiders. In a sense the autonomy and superiority of the Akha way of life over that of outsiders rests on an insider collaboration: those within must follow the hierarchical patterns laid down by the ancestors.
As we have seen in the household chapter, these spatial patterns also exist at the level of the household, which itself can become a totality that can access cosmic power on its own. Here the insider/outsider distinction can at times refer to household members vs. non-household village members, and Akha semiotic practices can express tensions between the village and household domains.
In this chapter, we look at a set of ritual practices called ‘spirit chanting of the inside and outside’. These ceremonies concern themselves with spirits of the inside and spirits of the outside (see also my discussion in Tooker 1988). We will find that ‘inside-ness’ is prototypically associated with the household (and its ancestral and reproductive spirits) in its capacity as a productive and reproductive unit, although the village can represent a relative degree of insideness. In addition, household and village autonomy and tensions are reflected in, and created through, these ceremonies. We will also find that the dangerous spirits of the ‘outside’ are placed in a similar structural position to human out siders (non-Akha, especially lowlanders). Essentially this is a construction that makes a ‘peripheral’ group ‘central’ by giving it access to forces of life (potency) and the ability to ward off evil outside draining influences. Thus it developed in an intergroup context.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Space and the Production of Cultural Difference among the Akha Prior to GlobalizationChanneling the Flow of Life, pp. 157 - 214Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2012