Article ID: CBB001212972

Missionaries, Healing and Sorcery in Melanesia: A Scottish Evangelist in Ambrym Island, Vanuatu (2013)

unapi

Rio, Knut (Author)
Eriksen, Annelin (Author)


History and Anthropology
Volume: 24, no. 3
Issue: 3
Pages: 398-418

Melanesian people have recently become highly occupied with history as an arena for moral scrutiny and causal explanations for contemporary failures. On the island of Ambrym in Vanuatu, this form of ontological worry goes back to the first missionaries on the island, the Murray brothers. This article takes us back to events in the 1880s when the missionaries were active on Ambrym, and searches into their social position. Drawing on the diary of Charles Murray, the main argument unfolds around his involvement in the realm of men's ritual powers, how he himself played his part as a highly knowledgeable magician and how his downfall came about by challenging a manly realm of knowledge and power and his wider inclusion of women and lesser men in his church.

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Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001212972/

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Authors & Contributors
Seman, Jennifer Koshatka
Waters, Thomas
Siegfried Weichlein
Wall, Barbra Mann
Yoshina Hurgobin
Linda Ratschiller
Concepts
Medicine and religion
Missionaries and missions
Cross-cultural interaction; cultural influence
Healers
Magic
Medicine
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, early
Medieval
20th century, late
21st century
Modern
Places
China
Great Britain
Africa
New Spain
Calcutta (India)
Mauritius
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