Residential areas are divided between a few colonies, neighbourhoods inhabited by single communities, and mixed areas, by far the majority. Hindu families of traditionally high-caste status (such as Brahmans and aristocratic Nāyars) live largely in the village interior near to temples other communities (Christians and lower-caste Hindus) live scattered around the village. Villagers are also divided–and stratified–by samudāyam or jāti, community or caste.

The data have been collected during three periods of joint residence in a rural area of Southern Kerala, totalling a three years’ fieldwork.Ģ Valiyagramam (pseudonym) is a mixed grāmam (village rural settlement) in which class differentiation has been considerably exacerbated by the recent impact of migration to the West Asian Persian Gulf countries and by economic liberalisation. The particular zone where we work is characterised by a rapidly expanding middle class, a small and declining elite, and a substantial and increasingly impoverished working-class sector, comprising many who work precariously as casual day labourers.

2 A phrase often used is ‘tuḷḷal kiṭṭi ’ or ‘tuḷḷal vannu’, where tuḷḷal implies ‘jumping, frisking, (.)ġ In this paper we approach the question of the nexuses between society, the environment, the Hindu pantheon, persons and the body by means of some thoughts on possession in rural Kerala (South India) we use the term ‘possession’ to refer to a wide range of phenomena involving altered states of consciousness –voluntary and involuntary, embracing deities and ‘demons’, major and minor spirits, subject to negative or positive evaluations: states lexicalised in Malayalam as forms of tuḷḷal, 1 albeit emphatically not of the same order 2 (cf.definition in the introduction to C rapanzano & G arrison’ S edited collection: “any altered state (.) Les individus ne sont pas uniformément perméables, ni les points de rencontre neutres : certaines de ces « voies de passage » sont considérées comme ayant des affinités avec différents types de pouvoir divin. L’ethnographie montre comment différentes parties du corps sont privilégiées elle suggère aussi la perméabilité des orifices associés à diverses sortes d’expériences : les types d’individus impliqués le degré de contrôle exercé sur le possédé ou son autonomie la nature et l’environnement du pouvoir spirituel qui pénètre les évaluations positives ou négatives de l’expérience de la possession dans le cadre plus large de la société. Les orifices corporels « agissent » comme des « voies de passage » liant le Soi a l’environnement et au cosmos.

Nous avons observé trois expériences de possession au Kerala ainsi qu’un cas contrasté – une expérience d’évitement de la possession – afin de mettre en lumière les correspondances et glissements entre les discours sur les corps physiques et sociaux. Ethnography shows different bodily parts being accentuated, suggesting permeation of different orifices, associated with variations in experiences: type of person involved degree of control or agency exerted by the possessee nature and environmental setting of the spiritual power which enters and positive or negative evaluation of the possession experience within wider society.Īu Kerala, les personnes, les esprits et l’environnement sont presque toujours mutuellement perméables, sujets à influence réciproque et en interaction fluide, en dépit de la domination de l’élite qui promeut la fermeture comme valeur supérieure. Persons are not uniformly permeable, nor are crossing-points ever neutral: different bodily orifices are evaluated differently and are held to have affinities with (act as gateways to) different types of divine power. Bodily orifices act as ‘gateways’ linking self to environment and cosmos. We consider three Kerala possession experiences plus a contrast case–an experience when possession is avoided–to focus upon correspondences and slippages between discourses about social and physical bodies. In Kerala, persons, spirits and environments are almost always mutually permeable, in fluid inter-relationship and subject to each other’s influence, despite the prevalence of elite values which promote closure as superior.

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