Vous trouverez ci-dessous les informations concernant la prochaine séance du séminaire de l’IrAsia qui se déroulera en distanciel le 06/11/2020 à 14h.

La séance est dirigée par Jean-Marc de Grave qui a invité le Professeur Guido Sprenger (Institut für Ethnologie, Universität Heidelberg, Centre of Asian and Transcultural Studies).

Titre de l’intervention et résumé :

Deflecting responsibility. Spirits and “systems” in Southeast Asia and Western modernity

Abstract: While many anthropological studies of responsibility have been concerned with the ways blame is traced to a human person that is made accountable, the deflection of responsibility to non-humans that are not accountable has been neglected. However, this occurs in both modern and non-modern contexts. Rmeet in Laos may deflect responsibility for wrongdoing to spirits who temporarily take over a person. Western-modern societies, in contrast, suggest the delegation of responsibility to functional wholes – the “system”, the “market”, “nature”, etc. In both cases, concepts of personhood condition the shape of the non-humans emerging from the refraction of agency. Among Rmeet, these non-humans by default take the shape of persons organized in part-whole relationships. The model found in modernity, however, assembles these refracted actions into object-like “systems” with intrinsic, non-negotiable rules. Both depend on the way cosmological hierarchies relate to society.  Continuer la lecture →