The phenomenon of “possession” continues to elude satisfactory explanation because of the ambiguity of its nature. It belongs to one of those marginal zones where beliefs and rites are allied in the closest possible way to still obscure psychological mechanisms. We know that the phenomenon dates from antiquity, and that in numerous so-called primitive societies it is one of the means by which the faithful communicate with the supernatural. Our object is to offer a contribution to the clarification of this (...) ambiguity by an analysis of the forms and functions of the trance in voodoo. This term, originating in Dahomey (in Fon, a voodoo is a god or spirit), denotes the ensemble of religious beliefs and practices observed on the fringes of Catholicism by the common people of Haiti. It is a syncretic religion in which elements from West Africa predominate, although other African cults have left their mark; however, this religious amalgam was impregnated from the beginning with Catholic beliefs and rites. The practice; of voodoo is not limited to Haiti. Under such names as macumba, candomblé, santeria, it is found in Brazil and in Cuba, where the Negroes, closer to the period of slavery, have conserved African traditions more completely than in Haiti. Observations made in Brazil can help to explain certain aspects of possession which, in Haiti, took an aberrant form. (shrink)

à Mauritz Friisen souvenir des soiréesde Görväln et de PampachicaFrancisco was born in 1573 in the old capital of the Incas, a pretty town stretching along a high valley of the Andes 11,000 feet above sea level but close enough to the earth's breast to enjoy a gentle springtime throughout the year, even in winter. 1573: forty-two years since the first Spaniards, three of them, reached the city as emissaries of the conqueror, who was then especially occupied with the last (...) Inca whom he held prisoner in a northern village and of whom he demanded an enormous ransom. Guided and protected by officers of the empire, they came to hasten the despoiling of temples and palaces and to collect vases and plaques of gold ordered by Atahualpa, who vainly hoped to gain his freedom. Three years later, on March 23,1534, before an astonished crowd of Indians, opening a new era in the name of the king and the pope, the founding of the new Spanish and Christian order in Cuzco solemnly took place. Then, one after another, material catastrophes occurred: in 1536 the conqueror's brother, the first governor, endured the siege of an army of twenty thousand Indians commanded by a phantom Inca, the second Manco, and the city, its thatched roofs ravaged by fire, was blown up by mines and countermines; in 1538 the newly rebuilt houses were destroyed by the rivalry of Pizarro and Almagro; in 1541, after the assassination of the former, new troubles caused new ruins. (shrink)

In Iroquois and Algonquin legend there is the story of a girl who submits in the dark of night to a man she believes to be her brother. Every detail seems to identify him: physical appearance, clothing, a scratched cheek attesting to the heroine's virtue. When formally accused by her, the brother reveals that he has a second self (Sosie) or, more precisely, a double; the bond between them is so strong that everything befalling the one is automatically transmitted to (...) the other : the torn garment, the wounded face. In order to convince his incredulous sister, the young man kills his double before her eyes, but with this single blow he pronounces his own death sentence, since their destinies are one. (shrink)

The possibility of the development of comparative thought made the Renaissance an era particularly favorable to the awakening of the scientific understanding of social phenomena. Isolated elements of such an attitude had already appeared, but now their accumulation became of decisive importance.

The simplest and no doubt the most persistent of the ideas held on the relationship between society and power, from Menenius Agrippa to Auguste Comte, is that of an analogy between the social body and the human body. Both these men deduced that power is nothing other than the supreme regulating function of all functional activities, as harmoniously integrated in society as they are in human physiology. Ethnographic study often strengthened this organicist conception through description of the various social functions (...) as necessary or vital for the cohesion and the existence of primitive society. But historic societies provide a spectacle quite different from that of an integrated organism. In them social functions are not abstractions but are seen rather in the form of human groups whose relationships can scarcely be said to show an organic solidarity. Within these groups and working to set them against each other, powers have their own interests which they must protect against the inroads of ambitions. The permanence of certain functions (military, religious, and economic, for example) does not imply permanence in the structures which implement them or in the real or fictional power which accompanies them. Their meaning is ambivalent. Obviously, they contribute to the architecture of a society; they may have a latent content which is a disintegrating factor from the moment when their hierarchy no longer suits the changing stratifications of the social body. (shrink)

Definitions are often viewed with a skeptical eye. The most diverse definitions are successfully applied to a given subject; their discrepancies are noted, and conclusions are drawn concerning the vanity of quibbling over words. In the best of cases the writer, before beginning his own exposition, proposes the definition which he will follow exclusively, convinced that all terminologies are valid so long as they are explicit and respected.

During the past century and a half historians and sociologists have often shown signs of considerable simplicity of mind when assessing the motivating forces behind the men whose deeds they are studying, and those attaining the most flattering notoriety in the intellectual world have been among the simplest. From the early nineteenth century, beginning with the fall of Napoleon, there is a tendency to present the historical disciplines as sciences: the re-creative anecdote is greeted with increasing disdain, and sociology undergoes (...) its act of baptism. The Revolution of 1789 and the epic of imperial France are events of such dimension that it is difficult to associate them with the conscious designs of a few individuals. No longer a muse, Clio becomes a goddess. In War and Peace Tolstoi ironically treats historians of the old school who pretend to offer the key to the Revolution “in exposing the deeds and gestures of a few dozen men in one building in the city of Paris.” The French emperor's gallop into Russia and the stubborn but apparently passive resistance offered by Kutuzov—these are facts in which Tolstoi sees the manifestation of forces far surpassing the play of a few human wills. Tolstoi's manner in extolling Kutuzov is typical: Kutuzov is not a visionary; he shows no signs of genius, but with humble and patient fervor he turns aside all obstacles which might stifle the voice of popular instinct. Thirty years before Tolstoi, in a letter to his fiancée, Georg Büchner stated the case in another good example of this type of thinking: “I have studied the history of the Revolution. … I find in human nature a frightening equality, in the condition of man an ineluctable power conferred at once upon all and upon no one. The individual is but a fleck of foam upon the wave, greatness merely the result of chance, the power of genius a puppet show, a ridiculous struggle against a law of iron.” Men are interesting insofar as they are representative. Saint-Simon, mentor of Auguste Comte and father of sociology, declares that the great men of the world merely play the role assigned to them in historical evolution. According to Saint-Simon, the sixteenth century, an age of theology, gave birth to theologian-kings: Charles V and Henry VIII. Because he is a theologian, Henry VIII easily prevails over gallant and witty Francis I. The eighteenth century, a siècle of philosophy, “counts but two great names among its sovereigns: Catherine and Frederick the Great, friends of philosophers and patrons of philosophy.” Seen in this light, the features of the individual become blurred and shadowy. History is admired instead— history which, often with material of mediocre quality, builds solid edifices. But, faced with the astonishing drama played out by Napoleon himself, Tolstoi merely shrugs his shoulders, while following step by step simple men like Tostopchin or Kutuzov, who are obviously the mere instruments of history. Heine, who went through a Saint-Simonian phase, is amazed that Luther, that rough, gross monk whose brain was clouded by anxiety and superstition, so easily wielded the battering ram that shattered the old medieval world. In the 1830’s Auguste Comte foresees a “history without proper names,” a definition which is of prime importance in the analysis we are undertaking here. But, a hundred years later, Maxime Leroy, nourished on both Comte and Sainte-Beuve, draws more subtly shaded definitions: history becomes a “sociology containing proper names.”. (shrink)

Cyberneticians define information and the quantity of information in mathematical terms, apprehending them independently from their meaning. When they put aside their conceptualizations and symbolizations, foreign to the semantic content of messages, we see them hesitant about their domain of prospection.

Picture a vast territory whose soil is peopled by European colonists, while military conquest places the natives in a position of total dependence. Settlers from all parts of the parent state and from other countries as well form, at first, an inorganic mass of families arbitrarily placed side by side and differing from one another in all aspects as to place of origin, mental attitudes, habits, way of life.

“What I wish to make clear … is … that from all we have learnt about the structure of living matter, we must be prepared to find it working in a manner that cannot be reduced to the ordinary laws of physics.” Thus the founder of quantum mechanics, Erwin Schroedinger, expounds in a recent book “the obvious inability of present-day physics and chemistry to account for … events” which occur in a living organism.

The development in modern times of the scientific study of the languages and civilizations called “oriental” (actually those outside western and central Europe) has of necessity been followed by a division of research into disciplines essentially delimited by linguistic boundaries. Thus experts of classical Arabic and of spoken Arab dialects, whether they study these idioms for their own sake, for their spoken or written literature, or even, making use of Arabic texts, to elaborate the history of the peoples of Arabic (...) language, their nations, or their culture, have found themselves tending to work more or less together and to consider themselves under the name of “Arabists” as the artisans of a common science. Likewise, the experts of classical or modern Chinese and of Chinese dialects—linguists, philologists, historians, ethnographers—are conscious of working in the same corps of studies, known as “Sinology.” In both cases the linguistic definition is reinforced by a fairly precise geographical definition; the Arab countries, or China, are easily found on the map, and the educated public understands without much difficulty the sphere of interests of the Arabist or the Sinologist. (shrink)

Today, the French word “syndicat” designates both an association of workers and a group of producers or business concerns. In the nineteenth century, it was identified with “associations of resistance” which the law called “workers’ coalitions” and which were associations of workers, de facto or de jure, formed to improve the lot of the working class by one means or another. In this study we shall consider such organizations exclusively.

Much has been written on the life of Muhammad, prophet of Islam. (“Mohammed” and the French “Mahomet” are the result of a long-standing and now traditional deformation.) Aside from his picturesque and romantic character, sure to excite the interest of Occidentals drawn to active, impassioned lives of genius, the importance of the Moslem achievement which he initiated has given rise to important works, the solid and honorable production of historians and specialists of Islam.We see, then, that many pages have been (...) written on this astonishing man. Critical discussions, often heated ones, have been devoted to the least of his words or deeds. However, very few of these pages have been devoted to the fundamental problems raised by his life in the minds of those who reflect on the evolution and the destiny of societies. (shrink)

Nothing has yet been done, and, here, in the middle of the twentieth century, it is fast becoming too late to draw up a suitable catalogue of the works of human wisdom. We are forced to project for the future the complete realization of our desires. This future will no doubt discover a conscious and effective organization of thought and action—a constant good fortune in the pursuit of legitimate satisfactions through a total mastery of natural forces—in a word, a perfect (...) and reciprocal adaptation between man and that part of the universe in which he lives. All this, or most of it, still remains to be done; but much has already been said in the five thousand years that men have been writing. An intelligent observer arriving from Sirius would doubtless be especially struck by the extraordinary gap separating here on earth what is so well said from what is so badly carried out. Or rather he would wonder how it is that beings as highly gifted as men, judging from the knowledge and wisdom they have accumulated, still make such ineffective and even harmful use of the means at their disposal. The most indulgent hypothesis would be to see in this the result of a temporary misunderstanding owing to the great speed with which human thought evolves. Our observer would resume his journey then, resolved to return after a hundred years or two, sure that he would then find that man had bridged the gap and become as great in what he does as in what he knows. (shrink)