This chapter centres around a structural equivalency between certain outside entities (e.g., anthropologists, tourists, and some organisations) and shamanic spirits (e.g., master-owners and spirit allies) in Surama Village. This equivalency is explored in connexion with the relational modes (particularly kinship and shamanism) and means (particularly hospitality) through which Makushi people form and manage strategic engagements with human and non-human others. This chapter articulates themes from previous chapters to clarify how Makushi shamanism reveals the status of contemporary visitors (particularly tourists) as akin to spirit allies and the Iwokrama International Centre as a magnified master-owner. Makushi shamanic relations with spirits, past missionaries, tourists, and organisations resonate and overlap. Makushi people seek esoteric knowledge and material goods from such outside entities. The chapter also discusses the spatial centralisation of alterity in Surama Village. The author’s status as a visitor and potential ally is highlighted to reflexively position the author within these relations.

This chapter consists of an extended discussion of shamanism and related ontological concepts among the Makushi. It opens with a narrative of the author’s experiences with a Makushi shaman named Mogo since 2012 and this shaman’s later death. The chapter discusses shamanic training and practices (including charms, spells, and tobacco use), as well as how shamans form relationships with spirits. It describes methods through which Makushi shamans obtain things and abilities from spirit allies. It examines notions of ‘mastery’ and ‘ownership’ and how these relations are grounded within the local landscape. However, unlike other recent ethnographic accounts from elsewhere in Amazonia, this chapter emphasises dimensions of reciprocity in Makushi shamanic relations with non-human beings. The chapter conceptualises Makushi shamanism through the combined theoretical lenses of historical ecology and Amerindian perspectivism. The shamanic relational mode described in this chapter provides a basis for examining relations with human outsiders in subsequent chapters.

Chapter 5 covers the tradition of the apotheosis in North America, principally the North East. It outlines the earliest encounters between Europeans and Native Americans and considers how the former were interpreted as shamans, as powerful spirits called manitou, or as the returning dead. The Europeans’ magnificent vessels conveyed an impression of extraordinary power, but not divinity. The chapter considers what a “first encounter” might mean where coastal natives had already had (sometimes decades of) experience of Europeans by the early seventeenth century. It then considers the extent to which European voyagers, such as Francis Drake, Thomas Harriot, and Walter Raleigh, engaged in self-apotheosis. The final section analyzes eighteenth- and nineteenth-century first encounters in the North American North West, the emergence of prophetic narratives and the significance of oral traditions.

This chapter explores how taxing the traditional livelihood practice of distilling spirits transformed the status of work and traditions, making previously ordinary ways of life illegal, and leading families to weigh their business self-interest against relationships, legal and moral responsibilities, and values. The chapter elucidates the opaque qualities of Istria’s vibrant moonshine market by unpacking the values underpinning it and the relationships between the winemakers, craft distillers, and bootleggers of which it is constituted. Taxing and regulating spirits challenged societal values in ways that forced new considerations into long-standing relationships, particularly around the circulation of the biowaste necessary for distilling. Families sought to maintain livelihoods based on farming, winemaking, and distilling while navigating new regulatory regimes, but those who could not handle such changes retreated from formal business ownership and into the margins of the market. This shift demonstrated that tax can make and unmake markets in sometimes unintended ways. At its core, this chapter illuminates how values in Istrian culture intersect in the practice of distilling and are complicated by the introduction of taxes and regulations.

Chapter seven opens with an account of the arrival of Captain James Cook’s expedition at Hawai’i, his association with the native ancestor god, Lono, and his death at the hands of the islanders. It then examines in depth the evidence for Cook’s identification with Lono, and the meaning of the Polynesian concept of mana. The rest of the chapter considers the merits of the two opposing views on how Hawaiians perceived Cook, the “Cook-as-Lono” interpretation, and the “Cook-as-Lono-as-myth” interpretation. It suggests that the “Cook-as-Lono” interpretation may be closer to the realities of Hawaiian ethnography, as long as we bear in mind that Lono, as an akua or “ancestor god” bore little resemblance to the western notion of “God;” and that the binary nature of the discussion (two clashing perspectives) may be a hindrance to appreciating a third interpretation which takes account of both sides. For Hawaiians, there was no inconsistency in seeing Cook as, all at once, a (Hawaiian) god, an ancestor spirit, a sacred high chief, and a man; both human and more-than-human (or human-plus) at the same time.

This chapter focuses on the distribution of wine. It begins with a detailed account of the liquor wars that pitted Distillers against South African Breweries (SAB), which owned SFW, from the late 1950s. This culminated in a peace agreement in 1974 which left SAB with a beer monopoly and divided the wine and spirits market between SFW, Distillers and the KWV who owned shares in a new company, Cape Wine and Distillers (CWD). It is shown that the competition between SFW and Distillers remained intense. A detailed account follows of how the wine companies, and especially SFW, attempted to market wine to a black consumer market, initially through jazz promotions. It is argued that while the SFW invested in market research and advertising, it was trapped in a racialised way of reading consumer preferences. This is demonstrated with reference to high-, medium- and standard-priced wines. The SFW dominated the market for SP wines but because the real profits were in spirits, rather little of the advertising budget was directed towards black and Coloured consumers. This fed a self-fulfilling prophesy about the limits of the market for wine amongst ’non-whites’.

This chapter engages with the world of ghosts and spirits (guishen 鬼神) in the classical Chinese tradition. While there has been agreement about the existence of ghosts, their status and the duties of currently living humans to them is all but clear. We argue that a Confucian innovation consists in acknowledging the existence of the spirit world in an “as if” mode. In this conception, humans share obligations of respect while they are well advised to practice attentive distancing to these beings. The mechanisms governing a haunted cosmos are ultimately beyond human comprehension. Ghosts are stand-ins and correctives who reveal the limits of human control and comprehension. We conclude by discussing the potential contributions of this Confucian conception of ghosts and spirits to contemporary debates on intergenerational justice.

So far, Christianity in Mizoram has been understood as having a specific birthdate: 11 January 1894, the day two Christian missionaries from London carried the world religion - along with technologies of writing, education, and print media - into the foothills. Despite the centrality of forest animals and spirits to everyday life in the past, the roles of forest-dwellers in this story have drawn little more than a cursory glance in historical writings. This chapter paints a different picture. The story of the Christianization can be seen afresh by paying attention to both continuity and change in older human relationships with the forest as well as by taking seriously both vernacular sources and the environmental knowledge of uplanders. Ecological transformations and catastrophic collapses in animal populations attended the arrival of the colonial state in the late nineteenth century, alongside the mass ‘vermin’ eradication schemes of the early 1900s. The changes wrought during this period altered the most historically significant of human relationships in the Lushai Hills - those with other animals, plants, and non-human beings. In this complicated ecosystem, these shifts both shaped and mirrored changes in upland society towards modern institutions: a cash economy, state rule, missionary and state medicine, and, most importantly, the near total conversion of the human population to Christianity from the early to mid-twentieth century. It was through the actions and reactions of specific forest species, and through changing human relations with them, that Christian missionaries first become relevant to upland people.

This chapter drills into the parish records of Little and Great Clacton to reveal new information about the Selles family, accused of witchcraft as tensions around child-rearing and illegitimacy reached a peak in a second village. It shows how parish records are vital to an understanding of the life circumstances of ordinary villagers and how much a name, a relatuonship or a life event can tell us about the processes of witch accusation.

This chapter ranges over the St Osyth lndscape, mapping its haunted spots and the location of key encounters with familiar spirits, particularly those said to belong to Elizabeth Bennet, Margerie Sammon, Ales Hunt and Joan Pechey. It introduces further key figures from the wider Darcy estate and shows how more suspects were drawn into the witch hunt. It argues that the history and features of a landscape can tell us much about the origin of local witchcraft fears.