Assignment: Read the article below and respond to the questions with a substantive post. <\/p>\n
How does the Marind understanding of a “sorcerer” coincide with
their experience of the effects of capitalism? How has capitalism
altered the way the Marind people live and relate to one another?
A sorcerer is a a personification of evil – a monster who symbolizes
people’s fears and embodies events that people don’t understand. The
Marind people’s assessment of the corporate men as sorcerers can be
understood as a critique of their unscrupulous power. We also have
monsters in our own culture…think, for example, of a vampire. A
vampire sucks out your life force until you are either dead or undead
(living only at night and unable to connect with humanity). The
historical figure a vampire was based on was a medieval ruler; as a
soulless killer, a vampire could be a critique of the absolute power of a
monarch. Think of other examples of monsters you have heard of
(zombies, la llorona, ghosts, etc – there are many). Choose one
to discuss. What fears and unknowns might it represent? Do you think
that it might be a direct or indirect critique of power? <\/p>\n
Corporate \u201cSorcerers\u201d Reveal the Magical Power of Capitalism
By Sophie Chao <\/p>\n
To Indigenous Marind communities living in West Papua, Indonesia, the year 2015 was abu-abu\u2014\u201cgray\u201d and \u201cuncertain.\u201d Forests set ablaze\u00a0(Links to an external site.) to clear land\u00a0(Links to an external site.)
for oil palm and pulpwood concessions filled the sky with a suffocating
haze. Vegetation was bulldozed and waterways were diverted to irrigate
the plantations, leaving the landscape brown and desiccated. Hundreds of
dead fish floated on stagnant ponds while other riverine critters
choked on pesticides, chemicals, and sludge. <\/p>\n
The widespread destruction was exacerbated by an extreme El Ni\u00f1o, contributing to the longest drought in two decades. In the villages of the Merauke district, where I conducted 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork\u00a0(Links to an external site.) between 2013 and 2018, Marind people gathered every morning at dawn to recite incantations in the hope of summoning rain. None came. <\/p>\n
In December 2015,
representatives from an Indonesian oil palm company visited the village
and offered to hold a rainmaking ritual. Most villagers assumed the
proposal was a ruse. This corporation had repeatedly urged the villagers
to cede their lands for an oil palm project, and the businesspeople
were becoming increasingly desperate to start development or risk losing
their permit. <\/p>\n
Many community members
said the ceremony would be co-opted and fake, and therefore doomed to
fail. These businesspeople from Java were ignorant of Marind customs,
myth, and ritual codes, so they would be incapable of manipulating the
elements, organisms, and spirits whose collaboration is necessary for
rituals to succeed. <\/p>\n
Nevertheless, the company
insisted on holding the ceremony\u2014and, in doing so, may have permanently
destroyed the community\u2019s relationship with their rain-making tradition. <\/p>\n
Only a handful of
villagers attended the ritual, largely out of fear of reprisals from the
company and the government if they did not comply. Those who did attend
were struck by how closely it followed secret Marind traditions. <\/p>\n
The corporate hosts wore
elaborate bird-of-paradise headdresses, handwoven sago-frond skirts, and
ornaments fashioned from the feathers and bones of cassowaries and
boars. They brought the necessary food offerings\u2014betel nut, sugarcane
stalks, sago, and bananas. Although their pronunciation was flawed, the
officiants read handwritten Marind spells with great solemnity. The
dances, chants, and sacrifice of a fattened male pig took place just as
Marind etiquette required. <\/p>\n
As the ceremony unfolded, Pius,*
an elder renowned for his extensive knowledge of Marind myth and
ritual, suddenly grabbed my shoulder. He pointed with astonishment at
the horizon, where thick clusters of dark clouds were gathering. Thunder
reverberated between the ritual drumbeats and the dancers\u2019 chanting and
stamping. At the apogee of the final rain dance, the clouds burst above
the village, releasing a heavy downfall that lasted more than two
weeks. <\/p>\n
In the aftermath, the
villagers offered several explanations for this unexpected outcome. Some
suggested the company had checked the forecast and timed the event to
coincide with predicted rainfall. Others suspected fellow villagers of
divulging traditional spells to the company in exchange for money and
alcohol. Some said it was coincidence or luck. <\/p>\n
For the vast majority of
my interlocutors, however, the success of the ritual confirmed
widespread rumors that foreign corporations are actually powerful and
lethal sorcerers. And given corporations\u2019 abilities to transform natural
environments and human societies across the world, it\u2019s a perspective
worth considering. <\/p>\n
According
to Marind, sorcerers are people (mostly men) who collude with evil
forces lurking in the forests in order to further their personal
interests and material gains. Sorcerers tend to be highly
individualistic power-seekers who use their supernatural abilities in
clandestine ways to inflict suffering upon vulnerable people. These
characterizations of sorcerers echo the beliefs of people across
Melanesia. <\/p>\n
As Viktor, a village
elder, explained, foreign oil palm corporations wield this kind of
diabolical power to wreak havoc on Indigenous peoples and their lands.
They obliterate the forest, undermine Marind people\u2019s ancestral
relations to kindred forest organisms\u00a0(Links to an external site.), and pursue a seemingly insatiable hunger for resources, profit, and power. <\/p>\n
Marcelina, a Marind mother
of three, said companies are always greedy for more land, just like
sorcerers are said to be perpetually hungry for the flesh and blood of
their victims. Geronimo, a young Marind man, spoke of corporations
draining the flesh and fluids of Marind and their plant and animal kin
by transforming diverse forests into homogeneous plantations and
diverting waterways for irrigation. <\/p>\n
Like sorcerers who lure
their victims by appearing as normal humans, corporations are also
profoundly deceptive, according to many Marind community members with
whom I have worked over the last seven years. They entice villagers with
promises of jobs, money, and better futures that rarely materialize.
They cause clans previously bound by shared pasts and kinship to fight
over compensation and land rights. <\/p>\n
Corporate sorcerers, Elder
Petrarchus explained, are also magical in the way they replicate
themselves and exist in several places at once. Their plantations
proliferate across space under dozens of different names and logos.
Their powers are spread over the many levels and individuals who make up
corporate entities. <\/p>\n
Just as sorcerers operate
in mysterious ways and cannot be easily identified, corporations govern
their concessions from a distance\u2014Jayapura, Jakarta, Singapore. Their
authority is everywhere, even as their agents remain elusive. <\/p>\n
There is something magical about the power of multinational corporations and their tentacle-like supply chains. <\/p>\n
Since corporate sorcery
originates from foreign places, its techniques, instruments, and
remedies are unknown to Marind. As Serafina, a mother of four from
Merauke, put it: \u201cSorcery is like oil palm. We do not know where it
comes from or how to stop it from spreading. In both cases, we cannot
escape the destruction and suffering.\u201d <\/p>\n
From the perspective of
Marind community members, corporate sorcerers\u2019 supernatural powers are
heightened by their association with other threats. Corporate interests
are protected by the Indonesian military\u00a0(Links to an external site.), whose deadly operations\u00a0(Links to an external site.) are often described as sorcery by Papuan peoples. These businesses also attract a growing influx\u00a0(Links to an external site.)
of non-Papuan migrants, who are said by Marind to harness new and
foreign spells, rituals, concoctions, and objects in order to
appropriate land, obtain jobs, and enrich themselves at the expense of
local Papuan communities. <\/p>\n
Modern capitalism\u2019s utilitarian focus on profit may seem far removed from sorcery. Capitalism, as sociologist Max Weber argued\u00a0(Links to an external site.), is driven by an extractive ethos that strips the world of its supernatural dimensions. <\/p>\n
Yet there is something
uncannily magical about the power of multinational corporations and
their tentacle-like supply chains. Some mega-companies are so widespread
they seem to have achieved omnipresence. Their success stories are
infused with mythology and spirituality\u00a0(Links to an external site.). Like a powerful, destructive sorcerer, capitalism is arguably the primary force\u00a0(Links to an external site.) behind ecological degradation and climate change. <\/p>\n
Thus, Marind villagers\u2019
characterization of corporations as sorcerers invites people to take
seriously the idea that modern capitalism is a kind of magic. It is a
powerful force that can sow conflict between communities, profoundly
alter landscapes, and even conjure rain, hurricanes, and drought through
global warming. <\/p>\n
Of
greatest concern to many of my companions is the fact that corporations\u2019
\u201csupernatural powers\u201d seem far greater than those of Marind sorcerers.
When the corporate rain-making ceremony appeared to succeed, it sent a
message to the villagers that their own failed rituals\u00a0(Links to an external site.)
were impotent. Moreover, it emphasized the community\u2019s powerlessness in
the face of broader issues\u2014their loss of land, resources, and autonomy. <\/p>\n
The Indonesian government denies West Papuans their right to political and cultural self-determination\u00a0(Links to an external site.). Politicians promote agribusiness projects that are routinely implemented without the free, prior, and informed consent\u00a0(Links to an external site.)
of Indigenous landowners, in violation of several international human
rights laws that Indonesia has either signed or ratified. And these
ventures contribute to the growing marginalization\u00a0(Links to an external site.) of Indigenous Papuans in some regions of the province where settlers now represent more than 60 percent of the population. <\/p>\n
Several weeks after the
co-opted ritual, the Khalaoyam community decided they would no longer
perform or participate in rainmaking ceremonies. \u201cRather than let the
companies manipulate our Indigenous rituals, it\u2019s better that we stop
practicing them altogether,\u201d explained Pius. <\/p>\n
The costs of abandoning
the rainmaking ritual have been high. Social relations across clans that
were once sustained through this collective ceremony have weakened.
Many Marind told me that elders were no longer teaching rainmaking\u2014or
other ritual spells and dances\u2014to the youth. This knowledge is therefore
likely to be lost within the next generation. <\/p>\n
Most worryingly, the success of the corporate ritual did play
a part in convincing some community members to surrender their lands.
When I last visited in June 2019, I found widespread disagreement among
villagers over whether they should abolish other Marind rituals that
corporations might manipulate. <\/p>\n
The co-optation was not an
isolated incident. In several Papuan villages, corporations have held
co-opted pig sacrifice ceremonies and ritual healings, expecting villagers to reciprocate\u00a0(Links to an external site.) by ceding their lands. <\/p>\n
Rituals, as
anthropologists have demonstrated, can play a critical role in affirming
and sustaining the social order and in providing psychosocial relief to
their participants. But rituals that succeed in the \u201cwrong hands\u201d can
be deeply problematic. <\/p>\n
Corporations\u2019
exploitative use of spiritual traditions represents the rise of a new
order ever more deeply shaped by greed and opportunism. This order is
far from just economic in its form and impact. Rather, the destructive
effects of capitalist \u201csorcery\u201d ripple across multiple realms\u2014the human,
the elemental, the natural, and perhaps even the supernatural. <\/p>\n
\u00a0 <\/p>\n
* All names except the author\u2019s have been changed to protect people\u2019s privacy. <\/p>\n
This work first appeared on SAPIENS\u00a0(Links to an external site.) under a CC BY-ND 4.0 license\u00a0(Links to an external site.). Read the original here\u00a0(Links to an external site.).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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