Promotional Information

A sophisticated, wide-ranging, theoretical account of how spirit mediums mediate the Thai experience of capitalist modernity.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii
Note on Transcription x
Introduction 1
1 Writing, Exchange, Translation: A Poetics of the Modern 13
2 Ruin, or, What the New City Remembers 55
3 First, Forgetting 80
4 The Appearance of Order 107
5 The Secret of the Dish 150
6 Transmissions, or, the Appearance of Culture 181
7 Representations: Locality and the Spirit of Democracy 240
8 Outside, Eyeless, and on Fire: The Apotheosis of Representation 287
9 After All Else: The End of Mediumship? 332
Bibliography 351
Index 371

About the Author

Rosalind C. Morris is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University. She is the author of New Worlds from Fragments: Film, Ethnography, and the Representation of Northwest Coast Cultures.

Reviews

"With this astutely conceived and exquisitely written account of the complexities of mediumship in Thai modernity, Rosalind Morris has taken ethnographic practice to a whole new level of theoretical as well as descriptive sophistication. It is a dazzling accomplishment."--Rey Chow, University of California, Irvine [*Have also asked G. Spivak. She will do by 12/1/99.] "Beautifully written, exquisite in its analysis, breathtaking in its insights. It is rare that I cannot put a book down after I have started reading it, but this was exactly my experience with Rosalind Morris's In the Place of Origins."--[PERMISSION PENDING] [RR, PP] Lisa Rofel, University of California, Santa Cruz "Rosalind Morris's In the Place of Origins is a marvellous work, full of provocations and insight into many issues: advanced capitalism and late modernity, marginalities in the world system, theatrics and politics, bodies and boundaries. It is a work of remarkable richness and eloquence, one that would repay repeated readings."--[RR, PP] Marilyn Ivy, University of Washington