ABSTRACT
In the realm of ordinary, observable reality, the hidden 'authorial' self is manifest at any particular time as the occupant of a social role. Individuals occupy distinct roles at different moments, but the authorial self 'provides experiential continuity throughout a life which would otherwise be a series of disjunctions of the kind depicted by the structural functionalist role theorists'. Again and again anthropologists witness spirit rituals, and again and again some indigenous exegete tries to explain that spirits are present, and furthermore that rituals are the central events of their society. And the anthropologist proceeds to inteipret them differently. Edith Turner's argument for the 'reality' of entities traditional anthropology has customarily dismissed as illusory arises from her reported perception of a 'spirit form' at the climax of a healing ritual among the Ndembu of north-western Zambia in 1985.
