Bori, within the Mawri society of Niger, are mischievous and invisible beings that populate the bush. Bori is additionally the perform of taming those wild forces within the context of ownership ceremonies. In Prayer Has Spoiled Everything Adeline Masquelier bargains an account of ways this phenomenon intervenes—sometimes subtly, occasionally dramatically—in human lives, supplying a regularly renewed resource of that means for Mawri peasants faced with cultural contradictions and socio-economic marginalization.
To discover the position of bori ownership in neighborhood definitions of background, energy, and identification, Masquelier spent a complete of 2 years in Niger, targeting the various ways that spirit mediums percentage, rework, and contest a quickly altering fact, threatened by way of Muslim hegemony and monetary worry. She explains how the unfold of Islam has provoked irreversible swap within the sector and the way prayer—a conspicuous component to way of life that has turn into nearly synonymous with Islamic perform during this area of west Africa—has hence turn into equated with the lack of culture. by means of concentrating on many of the inventive and intricate ways in which bori instantaneously competes with and borrows from Islam, Masquelier finds how ownership still is still deeply embedded in Mawri tradition, representing greater than uncomplicated resistance to Islam, patriarchy, or the country. regardless of a widening hole among former methods of existence and the contradictions of the current, it continues its position as a characteristic of lifestyle within which villagers take part with various levels of enthusiasm and approval.
Specialists in African reviews, within the anthropology of faith, and within the old changes of colonial and postcolonial societies will welcome this study.