'If the devil still had power, I'd be rich now': Power in society and some 'powerful' Philippine curers.

Abstract

The dissertation examines Cebuano-speaking curers in the Philippines in relation to the concepts of authority and power. Curers treat illnesses through an assortment of indigenous means, and some are hired to send sorcery for clients with personal social problems. More successful practitioners compete fiercely for patients, each demanding recognition as the supreme curer. Claiming that spiritual authority and power undergird their practices, these virtuoso curers must prove their worthiness to their spiritual mentors and clientele--they seek secular authorization for their spiritual resources. But inasmuch as curing practices are, from the point of view of society's dominant religious, biomedical, and political institutions, both illegitimate and illegal, all curers must secure authorization from their various audiences. Authorization occurs in terms of the society's prestige/stigma hierarchy. Curing is stigmatized as satanic, magical, and self-interested practice, and, because most curers and their patients are poor and undereducated, as an activity of the ignorant. But curers use their stigma in pursuing secular authority for their practices: as representatives of the poor they defend their work as necessary support for people who cannot afford biomedical health care, and they rely on disjunctions between ideology and practice of the dominant institutions, as well as subversive messages embedded in dominant ideology in order to claim the moral high ground for themselves, their work, and their followers. Because curing resources are regarded as valuable outside dominant institutions, the successful mananambal is presented with opportunities to earn prestige on the basis of his resource, as anyone with any resource can do. But aggressive managing of curing resources, which are divine gifts, by seeking out opportunities for profitable resource exchanges runs counter to the ideal mananambal image of selfless helper. Indeed, the study documents the tension which exists between two styles of management in the organization for resource production, distribution, and consumption, namely, leadership or exertion of authority and power over other persons. As a whole, the study proposes that power and authority are analytically inseparable, and that the concepts are best understood in their social and cultural contexts.