Chaosmology: Shamanism and personhood among the Bugkalot

This article examines personhood as contracted from a field of chaos. By analyzing the discourses on shamanism, spirits, and the wilderness among the Bugkalot of Northern Philippines, I seek to formulate a hypothesis about the properties of personhood in relation to the Bugkalot cosmology at large. This approach to cosmology is not one that asserts a coherent system of knowledge but rather portrays the Bugkalot cosmology as contingent, fragmentary, perpetually assuming a coherence and stability that swiftly dissolves. In order to lay out how this cosmology in motion—or “chaosmology”—is temporarily stabilized the article explores the role of shamanism among the Bugkalot.

Henrik Hvenegaard Mikkelsen: "Chaosmology: Shamanism and personhood among the Bugkalot" in Journal of Ethnographic Theory; Vol 6, No 1, 2016