Possession cults often proliferate during times of dramatic social and cultural changes (colonisation, evangelisation, war, etc.). The transitional and collective meaning of this phenomenon received many interpretations. On the other hand, not much attention was paid to the individual experience of change, to doubt, and to contradictory attitudes often accompanying choices such as religious conversion or immigration. This article addresses above all the following issues: 1) the relationship between possession and modernity; 2) the logic of possession and its unique ability to metaphorically catch complex and contradictory experiences; 3) the specific gender issues displayed by the nexus immigration/prostitution market through the female, possessed bodies; 4) the dialectics generated by possession among different idioms of daily life and embodied experience.

Mammy Wata Medical anthropology Immigrant Possession Commoditisation of bodies Nigerian women cultural identity

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