| Title | "Keep Off the 'Bad Things,' Uncle!" |
|---|---|
| Subtitle | A Tao Child's Perspective on Anito Monsters on Lanyu Island, Taiwan |
| Contributor | Leberecht Funk (author) |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.53288/0361.1.07 |
| Landing page | https://punctumbooks.com/titles/living-with-monsters-ethnographic-fiction-about-real-monsters/ |
| License | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ |
| Copyright | Leberecht Funk |
| Publisher | punctum books |
| Published on | 2023-05-11 |
| Long abstract | How is it like to live with monsters on Lanyu island, Taiwan? In the course of one year, the author has a series of exchanges with a 9-year-old Indigenous Tao girl. She gives him advice how to deal with “bad things,” which is a euphemism for the local Anito monsters who delight in stealing human souls. The monsters, which are never actually encountered, are constantly lurking in the background. Their presence can be perceived by bad smells, unjustified angry reactions, intense negative emotionality, or by viewing a beautiful butterfly or hearing the call of an owl. The girl needs to be constantly aware about the changes in the environment. She has to avoid certain places (such as the cemetery) and stays at home when “bad things” occur (for example, a death in the village). She can never let herself go, as the Anito take advantage of any kind of weakness. For example, when she is in pain, she will not cry out loud. Occasionally she mentions other people from her kinship network, like her grandmother and her elder brother, and explains how they cope with the monsters, or, in the case of her grandfather, temporarily become monsters by means of possession. |
| Page range | pp. 97–112 |
| Print length | 16 pages |
| Language | English (Original) |
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Leberecht Funk is a social and cultural anthropologist working in the field of psychological anthropology. In 2019 he obtained his PhD from the Freie Universität Berlin (Germany) for his work on the socialization of emotion among the Tao in Taiwan. He is interested in childhood and socialization, emotion, social relations, and Indigenous cosmologies. His regional focus is East Asia and Southeast Asia. He is the author of Ghosts of Childhood – Socialization of Emotions among the Tao in Taiwan which will be published by transcript in 2022 (in German). Currently he is working on project about “Feeding and the Formation of Social Relationships in Childhood,” which aims at showing that in many world regions it is not emotional intimacy but proactive caregiving which plays a leading role in attachment formation between children and their caregivers.