| Tromba possession dominates local arenas of power in Ambanja, a multi-ethnic, urban community in a plantation region of northwest Madagascar. A key assumption of this work is that through possession one may investigate social, economic, and personal ills, the human body providing a tool for expression. As a study in medical anthropology, it integrates historic, political-economic, symbolic, and social structural frameworks.;Tromba is pivotal to definitions of identity and it determines the thrust of economic development in this region. The population is composed of insiders, or indigenous Sakalava, and outsiders, who are Malagasy migrants of diverse origins. Insider status hinges on ancestors and land. Sakalava regard royalty as the primary actors for collective experience; tromba, as the spirits of royal dead, define local culture. Whereas French colonial policies undermined royal authority, recent nationalist trends recognize tromba spirits as the guardians of Sakalava territory, and so tromba mediums control the development of the region. Tromba ceremonies, as performances, are also a form of ethnohistory where Sakalava critique recent changes to the local order. Since Sakalava control Ambanja's power structures and maintain rights to arable land, migrants vie for insider status.;In the past, only a few Sakalava women served royalty as tromba mediums. Within the last few decades there has been an explosion in tromba's incidence, involving participation by migrants. Today tromba regulates the incorporation of outsiders into the Sakalava community; a complex spiritual fictive kinship system favors the participation of women over men. Through tromba, women extend their social networks and become locally assimilated. They, in turn, are mediators of the migrant experience, facilitating or impeding the incorporation of others.;Mediums, as healers, assist the less fortunate. Clients' problems reflect this community's tensions: primary concerns are physical illness, work, and romance. Mediums also treat new forms of possession sickness that affect adolescent girls; their incidence is linked to recent political and economic changes. Only the most extreme cases are taken to non-traditional specialists, who are non-Sakalava psychiatrists and Protestant exorcists. The efficacy of their treatments hinges on their understanding of Sakalava cosmology. |
