From haunted houses to housed hauntings: ghosts, oracles, and kinship ambivalence in a Sri Lankan merchant family

Abstract

This paper is oriented around moments of crises and kinship ambivalence within the home of a merchant family on the outskirts of a small town in central Sri Lanka. The problems explored play out in two registers. The first outlines relations between men that become problematic and result in disharmony at home and at work, while the second deals with a situation in which the house itself becomes the site of disorder and vulnerability. Bringing fractious relationships between men into conversation with an established literature on spirit possession in South Asia explores how families manage (haunted) houses in a way that centers around the ritual authority maha gedera. In so doing, it makes a case for the mutual interplay of relationality between people, houses, and ghosts that haunt. At another level, the article offers a critical reflection on kinship’s agrarian history (and political death) in Sri Lanka and considers the stylistic predilection for interpretive narratives of possession in anthropology.