"When a Jinn enters a human, he kills his self": 'Jinnology' and personhood in East Africa
The paper is a phenomenological study of spirit possession in an East African Muslim context, and based on ethnographic field work, the main method in the field of sociocultural anthropology. It argues that unreciprocated love is a popular reason for spirit possession in East Africa because of the East African concept of personhood which is radically different to Biblical conceptions, and also makes significant adaptations to Islamic notions of personhood. The first part shows that African personhood, Biblical personhood, and East African personhood have ontological and normative aspects.
