International records / OpenAlex research

M aking P eace with A gwu

SUMMARY It is generally accepted that ethnographic fieldwork can and should challenge researchers' assumptions about the world. However, anthropologists generally avoid the fundamental ontological issues raised by their experiences in the field. This article is an account of my initiation into a guild of traditional healers in the Ohafia region of Igbo‐speaking Nigeria. The ceremony was instigated by an ancestral spirit and, indirectly, by a spirit entity named Agwu, with whom I was obliged to make peace. Learning to accept the necessity of interacting with a spirit provided fundamental insigh…