Singing Me into this Land: The Territorialization of a Spiritual Ecosystem

In this special edition of vis-à-vis each of us was asked to think about how our research deals with issues of fear. Sadly, one does not have to look very far these days to see fear. It is a central topic every time we turn on the radio, TV, almost every time we go to a film or watch a documentary. Fear is becoming less an emotional state than it is an operational state; we are living and working against a backdrop of fear. Fundamentalism, terrorism, nihilism, ecological collapse, natural disasters, run-away capitalism, political corruption, epidemic disease, poisoned pet food, and poisonous children’s toys are just some of the daily issues we confront. How can we not live in fear? In the fieldwork that I have been undertaking, with a ritual group in Washington State, the act of not living in fear could be seen as a socio-political position or an act of group will. To not live in fear though seems to require a type of tension. During this fieldwork I have been reflecting on fear itself, or more specifically, on the options available to agents who are reacting to fear. It seems that if one considers the reac-tionary nature of fear you are left with two well-known possibilities, fight or flight. In this paper I am going to outline what it means to fight against one of these fear sets that I have listed above. Fear, when it is dealt with in a fight, becomes a struggle. This struggle or con-flict should not be seen as a lack of fear but more properly as a strategic engagement wit