Ritual Sociality and the Limits of Shamanic Efficacy among the Luangans of Indonesian Borneo

Abstract

This article uses a myth of the Luangans of Indonesian Borneo to reflect upon the value of sociality and its role in promoting well-being in their healing rituals. In these rituals, sociality with nonhuman beings and between participants is crucial, yet insufficient for, and sometimes at odds with, success. The article describes the multiple modes and valences of this ritual sociality, and how it is fundamentally predicated on a ‘conditional ontology’ of not-knowing and qualified by human finitude. An inherent risk of ‘reversibility’ of ritual sociality propagates constant efforts and cautionary measures, such as recurrent dramatised ritual acts of ‘undoing and redoing’, to counter the inevitable uncertainty of ritual outcomes.