Showing papers on "Possession (law) published in 2001"

Prayer Has Spoiled Everything: Possession, Power, and Identity in an Islamic Town of Niger

Abstract: Bori, in the Mawri society of Niger, are mischievous and invisible beings that populate the bush. Bori is also the practice of taming these wild forces in the context of possession ceremonies. In Prayer Has Spoiled Everything Adeline Masquelier offers an account of how this phenomenon intervenes—sometimes subtly, sometimes dramatically—in human lives, providing a constantly renewed source of meaning for Mawri peasants confronted with cultural contradictions and socio-economic marginalization. To explore the role of bori possession in local definitions of history, power, and identity, Masquelier spent a total of two years in Niger, focusing on the diverse ways in which spirit mediums share, transform, and contest a rapidly changing reality, threatened by Muslim hegemony and financial hardship. She explains how the spread of Islam has provoked irreversible change in the area and how prayer—a conspicuous element of daily life that has become virtually synonymous with Islamic practice in this region of west Africa—has thus become equated with the loss of tradition. By focusing on some of the creative and complex ways that bori at once competes with and borrows from Islam, Masquelier reveals how possession nonetheless remains deeply embedded in Mawri culture, representing more than simple resistance to Islam, patriarchy, or the state. Despite a widening gap between former ways of life and the contradictions of the present, it maintains its place as a feature of daily life in which villagers participate with varying degrees of enthusiasm and approval. Specialists in African studies, in the anthropology of religion, and in the historical transformations of colonial and postcolonial societies will welcome this study.

Home ownership in a risk society: A social analysis of mortgage arrears and possessions

Abstract: The risks of home ownership The 'epidemiology' and 'aetiology' of mortgage arrears and possessions Owner-occupation and the impact of economic transformations Unsafe safety-nets The costs of mortgage arrears and possessions Experiencing mortgage possession Mortgage arrears and possessions as public health issues Summary and conclusions.

Consent or property? Dealing with the body and its parts in the shadow of Bristol and Alder Hey.

Abstract: This article first considers the tenuous base on which the law of property in the body is founded, and then discusses the practical results of this in the light of the recent furore surrounding events at Bristol and Alder Hey. The authors suggest that neither the consent-based model followed by the official inquiries into these events nor a possible policy based on a full-blown property model adequately cover the private rights of an individual’s next of kin or the right of the public to an efficient and reliable pathological service within the NHS. Rather, they propose that a combined model in which a ‘cascade of possession’ for the recognition of various property interests is initiated by assent on the part of the next of kin and terminates in full possession of the body vested in the executor for the purposes of its disposal. The authors recommend further that any reform of the law should apply property rights to body parts taken from both the living and the dead.

Women, Gender, Religion a Reader

Abstract: Introduction: E.A.Castelli PART I: CATEGORIES OF ANALYSIS AND CRITIQUE: 'GENDER,' 'RELIGION,' 'FEMINISM' What's in a Name? Exploring the Dimensions of What 'Feminist Studies in Religion' Means M.Peskowitz Weaving the Fabric of our Lives C.P.Christ Unweaving: A Response to Carol Christ M.Peskowitz A Further Response C.P.Christ 'Gender' for a Marxist Dictionary: The Sexual Politics of a Word D.J.Haraway The Translation of Cultures: Engendering Yoruba Language, Orature, and World-Sense O.Oyewumi Snakes Alive: Resituating the Moral in the Study of Religion R.A.Orsi Transnationalism, Feminism, and Fundamentalism M.Moallem PART II: ORIGINS, IDENTITIES, AND APPROPRIATIONS Sexuality, Sin, and Sorrow: The Emergence of the Female Character M.Bal Sacrifice as Remedy for Having Been Born of Woman N.Jay 'Shahbano' Z.Pathak & R.S.Rajan A Question of Origins: Goddess Cults Greek and Modern H.P.Foley On Medicine Women and White Shame-ans: New Age Native Americanism and Commodity Fetishism as Pop Culture Feminism L.E.Donaldson PART III: GENDER AND RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE: INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACHES Margery Kempe Answers Back C.Dinshaw Sexology and the Occult: Sexuality and Subjectivity in Theosophy's New Age J.Dixon Rituals of Desire: Spirit, Culture, and Sexuality in the Writings of Rebecca Cox Jackson K.C.Bassard The Woman Who Wanted to Be Her Father: A Case Analysis of Dybbuk Possession in a Hasidic Community Y.Bilu The Production of Possession: Spirits and the Multinational Corporation in Malaysia A.Ong PART IV: GENDER, RELIGION, AND BODY POLITICS From a 'Pot of Filth' to a 'Hedge of Roses' (and Back): Changing Theorizations of Menstruation in Judaism J.Steinberg Veils, Virgins, and the Tongues of Men and Angels M.R.D'Angelo The Veil in Their Minds and on Our Heads: Veiling Practices and Muslim Women H.Hoodfar Women Who Walk on Water: Working across 'Race' in Women Against Fundamentalism C.Connolly & P.Patel Agency, Activism, and Agendas P.Jeffery Tender Warriors L.Kintz Getting Religion J.R.Jakobsen & A.Pellegrini PART V: GENDER AND RELIGION IN THE POLITICS OF THE ACADEMY The Academy as Real Life: New Participants & Paradigms in the Study of Religion J.Plaskow

Policing Possession: The War on Crime and the End of Criminal Law

Abstract: The war on crime has been the dominant ideology of American criminal law for the past three decades. This paper examines the inner workings of this remarkably successful, yet still little understood, strategy of social control. Particular attention is paid to the role of victimless crimes, and possession in particular, as sweep offenses to incapacitate dangerous undesirables. Easy to detect and to prove, yet far more potent and less vulnerable to constitutional scrutiny, possession emerges as the new and improved vagrancy, a modern policing tool for a modern police regime, the war on victimless crime. Language: en

Hearing Aid Possession in the Population: Lessons from a Small Country: Posesión de auxiliares auditivos en la población: Lecciones de un pequeño pais

Abstract: The results of several studies on hearing aid use in the Welsh population were considered to investigate some general principles on determinants of such use within the general populations of developed countries. Overall hearing aid possession and use were not found to have changed significantly over the past 18 years, remaining at 4 per cent having obtained hearing aids and 3 per cent using them. The possession figures were consistent across all methodologies used. Higher hearing aid use in the post-industrial valleys (in which the traditional industries of coal mining and steel production had disappeared) was explained entirely by a higher level of reported hearing difficulties there. In all populations, less than 20 per cent of those reporting difficulties possessed hearing aids. Whether a hearing aid had been obtained free of charge from the National Health Service or purchased privately did not influence whether it was still used. It was concluded that an effort to improve the acceptability of hearing...

Zar: Group distress and healing

Abstract: This paper describes Zar, a spiritual cosmology and ritual performance whose meaning is associated with the experience of spirit possession. Commentators on spirit possession such as Zar have provided evidence that it may serve three interrelated functions. It is compatible with religious mythology and cosmology; it may represent a mechanism of psychological manipulation of oppressed individuals and it can be a form of culturally defined group therapy. In this paper, we report the phenomenon of Zar possession in Oman and attempt to relate it to these three interrelated functions.

The Conservative Party, Patriotism, and British Politics: The Case of the General Election of 1900

Abstract: Paul Rich has written that “nationalism in English society has not been a subject that has especially interested historians until comparatively recently.” This judgment could equally be applied to what Gerald Newman has described as that “mere primitive feeling of loyalty,” the less complex and far more ancient phenomenon of patriotism, which, for the purposes of the present article, will simply be taken to mean “love of country.” In the last few decades, the attention given to patriotism by British historians has grown rapidly. However, historians of party politics, particularly those interested in the late nineteenth century, have proved something of an exception to this rule. Although few would dispute Lord Blake's view that “‘patriotism’ … has usually been a valuable weapon in the Conservative armoury,” even work done on the tory party has avoided serious discussion of the subject. Most writers, particularly those of textbook studies, have found it difficult to move beyond rather general allusions to the Conservatives' transformation into the party of patriotism in the 1870s, with “Disraeli's speeches of 1872–3” and his “performance at Berlin in 1878” establishing once and for all “the image of the Conservative party as the champion of national honour.” This argument, of course, owes much to Hugh Cunningham's important History Workshop article of 1981, which put forward the view that patriotism—originally an antistate and libertarian “creed of opposition”—had by the late nineteenth century passed from the hands of the radicals into the possession of the political Right.

“The root of all evil”? An exploratory study of money and delinquent involvement

Abstract: Modern criminological theory makes contradictory predictions about the possible effects of money on misbehavior. Strain theory suggests that the possession of monetary resources facilitates goal achievement and therefore reduces the likelihood of offending. In contrast, an anomie perspective would view possession of money as a prelude to greater drug use and delinquency. In this study we examine the effect of adolescents' resources—namely, money earned from work and received from parental allowance—on delinquent involvement and drug use. The results tend to be consistent with anomie theory, showing that money and its pursuit are associated positively with misbehavior. The implications for criminological theory are discussed.

Impact Study of Tobacco Possession Law Enforcement in Florida

Abstract: This study of tobacco possession law enforcement was conducted in four selected counties in Florida, the first state to report statistically significant annual declines in youth tobacco use during the 1990s. The primary objective of this study was to assess the impact of possession enforcement on youth attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors by comparing results of a survey administered in high-enforcement counties with results from low-enforcement counties and by examining the survey results for relationships of tobacco use to perceptions and awareness of laws and enforcement activity. The survey was administered to a sample of 2,088 randomly selected youth, in conjunction with a qualitative study of law enforcement officials reported elsewhere. Findings indicate that possession enforcement, as a component of comprehensive tobacco control, appears to help reduce youth tobacco use and may be a critical component of the most successful youth tobacco prevention program, documented in the previous decade.

The contribution of student experiences to understanding ethnic differences in high-risk behaviors at school.

Abstract: Past research reported that adolescent males from ethnic minority groups often engage in high-risk behaviors at school such as weapon possession, gang involvement, and fighting The purpose of this

New Thoughts About Old Things: Cognitive Policies as the Ground of Singular Concepts

Abstract: This book defends a novel theory of singular concepts, emphasizing the pragmatic requirements of singular concept possession and arguing that these requirements must be understood to institute traditions and policies of thought.

Permissive Natural Law and Property: Gratian to Kant

Abstract: In his Doctrine of Right Kant set out to formulate a theory of property that would be based on purely rational argumentation, that would abstract "from all spatial and temporal conditions," and that would be applicable to any person, "merely because and insofar as he is free and has practical reason." But from the time when the work first appeared Kant scholars have found many difficulties in the teaching that he presented. Many of them relate to the idea of permissive natural law that Kant introduced at a key point to his argument. In a previous, complementary article I discussed in detail various apparent aporias that arose in Kant's treatment of this concept and suggested that we might understand his problems better by setting them in a broader historical context than those considered in standard works like those of Reinhard Brandt and Wolfgang Kersting.1 This is the theme that I want to explore further in the present paper. To sum up briefly some of the difficulties in the Doctrine ofRight: A central problem for Kant was to explain how rightful possession of individual property could emerge from a hypothetical state of nature where everything was common to all, where everyone had a right to everything. His argument was grounded on a concept of freedom understood as "a pure rational concept." Kant maintained that every person had an innate right to freedom and from this he deduced a universal law of Right: "[S]o act externally that the free use of your choice can coexist with the freedom of everyone."2 But the person who first seized for himself what had been common to all evidently did encroach on the freedom of others (their freedom to use the property that had been taken).

Working Knowledge: Trade Secrets, Restrictive Covenants in Employment, and the Rise of Corporate Intellectual Property, 1800-1920

Abstract: The invention of trade secret doctrine in the mid-nineteenth century enabled employers to enjoin revelation of secret information by current or former employees At the same time, courts expanded the permissible uses of post-employment covenants not to compete so as to prevent dissemination of knowledge These doctrinal developments thus defined the bounds of permissible entrepreneurship Equally as significant, these doctrines both generated and reflected a profoundly new perspective on the nature and control of workplace knowledge This article examines the origins and development of the law of trade secrets and restrictive covenants through study of cases and treatises and through the study of corporate practices Drawing on the archives of the Du Pont company, this article examines the ways in which a firm that was unusually aware of the value of employee intellectual property used law to achieve its goal of protecting its own secrets while learning new developments from others The article analyzes how courts, firms, and workers attempted to reconcile the perceived demands of industrialization and the realities of factory work with the ideology of freedom of contract, and the corporate control of ideas with the ideology of free labor Both the doctrine and the practice reflected the contestability during the nineteenth century of the inalienable attributes of self that lay at the foundation of the discourse of free labor Drawing the line between what knowledge the firm could own and that which remained the possession of every free person was, in that context, an extraordinarily difficult task The article concludes that the persistence today of the multifactored, fact-based reasonableness inquiry for restrictive covenants and of standardless, factual tests for the existence and the remedying of the misappropriation of trade secrets is evidence that the value choices at the heart of these legal issues remain as wrenching today as they were when courts first created the doctrines that set employee freedom to switch jobs on a collision course with the corporate control of intellectual property

Attitudes of New York City high school students regarding firearm violence.

Abstract: Objectives. To assess prevalence of gun possession, attitudes regarding gun possession and gun violence, knowledge and influences of gun violence, and the potential role of physicians in gun violence prevention education among adolescents. Methods. An anonymous questionnaire was distributed to 9th through 12th grade high school students at 3 public high schools in New York City. Results. Three hundred forty-two surveys were distributed and returned. The prevalence of guns in the homes was 19.6%. Of respondents, 43.2% thought it was okay for anyone to have guns, and 57.3% had been injured or have had a relative injured by a gun. Although 11.6% of adolescents had felt the need to talk to an adult about guns, only 3.0% listed their physicians as one of these adults. However, if asked by their physician, 63.8% would discuss the issue with them. Only 5.7% of adolescents have had a physician speak to them about guns. Conclusions. The adolescent population surveyed is frequently exposed to gun violence. Although physicians rarely counsel adolescents regarding gun violence and firearm safety, many adolescents would be receptive to this mode of intervention.adolescence, attitude, firearm ownership, firearm violence, physician role.

Predicting school weapon possession: A secondary analysis of the youth risk behavior surveillance survey

Abstract: As school psychologists are asked to help schools evaluate the level of violence risk posed by specific students, they need to fully consider the technical adequacy of any test or procedure that is proposed to “predict” future violent behavior or conditions. In this article, we contribute to this discussion by examining responses of 40,435 students from the 1993, 1995, and 1997 administrations of the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey. Student self-reported school risk behaviors and experiences are used to “predict” recent weapon possession on school campuses and to illustrate the use of receiver operating characteristic curves to evaluate the performance of a test for prediction purposes. An index of nine school risk behaviors was moderately correlated (r = .36) with school weapon possession. However, when the accuracy of using this school risk index to predict weapon possession is evaluated, it is found that the area under the ROC curve was approximately .75, a moderate-to-large effect size but still demonstrating inadequate prediction at the individual student level. Further, there were twice as many frequent weapon carriers with zero school risks than with 7–9 risks, suggesting that attention directed toward violence risk profiles may promote inattention to another group of students who engage in potentially high-risk behaviors at school. It is argued that school psychologists should consider school violence appraisals within a developmental, long-term model. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

System and method for tracking lost articles by means of a global computer network, providing a theft deterrent and advertising

Abstract: Downloadable identification labels which are downloaded from a world wide computer network to a remote computer and printed on paper using a printer. Each label is printed with the contact information of a central lost and found registry and attached to one or more personal possessions. The labels can also be printed with an identification code, notification that a reward will be paid for a possession which is returned to the owner, sponsor advertising and a warning that the possession has been indelibly marked with identification indicia such as the internet address of the lost and found registry. The central lost and found registry stores, on a database, information about lost possessions and owner contact information as well as information about found possessions and finder's contact information. If a match is found between a lost possession and found possession the registry communicates the contact information of the finder to the owner so that the possession may be recovered by the owner. Owners do not preregister their belongings, codes, or contact information with the central registry. They only register with the registry if a possession should be lost or missing and the owner desires assistance in their recovery.

Tarquin Dispossessed: Expropriation and Consent in The Rape of Lucrece

Abstract: Lucrece tells a story about possession and dispossession. The woman at the centre of the narrative is treated as the proper possession of her husband – or perhaps her father: propriety evidently defines women as property in Shakespeare's Rome. But possessions can be expropriated and property owners may be dispossessed. Tarquin takes improper possession of the faithful wife of his comrade-in-arms on the basis of an irresistible desire and, thus possessed, in the distinctive sense that he is impelled to act against his own judgement, Tarquin loses his self-possession and, as a result, his identity as friend, kinsman, prince, Roman lord. At the last, publicly exposed, shamed by Lucrece's suicide, and driven in consequence from what was his proper place in Rome, along with the entire royal family that has taken possession of the city, Tarquin is doubly dispossessed by a woman's constancy. Recent criticism is divided on the sexual politics of the poem. Reacting incisively against those male readers who had followed St Augustine to find Lucretia guilty of vainglory or, worse, colluding with her own rape, critics influenced by feminism have predominantly seen Shakespeare's Lucrece as, instead, the victim of patriarchal values, whether the passive object of a struggle between men, or complicit in her suicide with masculine misogyny. A minority of other equally feminist arguments, however, powerfully defend her as an exemplum of female virtue, or hold her up as a model of resistance to patriarchy.

Dominance and difference : rival visions of ethnicity in Nigeria

Abstract: This article examines the dynamics of ethnicity in Nigeria. It argues that ethnic debates and disputes are not just about the possession of power but also about the morality of power and the empowerment of civil society. Ethnicity is represented as the quest for dominance and the voice of civil society and accountability. The acute mistrusts and fears that condition ethnic conflict are analysed in the context of these rival visions of ethnicity as dominance and resistance.

Owning Digital Copies: Copyright Law and the Incidents of Copy Ownership

Abstract: As copyrighted works are increasingly distributed in digital form over the Internet, our conventional print-based understandings of the rights associated with copy ownership are coming into increasing conflict with the copyright owner's right to restrict copying. Specifically, certain common activities, such as reading and transferring physical copies of copyrighted works (such as books), are increasingly being viewed as potential acts of copyright infringement when applied to digital copies. This Article explores this conflict by taking a close look at the concept of copy ownership. It argues that conventional notions of physical property ownership play an important, unrecognized role in copyright law. It further argues that, in order to preserve this role, copyright law should recognize an unlimited right to access digital copies in one's possession and a more limited right to transfer such copies to others. INTRODUCTION Copyright law places a number of limits on what I can do with my dog-eared copy of William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying.(1) I cannot run it through the photocopier to make another copy. I cannot read from it aloud in a public place. Nor can I translate the book into a foreign language (assuming I could speak one). These are things that I simply cannot do with my book, at least not without permission from the copyright owner or some statutory privilege. At the same time, copyright law permits me to do many, if not most, other things with my copy of that book. I can read it as many times as I want. I can lend it to a friend. I can destroy it. I can sell it to a stranger. I can even rent it out for a fee. All these things I can do without asking the copyright owner for permission or relying on some notion of fair use.(2) What explains the differences in these activities? Why can I do some things with my book, but not others? One standard explanation is that copyright law picks and chooses among different permissible uses in order to strike a careful balance between the rights of the producers of works and the rights of consumers.(3) According to this view, copyright law has never granted producers the right to control all uses of their works. Instead, it confers only a limited bundle of rights: the rights to reproduce, publicly perform, publicly display, publicly distribute, and make derivative works.(4) These rights are designed to give producers an incentive to keep producing. But, according to this explanation, giving producers any additional rights (such as the right to control reading or resale) would unduly restrict the access to, and the wide dissemination of, copyrighted works that the copyright laws are designed to foster. The particular bundle of copyright rights is thus determined through this careful balancing of incentives and access. Yet, upon closer examination, this account does not completely explain why we have struck the balance that we have. For example, the ability to sell a copy of a book to another would appear to reduce the incentives to create works. After all, by selling the book to another individual, I potentially deprive the author of royalties from a sale of the book. The sale is nearly a perfect substitute. Why does copyright law not restrict this activity? Conversely, prohibiting the public performance of a piece of music would appear to restrict wide access to, and broad dissemination of, that work. Why does copyright law bar this kind of dissemination? It may be that the current bundle of rights, as a descriptive matter, leads to a certain balance of rights and access, but this balance seems contingent. If a balance needs to be struck, there would appear to be any number of ways to strike it. What accounts for the particular balance struck by our existing copy copyright laws, the particular division of rights between copyright owner and copy owner? Another possible explanation, and one that seems more convincing to me, is that the bundle of rights, and the corresponding limits on that bundle, are determined in part by certain conventions and understandings that we commonly hold about the ownership of physical property. …

Of Spirit Possession and Structural Adjustment Programs: Government Downsizing, Education and Their Enchantments in Neo-Liberal Kenya

Abstract: This article analyzes a case of possession by spirit familiars (majini) among female students of a primary school in the Taita/Taveta District of Kenya. I explore the symbolic and historical significance of majini among the people of Taita (Wataita), examining in particular the homology among local conceptions of majini and local conceptions of money. I argue that the idea of majini has long reflected the discontents of the particular modernity that emerged in late colonial and post-colonial Taita society: in particular, the social fact of local reliance on the money earned in urban labor markets and acquired from cash crop production. Then, as now, social criticism about commercial exchange and the atrophy of relations and obligations of blood was framed in terms of gender conflict, just as debates about appropriate gender roles reflected local preoccupation with broader social-cultural transformations. I end by arguing that, if majini once expressed the insufficiencies and cruelties of modernity's articulations, the recent possession incidents speak to the unmaking of Taita modernity in the wake of global transformations associated with economic liberalization.

A Poetics and Politics of Possession: Taiwanese Spirit-Medium Cults and Autonomous Popular Cultural Space

Abstract: My intent in this essay is to discuss cults of spirit possession and healing in Taiwan, to consider the potential for this form of popular culture to create autonomous spaces, and to evaluate the larger social and political consequences of such autonomy. However, before turning to discussion of Taiwan, it would be useful to examine briefly another recent study of possession cults in a perhaps not entirely dissimilar environment, namely, Michael Taussig’s barely fictionalized Venezuela. (Taiwan is also a former colony with a well-developed modern economic sector.) In his Magic of the State, Taussig describes a kind of symbiosis between the state and popular religion, in which the same force that animates the bodies of the possessed is the history, and the historical figures and stereotypes, on which the state relies for its legitimation: “a sixteenth century cacique, an early nineteenth century barefoot black cowboy freedom fighter, . . . the Liberator [Simon Bolívar] himself, coughing blood.” And in thus physically manifesting, making

Working Knowledge: Trade Secrets, Restrictive Covenants in Employment, and the Rise of Corporate Intellectual Property, 1800-1920

Abstract: The invention of trade secret doctrine in the mid-nineteenth century enabled employers to enjoin revelation of secret information by current or former employees. At the same time, courts expanded the permissible uses of post-employment covenants not to compete so as to prevent dissemination of knowledge. These doctrinal developments thus defined the bounds of permissible entrepreneurship. Equally as significant, these doctrines both generated and reflected a profoundly new perspective on the nature and control of workplace knowledge. This article examines the origins and development of the law of trade secrets and restrictive covenants through study of cases and treatises and through the study of corporate practices. Drawing on the archives of the Du Pont company, this article examines the ways in which a firm that was unusually aware of the value of employee intellectual property used law to achieve its goal of protecting its own secrets while learning new developments from others. The article analyzes how courts, firms, and workers attempted to reconcile the perceived demands of industrialization and the realities of factory work with the ideology of freedom of contract, and the corporate control of ideas with the ideology of free labor. Both the doctrine and the practice reflected the contestability during the nineteenth century of the inalienable attributes of self that lay at the foundation of the discourse of free labor. Drawing the line between what knowledge the firm could own and that which remained the possession of every free person was, in that context, an extraordinarily difficult task. The article concludes that the persistence today of the multifactored, fact-based reasonableness inquiry for restrictive covenants and of standardless, factual tests for the existence and the remedying of the misappropriation of trade secrets is evidence that the value choices at the heart of these legal issues remain as wrenching today as they were when courts first created the doctrines that set employee freedom to switch jobs on a collision course with the corporate control of intellectual property.

Possessed : Women, Witches, and Demons in Imperial Russia

Abstract: Women known as "shriekers" howled, screamed, convulsed and tore their clothes. Beleived by many to be possessed by demons, these central figures in the cultural drama of "klikushestuo" stirred various reactions among those who encountered them. While peasants and clergymen sheltered the shriekers, others analyzed, diagnozed and objectified them. The Russian Orthodox Church played an important role for, while moving toward a scientific explanation for the behaviour of the "klikushi", it was reluctant to abandon the ideas of possession and miraculous exorcism. "Possessed" examines the phenomenon of demon possession in rural Russia. Drawing from a wide range of sources - religious, psychiatric, ethnographic and literary - Worobec looks at "klikushestuo" over a broad span of time but focuses mainly on the 19th and early-20th centuries, when all of Russian society felt the pressure of modernization. Worobec's study is as much an account of perceptions of the "klikushi" as an analysis of the women themselves. Engaging broad issues in Russian history, women's history and popular religious culture, "Possessed" carries rich implications for understanding the ways in which a complex society treated women believed to be out of control.