Living in the end of days: risk, anxiety, subjectivity and the devil in a Trinidadian village

Abstract

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Trinidad, this paper examines how the framing of a particular apocalyptic future provided a moral commentary and model for wellbeing in contemporary everyday life. Changing social, political, and economic circumstances and relations had brought a range of new risks and anxieties into daily life. These more recent problems originating from beyond the village (such as climate change, criminality, inequality, pollution, neglect by the State) could not be resolved through working with obeah spirits as might have been used previously for more local issues, or through the long-established Catholic and Anglican churches. Instead evangelical Christian cosmology and practices gave a means of making sense of such issues and for protecting oneself. The development of a strong individual relationship with God connected individuals to a greater power and a global community, framing such problems not only as the work of the Devil but as evidence of the coming of the End of Days. Political protest or attempts at wider change were futile therefore; individuals should focus on their own practices to develop a strong relationship with God. Health and wellbeing relied on an individualised and deep relationship with the Holy Spirit. This was developed through practices that both drew on, and helped create, a type of neoliberal logic and global subjectivity to understand and live within current times, evangelical Christianity promoting ways of living without anxiety in the present through understandings of an apocalyptic future.

Keywords:

• Evangelical Christianity
• the body
• Trinidad
• Cosmological understandings
• risk and anxiety

Acknowledgements

I am extremely grateful to my interlocutors who allowed me to join them in participating in everyday life in the village and who shared their stories and histories. Ethical permission to conduct this work was granted by the UCL’s central ethics committee. I am grateful for the comments of audience members at the Medical Anthropology seminar at UCL in developing the paper, particularly Daniel Miller and Roland Littlewood, and to the paper’s anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

The author declares no conflict of interest.

Note

Notes

1 I am indebted to Daniel Miller for this helpful point.