Enchanted Worlds: Visayan Children's Perspectives on Living among Engkanto

Abstract

In the Visayan Philippines, engkanto are a diverse category of spirits and supernatural entities. Children are seen as especially susceptible to contact with and harm from engkanto, yet their views on these spirits have not been researched. Based on conversations with and drawings by a group of children from an impoverished periurban community, we examine their anxieties, ideas about and experiences of engkanto. Previously conceptualised as relevant to children's lives only as an adult strategy to gain their compliance, engkanto are important to children as they interpret and negotiate the day-to-day challenges of growing up in a deeply distressed environment. Children use engkanto, as do their parents, to explain certain instances of illness and to navigate potentially harmful places within their community. Importantly, children use these spirits to negotiate the specific tensions and contradictions which they face as children growing up in poverty.

Keywords:

• Philippines
• Visayas
• Children
• Supernatural
• Engkanto

Acknowledgements

This paper is based on fieldwork conducted during several periods from 2001 to 2005 with funding by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Much of the analysis and writing was carried out while one of us (LMM) was a Fellow at the University of Victoria's Centre for Studies in Religion and Society. We thank KASAKI and NGO Balayan, especially Julie Dojillo and Violetta Nacion, for assistance in the field. Most of all, we thank the children of Purok Dagat for their enthusiastic participation: salamat gid!

Notes

1. Although our original plan was to use pseudonyms for the research participants, many of the children preferred that their own names be used in publications and presentations. With approval from the children's parents and the Human Research Ethics Board at our institution, we complied with those children's requests.

2. See McElhinny's (2005) discussion of the historical construction of Filipinos as ‘sanitary subjects’ during the early twentieth century American occupation of the Philippines.

3. The resemblance may be a legacy of the presence of Columban priests and nuns, members of an Irish Catholic religious order active in impoverished communities on Negros Island since the 1950s (www.columban.com.htm/histphil).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lisa M. Mitchell

Lisa M. Mitchell is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Victoria

Marjorie Mitchell

Marjorie Mitchell is Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at the University of Victoria