Fetishism

William Pietz, who, in 1994, conducted an extensive ethno-historical study[3] of the fetish, argues that the term originated in the coast of West Africa during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

[5]Stallybrass concludes that "Pietz shows that the fetish as a concept was elaborated to demonize the supposedly arbitrary attachment of West Africans to material objects.

Later, Auguste Comte employed the concept in his theory of the evolution of religion, wherein he posited fetishism as the earliest (most primitive) stage, followed by polytheism and monotheism.

According to Hegel, Africans were incapable of abstract thought, their ideas and actions were governed by impulse, and therefore a fetish object could be anything that then was arbitrarily imbued with "imaginary powers".

[13] Akaruhime no Kami, the female deity of Hiyurikuso Shrine [ja], was said to have originally been a red ball before transforming into a beautiful woman.

[14] Given the vagueness of such distinctions – further accentuated by the restricted usage of images (e.g., in painting or sculpture) – there was a tendency to ascribe special virtues to certain physical objects in place of the deity.

[14] In modern times, the American linguist Roy Andrew Miller (1924–2014) observed that the pamphlet of the nationalistic Kokutai no Hongi proclamation (1937) and the Imperial Rescript on Education (1890) were also often worshipped as "fetishes", and were respectfully placed and kept in household altars (kamidana).

Their role in rituals, worship, and daily life illustrates the rich spiritual tradition of the early Austronesian peoples who inhabited the Philippine archipelago.

Anito fetishes were typically carved from wood, stone, or bone, and they served as both a focus of worship and a conduit for spiritual energy.

In contrast, within the context of folk religion[25][26][27] Made and used by the BaKongo of western DRC, a nkisi (plural minkisi) is a sculptural object that provides a local habitation for a spiritual personality.

In addressing the question of whether a nkisi is a fetish, William McGaffey writes that the Kongo ritual system as a whole, bears a relationship similar to that which Marx supposed that "political economy" bore to capitalism as its "religion", but not for the reasons advanced by Bosman, the Enlightenment thinkers, and Hegel.

[4]Therefore, McGaffey concludes, to call a nkisi a fetish is to translate "certain Kongo realities into the categories developed in the emergent social sciences of nineteenth century, post-enlightenment Europe.