Of blood and stone: The emplaced reality of Marian statue devotion in Bougainville

Abstract

This article explores how transcendent, immaterial spiritual entities have material presence by focusing on Marian statue devotion among Catholics in Central Bougainville (Papua New Guinea). Drawing upon scholarly debates about belief and materiality in religious worlds and practices, it is argued that Marian statues impact their surrounding worlds as they are synthesized with local values, customs, social action, and human existence at large. The article highlights how Bougainvillean Marian statue devotion embodies and engenders the enduring significance of matrilineal blood and sacred stones. These core symbols and parameters of meaning and immanent experience did not shift with the advent of Catholicism but created a lived reality in which plaster and plastic statues of Mary are animated and have divine power and agency.