Word Finder - fetishism

definition

The belief that natural objects have supernatural powers, or that something created by people has power over people.

definition

A form of paraphilia where the object of attraction is an inanimate object or a part of a person's body.

Nor did Roman fetishism stop short at natural objects.

The Moguls, though baptized, are in fact believers in fetishism as much as the unconverted Samoyedes.

But Fetishism must very early have developed into Animism, the feeling of the sacredness of the object into the sense of an indwelling spirit.

We are not concerned with the question whether the earliest forms of recorded religious consciousness such as animism, or totemism, or fetishism, were themselves degradations of a primitive revelation or not.

Animistic in many of their features too are the temporary gods of fetishism, naguals or familiars, genii and even the dead who receive a cult.

Taken in this sense fetishism is probably a mark of decadence.

The suhman can, it is believed, communicate a part of his powers to various objects in which he does not dwell; these are also termed suhman by the natives and may have given rise to the belief that the practices commonly termed fetishism are not animistic. These charms are many in number; offerings of food and drink are made, i.e.

Fetishism is the prevailing religion throughout the province.

It is possible, however, that the savage always distinguishes in a dim way between the material medium and the indwelling principle of vital energy, examples of a pure fetishism, in the sense of the cult of the purely material, recognized as such, being hard to find.

The power of fetishism seemed, however, unaffected.

With all this, however, there has long existed a kind of idolatry, which in its origin is simply fetishism - the belief in charms - as having power to procure various benefits and protect from certain evils.

Among the western Baluba, or Bashilange, a remarkable politico-religious revolution took place at a comparatively recent date, initiated by a secret society termed Bena Riamba or " Sons of Hemp," and resulted in the subordination of the old fetishism to a cult of hemp, in accordance with which all hemp-smokers consider themselves brothers, and the duty of mutual hospitality, &c., is acknowledged.

The first of these two shows certain affinities with the culture characteristic of the western area of Africa, such as rectangular huts, clothing of bark and palm-fibre, fetishism, &c., but cattle-breeding is found as well as agriculture.

Fashion and Fetishism is concerned with the idea of the corset throughout history yet covers important and controversial issues including feminism and abortion.

Many people, especially in small countries like Sweden, indulge in what might be called a fetishism of the UNO.

In his concluding chapter Rutsky analyzes contemporary technological fetishism.

However, perhaps the most influential arena for her work, if not a little unusual, lies within the forum of sexual fetishism.

Here Woods lapses back into constitutional fetishism, of a particularly silly form.

Distinctively Besson embraces a certain fetishism of style, developing a film language that is essentially colored, highly stylized, energetic and mysterious.

Marx analyzed what he called ' commodity fetishism ' in Capital.

Not that hardware fetishism is bad, or even unimportant.

Probably magic was always accompanied by some primitive form of animism whether the Melanesian mana or fetishism (see Dr Haddon's Magic and Fetishism, pp. 58-62, 64-90).

At a higher stage the spirits of dead kinsmen are no longer unfriendly, nor yet all non-human spirits; as fetishes (see Fetishism), naguals (see Totem), familiars, gods or demi-gods (for which and the general question see Demonology), they enter into relations with man.

It is an age of conscious selection as between ideal systems. Instead of necessitating a wasteful and precarious elimination of inadequate customs by the actual destruction of those who practise them - this being the method of natural selection, which, like some Spanish Inquisition, abolishes the heresy by wiping out the heretics one and all - progress now becomes possible along the more direct and less Comte's own term " fetishism " was most unfortunately misleading (see Fetishism).

Today, the French maid's costume is one of the most popular forms of women's fantasywear and the occasional subject of sexual fetishism.

Fetishism may include a desire to submit, dominate, have someone spank you or simply act out fantasies of multiple origins.

When it comes to women's intimate anime apparel, role-playing and fetishism both come up.

They follow the most primitive forms of religion (mainly fetishism), live on products of the woods or of the chase, with the minimum of work, and have only a loose political organization.

In primitive religions inclusive of almost every serious offence even in fields now regarded as merely social or political, its scope is gradually lessened to a single part of one section of ecclesiastical criminology, following inversely the development of the idea of holiness from the concrete to the abstract, from fetishism to mysticism.