The Ecology of Transaction Dividual Persons, Spirits, and Machinery in a Special Economic Zone in South India

In this paper, I analyse relations between humans and nonhuman entities, including deities and machinery, linking the concepts of dividual persons and substance-codes (Marriott 1976) with transactional networks (Appadurai and Breckenridge 1976) and the ideas of hybrid and limited networks discussed by Strathern (1996). In būta (spirit) rituals in the coastal area of Karnataka, people enter into transactional relations with the deities, in which all human and nonhuman participants appear as dividual persons exchanging their substance-codes as ‘gifts’. Such relations have been disrupted, however, by the construction of a huge industrial zone in the area. How, then, can transactional networks including unique nonhumans, such as būtas and machines, be recreated? Through close investigation of ritual transactions between people and būta, I examine how the būta ritual (re)creates a unique ecology of humans and nonhumans, and how the potentially limitless extension of networks in and beyond industrial facilities can