Encounters of Body and Soul in Contemporary Religious Practices

Anthropological Reflections
1. Auflage 2011
ISBN: 978-0-85745-207-8
Verlag: Berghahn Books

Buch, Englisch, Band 16, 252 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 507 g

Reihe: EASA Series

Social scientists and philosophers confronted with religious phenomena have always been challenged to find a proper way to describe the spiritual experiences of the social group they were studying. The influence of the Cartesian dualism of body and mind (or soul) led to a distinction between non-material, spiritual experiences (i.e., related to the soul) and physical, mechanical experiences (i.e., related to the body). However, recent developments in medical science on the one hand and challenges to universalist conceptions of belief and spirituality on the other have resulted in “body” and “soul” losing the reassuring solid contours they had in the past. Yet, in “Western culture,” the body–soul duality is alive, not least in academic and media discourses. This volume pursues the ongoing debates and discusses the importance of the body and how it is perceived in contemporary religious faith: what happens when “body” and “soul” are un-separated entities? Is it possible, even for anthropologists and ethnographers, to escape from “natural dualism”? The contributors here present research in novel empirical contexts, the benefits and limits of the old dichotomy are discussed, and new theoretical strategies proposed.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fedele, Anna

Blanes, Ruy Llera

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of illustrations

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Anna Fedele and Ruy Llera Blanes

PART I: BODIES AND SOULS IN CATHOLIC SETTINGS

Chapter 1. “I want to feel the Camino in my legs”: trajectories of walking on the Camino de Santiago

Keith Egan

Chapter 2. Holding the saint in one’s arms. Miracles and exchange in Apiao, southern Chile

Giovanna Bacchiddu

Chapter 3. Embodying devotion, embodying passion. The Italian tradition of ‘La Festa dei Gigli’ in Nola

Katia Ballacchino

PART II: CORPOREALITY, BELIEF AND HUMAN MOBILITY

Chapter 4. The Body and the World: Missionary Performances and the Experience of the World in the Protestant Church in the Netherlands

João Rickli

Chapter 5. “How to deal with the Dutch”: the local and the global in the habitus of the saved soul

Kim Knibbe

Chapter 6. Is witchcraft embodied?  Representations of the body in talimbi witchcraft

Aleksandra Cimpric

PART III: NEW SPIRITUALITIES CHALLENGING THE BODY/SOUL DIVIDE

Chapter 7. When Soma Encounters the Spiritual: Bodily Praxes of Performed Religiosity in Contemporary Greece

Eugenia Roussou  

Chapter 8. Re-enchanted Bodies: The Significance of the Spiritual Dimension in Danish Healing Rituals

Ann Ostenfeld-Rosenthal

Chapter 9. The struggle for sovereignty: the interpretation of bodily experiences in anthropology and among mediumistic healers in Germany

Ehler Voss

Chapter 10. Transforming musical soul into bodily practice: Tone eurythmy, anthroposophy and underlying structures

Andrew Spiegel and Silke Sponheuer

Notes on Contributors

Subject Index

Über Autor(innen)

Blanes, Ruy Llera
Ruy Llera Blanes is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon and Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences in the Department of Anthropology. He has specialized in the anthropology of religion, having worked on Pentecostal movements in southern Europe. Currently, he is working with African prophetic movements, discussing issues of leadership, charisma, memory, transmission, knowledge and rationalism.

Fedele, Anna
Anna Fedele explores in her work the intersections of gender and religion, the importance of corporeality in religious contexts, and ritual creativity. She has done extensive fieldwork on alternative pilgrimages to French shrines and is the author of Looking for Mary Magdalene (forthcoming, Oxford University Press). She is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centro em Rede de Investigação em Antropologia (CRIA) of the Lisbon University Institute and a research fellow at the Groupe de Sociologie Politique et Morale of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales of Paris.

Anna Fedele explores in her work the intersections of gender and religion, the importance of corporeality in religious contexts, and ritual creativity. She has done extensive fieldwork on alternative pilgrimages to French shrines and is the author of Looking for Mary Magdalene (forthcoming, Oxford University Press). She is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centro em Rede de Investigação em Antropologia (CRIA) of the Lisbon University Institute and a research fellow at the Groupe de Sociologie Politique et Morale of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales of Paris.