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- Convenors:
-
Kathleen Openshaw
(Western Sydney University)
Cristina Rocha (Western Sydney University)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Vitality
- Location:
- NIKERI KC2.208
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 23 November, -
Time zone: Australia/Melbourne
Short Abstract:
This panel explores the how religion, spirituality and faith-based organisations (FBOs) may provide spiritual, social and material life supports during crises and disasters.
Long Abstract:
We live in existentially uncertain times beset by global socio-political upheaval, war, an ever-worsening refugee crisis, the intensifying climate emergency with associated habitat loss and mass extinction, a dramatic rise in the cost of living and the COVID 19 pandemic. Within this precarious global context, Australia has experienced disastrous governmental policies such as the robodebt scheme (an illegal method of automated debt assessment), and cuts to the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), in addition to horrendous bush fires and floods leaving communities across the country traumatised. This panel invites contributions that discuss how religion, spirituality and faith-based organisations (FBOs) provide spiritual, social and material life supports for those affected by such tragic situations. We invite panellists to consider the many ways in which faith-related activities may explain, respond, adapt to, hinder, frustrate and manage crisis circumstances. We seek to discuss questions such as:
o In what ways does a connection to the divine provide comfort and guidance during adversity?
o As neoliberalism dismantles the welfare state and shrinks state-funded social services, what role do religious institutions, spiritual communities and FBOs play in addressing need within communities?
o How have religious institutions and spiritual communities supported or burdened adherents during COVID 19(e.g., questioning/supporting vaccination, moving or refusing to move online, etc.)?
o What is the relationship between faith and activism in addressing political (in)actions during crisis conditions, particularly those related to the Anthropocene?
o How are religious/spiritual rituals, beliefs and material culture used, repurposed and created to address crises and disasters?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 22 November, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
In this paper, I explore how Chippa (printing caste) women's practices of wearing, gifting and keeping 'heavy' attire for ritual events were imbued with special significance during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Paper long abstract:
In the textile printing town of Bagru, Rajasthan, the English word 'heavy' is used for ornate special occasion wear worn to ritual events. This form of attire is not only heavy in adornment, however, but is also heavy in weight, price and symbolism. Material things, including cloth, clothing, and other forms of attire are a significant feature of local Hindu ritual events such as religious festivals and weddings. Practices of gifting, wearing and keeping attire related to these events is an arena of kinship connection that benefits those Chippa women with the socio-economic means to participate. These practices were placed under pressure in 2020, as government restrictions, fears of the virus and the pandemic-related economic downturn curbed social and ritual life and adversely affected the town's printing cottage industry. The slow dressing practices required for wearing 'heavy' create windows of time for hardworking (mahenati) Chippa women to partake in shared sessions of beauty, fun and fashion. I will show how getting ready for scaled-back events at home during the pandemic were both interludes of enjoyment and spaces to reaffirm kinship ties during this period of hardship.
Paper short abstract:
A Hindu goddess, Kannaki, worship is popular among Sri Lankan Tamil for Justice and healing from diseases. Therefore, Kannaki worship is being prominent ritual practice of life support since the thirty years of civil war ended in 2009 and during the covid-19 pandemic among Sri Lankan Tamil.
Paper long abstract:
Goddess Kannaki worship is popular among the Sri Lankan Tamil Hindus. She is a heroine of one of the Tamil epic Cilapaticāram. Her worship and rituals are being as mode of life support in the sense of justice and healing from the diseases. In the post-war environment, many of the uprisings of migration, death, family breakdown, and nationalist consciousness are being remembered and re-evaluated through the ritual events at the Kannagi temple. The role of Kannagi worship in these changes is important since the civil war ended and during the pandemic. At the same time, caste hierarchies are being re-imagined through material realities, such as temple roles and kinship relations. Pre-war and war-time social structures are evolving to reflect the new political and economic environment. These all changes also influence in worship, especially during the covid-19 pandemic. Therefore, Kannagi seems to hold an important symbolic significance within these changes during the life support needed.
Paper short abstract:
Conventionally, a newspaper is defined by the way it enables deliberation about public issues. In Indonesia, newspapers are Islamic in the way they mediate routines of embodied worship. Newspapers mediate, encourage, inform and represent public commitment to embodying the Islamic calendar.
Paper long abstract:
The newspaper is considered paradigmatic of a certain idealisation of publicness, namely the one constituted by the circulation of ideas between readers detached from their private interests. Recent anthropology has recognised that this ideal corresponds to only one of a number of ways in which publics cohere around ties of publicity, exchange and affect. West Java's 'Pikiran Rakyat' is a heritage newspaper in the traditional mould that dedicates enormous resources to covering the embodied celebration and commemoration of the feast dates of the Islamic calendar. In a number of modes, it participates in its readership's struggle to properly honour the ritual obligations of the calendar, paying attention to worship and ritual styles popular amongst the readership's population. Conclusions suggest that the newspaper is less of an organ of detached exchange as traditionally thought, and in fact fits into a public ecology of bodily practice.
Paper short abstract:
Guided by spirits, Spiritualist mediums learn a sophisticated multi-sensory form of communication and healing. The medium serves as a channel for spirits to cause a transformative rupture in clients, waking them to discover their true expressions in life and work through self-limiting beliefs.
Paper long abstract:
Faced with global uncertainty and adversity, Western demographics are increasingly seeking ‘radical experiences with the sacred’ (Rocha, 2017) and mystical cultivation of intuition, psychic and healing abilities (Hoo, 2021). Across a landscape of growing spirituality sub-cultures, the Spiritualist medium is highly regarded for their advanced spirit communication and spirit healing techniques. These techniques draw on altered states of consciousness and heightened embodied multi-sensory experiences for wellbeing. Research indicates these practices have some commonality with psychotherapy, but conducted with significantly different cultural variation (Sollod, 2005).
To respond to ethnographic gaps identified by transcultural mental health and anthropology (Kirmayer and Ban, 2013), I am undertaking an experiential auto-ethnographic investigation (Stoller and Oakes, 1987) into Spiritualist mediumship. I am also training under spirits, as channelled by trance mediums. My approach builds on Luhrmann’s (2020) methodological focus on the cultivation practices of people developing relationships with spirits, rather than an understanding of their beliefs and cosmology.
My paper will provide insight into the complex support relationships people have with spirits. Spirit communication provides a sophisticated embodied and multi-sensory form of healing. Spirits provide a rupture (Deleuze and Guatttari), waking people to discover their true expressions in life. Spirit mediums also provide support to people with complaints of evil entities and curses. Participants have identified a grey area between spiritual perceptions of spirits and mental health challenges. Insights from my research are being fed into a transcultural mental health unit, to illuminate the complexity of spirit communication practices in Australia.