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- Convenors:
-
Fabian Graham
(Max Planck Institute)
Daiana Andreoli
- Chair:
-
Fiona Bowie
(Oxford University)
- Stream:
- Moving bodies: Shamanism, Spiritualism and Reliogiosity/Corps mouvants: Shamanisme, spiritisme et religiosité
- Location:
- KED B005
- Start time:
- 5 May, 2017 at
Time zone: America/New_York
- Session slots:
- 3
Short Abstract:
Research into role of spirits and the spiritual power of objects has undergone a paradigmatic shift reflective of the ontological turn in contemporary anthropology. This panel explores the privatization and dissemination of this knowledge in evolving ethnographic research methodologies and analyses.
Long Abstract:
Ethnographic research into spirit-mediumship, shamanism, witchcraft and religious phenomena has undergone a paradigmatic shift reflective of the ontological turn in contemporary anthropology, new research giving recognition to the role of spirits and to the spiritual power of objects in religious practices. New ethnographic research methods and theoretical approaches are therefore developing to integrate emic ontological spiritual worlds into the broader scope of normative etic analysis.
Fiona Bowie has suggested that "Western academic approaches often rely on the juxtaposition between "our" rational and "their" irrational belief systems, and attempt to "explain away" or ignore emic interpretations with a subsequent loss of semantic density", and suggests "adopting an emic interpretive lens in order to arrive at a "thick description" that does not shy away from aspects of experience outside the ethnographer's Weltanschauung (world view)". Such approaches remove the monopoly on sacred, spiritual and religious knowledge held by religious specialists as emic understandings and knowledge are increasingly integrated into ethnographic research and anthropological analysis. This disseminates into the public sphere through anthropological publications, conferences, and through new social media.
This panel would like to invite potential participants to explore dimensions of the privatization, revelation and dissemination of religious and spiritual knowledge through evolving ethnographic research methodologies and analyses based on previous or on-going research in any region of the world. Topics of specific interest include:
1. Spirit-mediumship and spirit possession
2. Shamanism
3. Religious ritual / magic
4. Religious / spiritual belief systems
6. Contemporary witchcraft
7. Spirit power and material culture
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
Present study explores how power of oscillation, which evolves in Tibetan Tantric ritualistic practices for liberation of beings from sufferings, is disseminated to respond to the challenges of uprooted Tibetans at Dharamsala (India) and in stressed global culture through a reinvigorated paradigm.
Paper long abstract:
In Tantric rituals the power of oscillation (to pacify and resist) evolves through (embodied sacrifice of senses and the self) which dissolves the worlds (mundane & beyond) into oneness (non-dualism, i.e. the global capital). This paradigm opens global channels and attracts overwhelming inflow of tourists at Dharamsala (India), especially from the West (Christian donors, sponsors), who travel in the quest for spiritual pleasure.
Despite challenged livelihood since 1959 and global unrest Tibetans maintain eco-harmony through rituals, ceremonies, discourses by the Dalai Lama and the tourists get privileged to experience a perception, realization of stressful and challenged world of culture through their extended cognitive worldview which blurs the boundaries. That reorients encapsulated Tibetan Tantric spiritual power to revitalize challenged Tibetans' well-being and transcends revolutionary ethos for the Tibetan cause. It encourages lay practice and equality that strengthen Tibetans' sense of nationalism.
In addition, migration, global travel, translation, digitization of Tibetan Tantric manuscripts, semiotic analysis and messages through internet, also disseminates this knowledge which formulates transcendent unity through charitable act into the public sphere for the global traumatized actors.
Present study envisages how this knowledge is increasingly integrated into ethnographic research and anthropological analysis on Tibetan global capital movement which is occupying psycho-cultural vacuum in global space and retaining the key adherence to the historical past.
Paper short abstract:
This paper focuses on experiences of communications from the deceased in contemporary North America, outside a formal institutional religious framework.
Paper long abstract:
Based on ethnographic fieldwork at the Sixth Annual Afterlife Awareness Conference in St. Louis, MO, this paper discusses contemporary understandings of the afterlife in North America, and describes how people interpret incidents or phenomena in the environment as signs from deceased family members. Interactions between the living and the dead through mediums are also considered. I argue that after death communications are central to griefwork and the work of kinship in contemporary North America, and that increased anthropological attention should be brought to bear on the maintenance of ongoing ties between the living and the dead in our own society.
Paper short abstract:
Sacred space built inside a Canadian government office tower is examined. Ethnographic findings suggest new trends are emerging where individuals are claiming back the landscape. Small installations like the Algonquin lodge inside a workplace are re-establishing this connection.
Paper long abstract:
This paper discusses whether the Kumik lodge is a sacred space. Built inside a skyscraper that headquarters Canadian government aboriginal affairs administration overlooking the sacred waterfalls Akiko or Great Kettle of Boiling Water or Chaudière Falls, in the Ottawa River landscape. Indigenous cosmologies are complex but typically held all nature as animate. Today the dominant paradigm of scientism is evident in the surrounding office towers and hydro turbines. In researching the sacred, Eliade recommended the phenomenological approach. He theorized that sacred space could occur naturally or could be human-built. From ethnographic evidence, the Kumik is a human constructed space made sacred in the acknowledgment and repetition within it of ideas from Algonquin spirituality. New trends are emerging where individuals are claiming back the landscape and small installations like the Algonquin lodge inside a workplace seem to be re-establishing this connection.
Paper short abstract:
The dissemination of knowledge frequently weighs either side of an emic/etic divide. This paper posits an alternative approach, applying the concept of ‘deep mapping’ as ethnographic practice to bridge differing world views without any loss of individual authority, creating a polyphony of belief.
Paper long abstract:
"A deep map is not a thin map… It is a folding of representations akin to the relationship between a "thick" and a "thin" description… it creates a pattern of social and cultural communication, connections which go beyond any single account."
(Kavanagh, 2017, forthcoming - Springer)
The dissemination of knowledge is frequently weighted either side of an emic and etic divide. Stories, psychism and spirit stand across from science, with contesting notions of truth value stirring the normativity in-between.
This paper posits an alternative approach, which has been developed within an interdisciplinary framework to challenge the conventions of geomythological narrative along the coast of Cardigan Bay, in West Wales. It applies the concept of 'deep mapping' as ethnographic practice in order to integrate differing epistemological world views without any loss of individual authority. In this way, semantic density may be retained in an ethically transparent manner and multimodal interpretations are afforded the space to speak with equal voice, creating a polyphony of belief.
Paper short abstract:
This paper focuses on the role of affect and perception in spirit possession in contemporary Japan. It argues that spirits can emerge through practice, "affective correspondences" among humans and non-humans, as well as institutionalization, through which meaning is entangled with the affective.
Paper long abstract:
This paper focuses on the role of affect and bodily perceptions in experience of spirit possession and exorcism in contemporary Japan. I will build on the concept of affect proposed by Massumi (2002), while integrating it with the notion of "correspondence" (Ingold 2013), in order to elucidate spirits' emergence by looking at perceptions of bodies moving in the world and to "somatic modes of attention" (Csordas 1993). I will try to elaborate an approach that includes "culture"/locality specific aspects of practices and experiences, with a particular focus on institutionalization.
In order to do so, I will rely on ethnographic data collected in Kenmi Jinja (Tokushima Prefecture, Japan), a Shinto shrine renown because of a ritual to heal especially from possession by the Dog-God (inugami). I will provide a description of people's feelings of being possessed and healed, thus shedding light on the bodily perceptions through which these conditions emerge.
I will argue that possession and spirits in contemporary Japan do not have to be understood as self-standing phenomena, but as assemblages in which bodily perceptions play a major role. I will argue that spirits can emerge through (ritual) practice, as well as through a whole set of "affective correspondences" among humans and non-humans. In doing so, I will highlight the fundamental role that the institutionalization of these correspondences plays in the entanglement of symbolic, "cultural" specific aspects with the affective dimensions of experience.
Paper short abstract:
Can 'money gods' change one's luck and fate through bestowing 'fortune money' to devotees, and if so, what do they have to gain? A recursive analysis of deific intervention in the human world world through ritual giving in Taiwan.
Paper long abstract:
A distinctive feature of Taiwan's religious landscape is the increasing number of new money god temples where, after negotiating with a deity by throwing divination blocks, the temple gives visitors between twenty and six hundred Taiwan dollars of 'fortune money'. Although there is no contractual agreement with the temple, recipients usually return the money with between one hundred and one thousand per cent interest at a later date. The two case study temples claim to receive millions of visits a year, and the total amount given annually totals over one billion Taiwan dollars. Utilising Derrida's concept of a 'true gift' as a starting point for a multi-layered ontological analysis, this paper untangles the complex web of giving, reciprocity and exchange involved, and examines the impossibility of Derrida's 'true gift' both from the perspective of the money god temples, and from the suppositional perspective of devotee - deity interactions.
Paper short abstract:
This paper aims to disclose the mediumship at work behind the Kimbanguist inspired hymns, by analyzing life stories collected in ethnographic fieldwork among inspired men and women.
Paper long abstract:
Defined as "songs from the angels" by certain scholars of African initiated churches or as "songs from Heaven" by others, what the Kimbanguist church calls inspired hymns is a phenomenon situated between the natural and supernatural worlds. Born in the 1920s with the movement launched by Simon Kimbangu against the Belgian colonial order in Congo, inspired hymns are one of the key characteristics of the Kimbanguist church. Indeed, they constitute a vast body of syncretic Christian literature which is superimposed to the Bible.
But Kimbanguist inspired hymns cannot exist without the inspired persons themselves—as they are known to the Kimbanguist believers. They act as discrete mediums between the visible and invisible worlds, the profane and the sacred, as they receive spiritual messages from the other world and then transmit them to the visible world, particularly the various choirs gathering church members.
This paper aims to disclose the mediumship at work behind the Kimbanguist inspired hymns, by analyzing life stories collected in ethnographic fieldwork among inspired men and women.
Paper short abstract:
Tharu is one of the largest tribal group in India . . present paper will focus on the practice of shamanism among tharu tribe of India which will give new inference to understand and elaborate this notion in depth
Paper long abstract:
Tharu is one of the largest tribal group in India and apart from its all socio-cultural study, practice of shamanism is momentous among them. Shamanism is practiced to not only for ailments but also for so many sex practices and it is also taken into account for gender discrimination. After having patriarchal system, due to influence of shamanism it presents its matriarchal pseudo picture . present paper will focus on the practice of shamanism among tharu tribe of India which will give new inference to understand and elaborate this notion in depth
Paper short abstract:
Nevruz is celebrated as the beginning of a new year, the coming of spring. It has been interpreted by the Alevis and Bektashis, through an Islamic framework. It is performed to maintain fertility, peace, unity and solidarity. The ethnographic study is conducted in a Bektashi Village.
Paper long abstract:
Nevruz is a holiday celebrated by various cultural groups in the Anatolia, the Balkans, Crimea, Afghanistan, Iran and Central Asia. For some Alevi Bektashi groups, it is a cem ritual, celebrated once a year as the beginning of a new year and the coming of spring. It has also been interpreted through an Islamic framework, with meanings such as the birth of Ali. The fieldwork concerning Nevruz cem ritual was conducted in Çeşmeli Village, which is a village in the Çorlu district of Tekirdağ province. The mentioned field is where the believers of Sultan Sücaeddin Veli, their spiritual ancestor, and the believers' fathers live. The inhabitants of the village are Babai (Bektashi) community migrated from Bulgaria to the Anatolia. Nevruz cem ritual is a calendar ritual celebrated on the 21st of March. In the field, the Nevruz cem ritual is performed to celebrate the coming of spring and the beginning of a new year, intention of securing and maintaining fertility, peace, unity and solidarity. The Nevruz cem ritual is performed as the last ritual of the annual ritual calendar and following this, a new ritualistic cycle begins. In this study, conducted in Çeşmeli Village, under the authority, personal agenda of Sultan Sücaeddin Veli, the physical objects, verbal and behavioral manifestations in Nevruz cem ritual will be discussed. This will follow a semantic analysis of contact with the spiritual world. Nevruz cem ritual was observed before, during and after the performance of the ritual, and an ethnographic method was necessarily used.