Paper short abstract:

Drawing upon personal and comparative ethnographic data in the context of Afro;Brazilian Candomblé, this paper will discuss the challenges and dynamics of renegotiating one's bodily involvement and positioning through and with different ontological worlds.

Paper long abstract:

The bodily experience is a central feature of Afro-Brazilian religions, and it exposes the human body during all ritual phases, from the first stages of the initiation to trance possession. Personalities, intellectuals, and also anthropologists have often been included in Candomblé's rigid social structures as legitimate initiates. However, in many notable examples in history, anthropologists were initiated as "não-rodantes," people with a higher position in the hierarchy who do not experience trance possession and whose initiation is shorter and less invasive. These conditions were often negotiated with religious authorities as a win-win situation: "não-rodantes," anthropologists could add prestige to the Candomblé houses, and have access to information while also maintaining the comfort and status of their position within both the religious and the academic environment.

However, in other cases, these engagements are not set in motion by humans, but by entities and spirits themselves who participate and interact with humans through a code of symbolic actions or involving the ethnographer's bodily experience, like through unexpected trance possession. Drawing upon personal and comparative ethnographic data, this paper will discuss the challenges and dynamics of renegotiating one's bodily involvement and positioning through and with different ontological worlds. Moreover, it will argue how the researcher's bodily experience is a primary source of ethnographic data not only because of his/her ability to internalize social values but also as a central place of renegotiation of one's power, status, and inclusion within a social group.

Paper short abstract:

The paper discusses sensory aspects of mediumship in Brazilian Spiritist healing settings and explores the involvement of the ethnographer. It reflects how far sensory perception does not only serve as a focus of anthropological investigation but also as an insightful ethnographic technique.

Paper long abstract:

Brazilian Spiritist healthcare models serve as an example of how sensory perception shapes the interaction, experience, and interpretation of therapeutic practices. Ethnographers study the interconnection, functionality, and efficacy of spirit possession, mediumship, and (self-)care by exploring their performative, embodied, and sensual qualities. Many argue for a socio-cultural-psychological model and impose their cognitive interpretations of observed experiences and narratives on their research objects. Few try to explore the individual affective entanglements of their interlocutors with related practices, and hardly anybody dares to reflect on their own sensory perception throughout observing participation in terms of relevant data production and reflection. Applying to Sensory Anthropology as an approach that covers both, this paper surpasses the anthropological interpretation of Spiritist healing practices as bodily-sensory "technologies of the self" by discussing the ethnographer's involvement with these therapeutic interventions. It only touches the perspective on patient-healer relationships as socially structured, symbolical, and performative, and different layers of sensory experience and interaction. Instead, it will focus on the analysis of the ethnographer's perception and interaction in this space of healing. It describes some ethnographer's sensory experiences and his gradual transformation from a participant-observer towards an observing participant in mediumship-related practices of care. A major question to be discussed will be how far ethnographers are able to participate without becoming involved and how they are able to use their sensory experiences as data and therefore as a source of knowledge. It implements a discussion on how to fill the gaps between interpretation, empathy, and "going native".

Paper short abstract:

This paper addresses the entanglements between tangible and intangible worlds in learning spirit mediumship in the Vale do Amanhecer. Moving beyond propositional knowledge it embraces the dimension of feeling and affection in which also the ethnographer is engaged in learning a way of knowing.

Paper long abstract:

This paper addresses the entanglements between tangible and intangible worlds in learning the practice of spirit mediumship in the Brazilian Spiritualism of the Vale do Amanhecer (Valley of the Dawn). Learning this practice is hereby approached as learning a way of knowing, in which the spiritual experience of other worlds and other selves is materialized through bodies, spiritual substances and visions are made tangible, and people are made aware of their own selves as extended beyond the physical body. In my analysis of this process of learning, I propose to move beyond the idea of propositional knowledge to embrace the dimension of feeling and affection. Along with the experiences of mediums, I also consider my own experience as ethnographer engaged in this process of learning a way of knowing through the body, expanding perception in a field of interactions and co-presence with other selves (human and non-human), materializing the intangible in and through my own body, which becomes a zone of encounter and transition between worlds where ethnographic knowledge is engendered relationally and through bodily experience.

Paper short abstract:

In this presentation, I focus on experiences with spirits in contemporary Japan, including my own. I argue that a focus on feelings emerging through correspondences with certain environments can create legitimate ways to analyze and express people's (including researchers') experiences with spirits.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I propose an ecological approach for an understanding of the emergence and becomings of spirit entities, as well as of the social life that they acquire and elicit (Blanes and Espirito-Santo 2013). In order to do so, I will focus on ethnographic data about experiences with spirits in contemporary Japan. I will firstly provide a quick overview of the "symptoms" of spirits, ranging from cases of haunting to cases of spirit possession, thus showing the central role played by affects and bodily perceptions. Subsequently, I will introduce and reflect on my own experiences in the field, especially while undergoing exorcisms, shedding light on similarities and differences with other people's accounts. I will argue that experiences with spirits can be usefully understood as emerging from specific feelings of the lived body corresponding with certain environments through practice, or as emerging from "practices of feeling with the world."

I will suggest that carrying out ethnographic fieldwork about spirits can also be understood as such. Consequently, I argue that a methodological focus on micro-interactions between humans and non-humans, as well as on feelings that emerge through correspondences and attunements with certain environments can provide a useful way to analyze people's (including researchers') experiences. Such approach, therefore, can also contribute to the elaboration of new and useful ways to express (researchers') experiences with spirits in the 'academic field,' while also opening possibilities for the production of new legitimate 'scientific' knowledge.