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Paper short abstract:

In ethnographies around the globe, sound is described as a prerequisite for ritual action. Based on examples from the Amazon and the Caribbean we propose that sound, as a medium for intercorporeal and interaffective experience, can aid in bridging epistemological incommensurabilities.

Paper long abstract:

Around the globe, ethnographies tell us, songs, sounds or rhythms are not only a substantial part of, but often an absolute prerequisite for ritual action: e.g., drum rhythms invoke the orixá in Brazilian candomblé, and gongs are played during the Philippine Ifugao's pig sacrifice. In both anthropology and musicology, however, the inevitability of sonic utterance in ritual has not yet been well explained. In ethnographies, on the other hand, explanations like "the songs are performed by the spirits", "this rhythm calls the ancestors", or "our voice is heard by the gods" abound. Proposing a bridge between ontological pluralism and scientific epistemology, we will embark on the endeavour to situate sound as the preferred medium of intercorporeality and interaffectivity within a space that embraces the human mind, body, and environment (as related to the 4E-concept of human cognition). Axionomy is understood as an extension of taxonomy into axiomatic metaphysical preconditions; ontological linkages describe which kinds of relations and connections exist in indigenous theory and in which way they interconnect and can be used.

Based on two examples of ritual action - a Shipibo-Konibo indigenous curing session in the Western Amazon, and a Vodoist celebration involving spirit possession in the Dominican Republic - it will be shown that an axionomy of ontological linkages between mind, body, and environment can be understood as a matrix for sound permeating and interconnecting the embodied experience of participating persons.

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Paper short abstract:

Based on long-term fieldwork with a Greek spiritual healer, this paper explores how the 'transreligious' experiences of the anthropologist leads to epistemological challenges with regard to ethnographic knowledge and intense encounters with the spiritual cosmos in the field.

Paper long abstract:

This paper introduces the notion of 'transreligiosity', by exploring the ethnographic and epistemological challenges that the researcher faces through embodying spirituality, experiencing extra-sensory perception and communicating with the spiritual world. Drawing on long-term fieldwork with a spiritual healer who combines Brazilian spiritism, Buddhism, and (neo)Shamanism, among others, in her spiritual healing practice in Athens, Greece, I will provide an account of the personal and ethnographic 'transreligious' trajectories I followed through my encounter with the Greek spiritual healer and my active participation in her healing groups. Adopting a self-reflexive approach of embodying spirituality and opening up to experience the spiritual beyond my role as a 'social scientist', I will explain how I have tried to resist 'objectified' epistemological reification and 'reinvent' the acquisition of epistemological knowledge through an intensively personal bodily involvement in the field. I will argue for an anthropology of 'transreligiosity', the epistemological value of which is centred around open spiritual boundaries, spi/ritual fluidity, creative ethnographic methodology through embodied spiritual experience and (extra)sensory perception, and the transcendence of boundaries between the ethnographic and the personal, the 'scientific' and the 'empirical', the 'objective' and 'subjective' epistemological and anthropological knowledge.

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Paper short abstract:

I compare Afro-Cuban religiosity and an auto-ethnography in "crisis". I had been advised that the former was linked to the latter, but I only discovered it later and precisely through my research. I explore the term "transreligiosity" so as to account for these confluences and other transgressions.

Paper long abstract:

The general practitioner said calmly but decisively: "Your research has to do with your problem. It has affected you too much". My initial surprise was succeeded by the general suspicion that is always guarded against general practitioners and then by fury for the calm confidence displayed in his words. In this paper I explore the sudden and unplanned intersection of a personal "crisis" with the object and subject of one's own research without wishing to either fully merge them into an amorphous whole or pretend to be completely unrelated. I, rather, open a comparative dialogue between the two and explore what this dialogue can offer in the production of ethnographic theory. I introduce, employ and analyse the term of "transreligiosity" as an extremely useful one when it comes to account for these onto-epistemic confluences, as well as much broader issues of religiosity and its transgression of "frontiers" which cannot be adequately captured by the traditional frameworks of "religion", "science" and "secularism". The ethnographic focus is my research on Afro-Cuban religiosity and an initially unexpected kind of auto-ethnography. Among others, I compare the effects, affects and peculiar coincidences produced by the ritual preparation of an Afro-Cuban doll and the preparation of another doll, as this was prescribed by a psychotherapist, the specialist confirming in an uncanny way the early, and arrogant to my then interpretation, words of the general practitioner, but also prompting us to stretch the "voodoo" efficacy of dolls.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper recounts my recent fieldwork experiences of the everyday unseen worlds in a Tamang village in Nepal. I reflect on my acceptance of these spaces in my interactions with the local traditional healers and those they help with long term pain.

Paper long abstract:

I aim to recall preliminary reflections through a short ethnographic recounting during my recent doctoral fieldwork in rural Nepal in a small Tamang community . The study focused on local coping and knowledge surrounding chronic pain. As everyday practice, the villagers first sought the advice of traditional healers. This led to time spent with the local shamans ( Jhangkri , Nepali), (Bompo, Tamang). In my introduction to their worlds, I saw a widespread acceptance of "we can't see" (Amrang Ba, Tamang) spirits which continually caused disturbances of various kinds . For the Tamang, these were real and tangible spaces where the sources of physical pain and psychological distress prevailed. A Bompo would enact a performance, involving animal sacrifice, to chase away the spirit who had stolen the life force known as Hungsa (Tamang). Within the framework of person-centered ethnography , I aim to focus on experiences of the ill person within their everyday lived world. During the Yalmo Kyonda (Tamang) the Bompo's embodied demonstration is of his own internal power as directed by his ancestor, his internal guru, and supplemented by divine power. As described by Holmberg ( 2006), it is by witnessing this performance that the ill person may gain resilience and allow the life force to re-enter. In the field, I witnessed a pragmatic approach to the unseen in the lived experience of this farming community, affecting all aspects of their worlds. In this paper I will focus on my acceptance of these invisible spaces.