Paper short abstract:

In this presentation, I review various ways to tackle the ontological challenges raised by the exploration of contemporary spiritualities and their epistemological and methodological consequences. In doing so, I also use my own work on Iban animism as well as contemporary spiritualities in Canada.

Paper long abstract:

Doing ethnography of contemporary spiritualities, especially in Western countries, is facing the ontological issue of a world multiple. In coining this expression, I am inspired by Anne-Marie Mol’s book “The body multiple”. This world multiple is not akin to the various worldviews that anthropologists are so used to navigate. It is a materialistic world which collides with a world made of visible and invisible dimensions that humans can eventually perceive through attention and presence. It is a world devoid of spirituality opposed to a world populated by invisible, sentient beings of human and non-human origins, to whom human are in relationships. It is a world made of conflicting configurations of what is real and different ways of inhabiting it.

Doing ethnography of contemporary spiritualities is fundamentally being confronted to this ontological question, without ever solving it. It is also facing the limits of cultural relativism. It then turns into an ethical, epistemological, and finally a methodological question: how to explore those spiritualities and through them this world multiple?

In this presentation, I’d like to review various answers to this question, especially since the so-called ontological turn in anthropology. In doing so, I will also draw on my own work on Iban animism as well as contemporary spiritualities in Canada.