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Paper short abstract

A decade of work with ‘Canto a lo Divino’ vigils transformed my ways of knowing. From prioritizing symbolic analysis to attending to sensory conditions. I reflect that when the field reveals itself and guides attention, modes of understanding emerge that move the discipline's frameworks.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines an ethnographic trajectory of a decade with the vigils of ‘Canto a lo Divino’ in central Chile; a devotional practice of Catholic roots enacted in mostly rural domestic spaces. In 2015, my first research focused on verses, ritual structures, and cognitive dynamics. I documented altars and recorded songs, but understood them as complements to the symbolic analysis I prioritized.

Upon returning years later, sustained presence in the vigils revealed dimensions I had overlooked. The field disclosed a multimodality that had escaped any methodological decision; song modulating durations, images organizing presences, bodies responding to intensities. Learning to inhabit that sensory density gradually displaced the question about my own relationship with faith. Less relevant than evaluating beliefs or verifying presences was attending to what the practice does: the forms of being together it produces, the temporalities it configures, the spaces it opens.

This reformulation allowed me to take the ritual seriously on its own terms rather than evaluating it from external categories. Moreover, collaborative work with ‘cantores’ and ‘cantoras’ revealed ways of knowing (entonations, silences, spatial arrangements) that tensioned my previous analytical frameworks.

I reflect on this transformation from imposing questions or binary frameworks to accompanying processes of ritual production. I propose that when the field guides our forms of attention rather than receiving predetermined methods, possibilities emerge to understand practices that resist being reduced to systems of meaning or confessional adhesions.