Making Sense of the Paranormal: The Interactional Construction of Unexplained Experiences

by Rachael Ironside, Robin Wooffitt

Overview

This book is a study of how people collaboratively interpret events or experiences as having paranormal features, or as evidence of spiritual agency. The authors study recordings of paranormal research groups as they conduct real life investigations into allegedly haunted spaces and the analyses describe how, through their talk and embodied actions, participants collaboratively negotiate the paranormal status of the events they experience.By drawing on the study of the social organisation in everyday interaction, they show how paranormal interpretations may be proposed, contested and negotiated through conversational and embodied practices of the group.

The book contributes to the sociology of anomalous experience, and explores its relevance to other social science topics such as dark tourism, participation in religious spaces and practices, and the attribution of agency. This book will therefore be of interest to academics and postgraduate researchers of languageand social interaction; discourse and communication, cultural studies; social psychology, sociology of religious experience; parapsychology, communication and psychotherapy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783030884062
Publisher:	Springer International Publishing
Publication date:	01/03/2022
Edition description:	1st ed. 2021
Pages:	144
Product dimensions:	5.83(w) x 8.27(h) x (d)

About the Author

Rachael Ironside is Senior Lecturer at Robert Gordon University, Scotland. Her research interests include social interaction and anomalous experience. She has also published more widely on the role of supernatural folklore and how it impacts our experience and understanding of place and cultural heritage.

Robin Wooffitt is Professor of Sociology at the University of York, UK. He is interested in language, interaction, and anomalous experiences. He is author or co-author of eight books.

Table of Contents

1. Language, Embodiment And Anomalous Experience.- 2. The (Absent) Body In Research On Paranormal Phenomena.- 3. Talk, Bodies And Tools In Interaction With Spirits.- 4. What Is That?.- 5. Embodied Sense Making.- 6. Experiencing The (Anomalous) Moment.

Editorial Reviews

Making Sense of the Paranormal makes an important contribution to sociological and interactionist research on the paranormal … . Making Sense of the Paranormal offers original insights into how meaning emerges through the interplay talk, embodied actions, and objects in physical settings that are also significant to this meaning making activity.” (Marc A. Eaton, Symbolic Interaction, September 17, 2022)

From the Publisher