Making Spirits: Materiality and Transcendence in Contemporary Religions

by Diana Espirito Santo (Editor), Nico Tassi (Editor)

Overview

The analysis of religion has often placed an emphasis on beliefs and ideologies, prioritizing these elements over those of the material world. Through the ethnographic analysis of a variety of contemporary religious practices, Making Spirits questions the presumed separation of spirit and matter, and sheds light on the dynamics between spiritual and material domains. By examining the cultural contexts in which material culture is central to the creation and experience of religion and belief, this volume analyses the different ways in which the concepts of the material and spiritual worlds intersect, interact and inform each other in the reproduction of religious rites. Using examples such as spirit mediums, fetishes and ritual objects across a variety of cultures such as Latin America, Japan and Central Africa, Nico Tassi and Diana Espirito Santo offer insights that challenge accepted categories in the study of religion, making this book important for scholars of comparative religion, anthropology and sociology.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780857734068
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	07/15/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Diana Espirito Santo is currently a research fellow in social anthropology based at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa (CRIA, FCSH-UNL). She works between Cuba and Brazil on themes of learning and cognition, personhood, materiality and cosmology in spirit mediumship practices. Nico Tassi is a research associate of the Programa de Ivestigacion Estrategica en Bolivia (PIEB) and visiting scholar at University College London. He has dedicated most of his academic work to the study of Bolivia's indigenous highlanders, focusing on religion and political economy, materiality and transcendence, trade and informality.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Introduction / Nico Tassi&Diana Espirito Santo

I. SPIRITS IN THE MAKING
Chapter 2. Materiality, cosmogony and presence among Cuban spirits and mediums / Diana Espirito Santo
Chapter 3. Conchas, candles and flowers in the creation of the Concheros' religiosity / Susanna Rostas
Chapter 4. “We worship nature”: The given and the made in Brazilian Candomblé / Roger Sansi

II. TRANSFORMATIONS
Chapter 5. Knowing what has been done: technology of ritual 'objects' amongst the Abelam (East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea) / Ludovic Coupayé
Chapter 6. Objects, Bodies and Gods: analysis of an ontological process in the Xangô Cult in Recife (Brazil) / Arnaud Halloy
Chapter 7. Divinity and experiment: conversion in a Japanese jam jar / Phil Swift

III. MATTER AND SPIRITUAL POWER

Chapter 8. Forms of fetishism in Kinshasa: historical insights and contemporary practices / Joe Trapido
Chapter 9. Things we grow with: spirits, matter and bodies in La Paz, Bolivia / Nico Tassi
Chapter 10. Making Matter Matter: The Santo Daime Ritual of Feitio / Andrew Dawson

Chapter 11. Concluding remarks and discussion / Martin Holbraad