Making Spirits: Materiality and Transcendence in Contemporary Religions

by Nico Tassi (Editor), Diana Espirito Santo (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:	9781848857964
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	08/15/2013
Series:	Library of Modern Religion
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.10(d)

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

Contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Spirits in the Making
2. Materiality, Cosmogony and Presence among Cuban Spirits and Mediums
3. Conchas, Candles and Flowers in the Creation of the Concheros' Religiosity
4. 'We Worship Nature': The Given and the Made in Brazilian Candomblé
5. Transformations
6. Knowing What Has Been Done: The Techniques of Ritual 'Objects' among the Abelam (East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea)
7. Objects, Bodies and Gods: A Cognitive Ethnography of an Ontological Dynamic in the Xangô Cult (Recife-Brazil)
8. Divinity and Experiment: Conversion in a Japanese Jam Jar
9. Matter and Spiritual Power
10. Things We Grow With: Spirits, Matter and Bodies in La Paz, Bolivia
11. Forms of Fetishism in Kinshasa: Historical Insights and Contemporary Practices
12. Making Matter Matter: The Santo Daime Ritual of Feitio
Index