Encounters of Body and Soul in Contemporary Religious Practices
Anthropological Reflections
- 252 pages
- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
Encounters of Body and Soul in Contemporary Religious Practices
Anthropological Reflections
About this book
Social scientists and philosophers confronted with religious phenomena have always been challenged to find a proper way to describe the spiritual experiences of the social group they were studying. The influence of the Cartesian dualism of body and mind (or soul) led to a distinction between non-material, spiritual experiences (i.e., related to the soul) and physical, mechanical experiences (i.e., related to the body). However, recent developments in medical science on the one hand and challenges to universalist conceptions of belief and spirituality on the other have resulted in "body" and "soul" losing the reassuring solid contours they had in the past. Yet, in "Western culture," the body–soul duality is alive, not least in academic and media discourses. This volume pursues the ongoing debates and discusses the importance of the body and how it is perceived in contemporary religious faith: what happens when "body" and "soul" are un-separated entities? Is it possible, even for anthropologists and ethnographers, to escape from "natural dualism"? The contributors here present research in novel empirical contexts, the benefits and limits of the old dichotomy are discussed, and new theoretical strategies proposed.
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Table of contents
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I — Bodies and Souls in Catholic Settings
- Chapter 1 — 'I want to feel the Camino in my legs': Trajectories of Walking on the Camino de Santiago
- Chapter 2 — Holding the Saint in One's Arms: Miracles and Exchange in Apiao, Southern Chile
- Chapter 3 — Embodying Devotion, Embodying Passion: The Italian Tradition of The Festa dei Gigli in Nola
- Part II — Corporeality, Belief and Human Mobility
- Chapter 4 — The Body and the World: Missionary Performances and the Experience of the World in the Protestant Church in the Netherlands
- Chapter 5 — 'How To Deal with the Dutch': The Local and the Global in the Habitus of the Saved Soul
- Chapter 6 — Is Witchcraft Embodied?: Representations of the Body in Talimbi Witchcraft
- Part III — New Spiritualities Challenging the Body/Soul Divide
- Chapter 7 — When Soma Encounters the Spiritual: Bodily Praxes of Performed Religiosity in Contemporary Greece
- Chapter 8 — Reenchanted Bodies: The Significance of the Spiritual Dimension in Danish Healing Rituals
- Chapter 9 — The Struggle for Sovereignty: The Interpretation of Bodily Experiences in Anthropology and among Mediumistic Healers in Germany
- Chapter 10 — Transforming Musical Soul into Bodily Practice: Tone Eurythmy, Anthroposophy and Underlying Structures
- Notes on Contributors
- Subject Index