Encounters of Body and Soul in Contemporary Religious Practices: Anthropological Reflections

Fedele, Anna

ISBN 10: 085745207X / ISBN 13: 9780857452078

Published by Berghahn Books, 2011

About this Item

New. Pristine, unmarked. 16 illustrations, 4 figures. // shipped carefully packed in a sturdy box.

Seller Inventory # 018128

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Encounters of Body and Soul in Contemporary Religious Practices: Anthropological Reflections
• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Publication Date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 085745207X
• ISBN 13: 9780857452078
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New
• Dimensions: 0.5W x 6.2H x 9D inches 0.5 inches width by 6.2 inches height by 9 inches depth
• Weight: 1 pound
• Seller catalogs:
  • Berghahn Books

About this title

Synopsis

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.

About the Authors

Anna Fedele explores in her work the intersections of gender and religion, the importance of corporeality in religious contexts, and ritual creativity. She has done extensive fieldwork on alternative pilgrimages to French shrines and is the author of Looking for Mary Magdalene (forthcoming, Oxford University Press). She is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centro em Rede de Investigação em Antropologia (CRIA) of the Lisbon University Institute and a research fellow at the Groupe de Sociologie Politique et Morale of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales of Paris.

Ruy Llera Blanes is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon and Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences in the Department of Anthropology. He has specialized in the anthropology of religion, having worked on Pentecostal movements in southern Europe. Currently, he is working with African prophetic movements, discussing issues of leadership, charisma, memory, transmission, knowledge and rationalism.