Skill and Scale in Transnational Mediumship Ethnographic Inquiries into New Communities of Practice and Enskilment

The open access volume “Skill and Scale in Transnational Mediumship” presents ethnographic inquiries into new communities of practice and enskilment that revolve around techniques of mediumship, spirit possession, and trance rituals in a globally interconnected world. The increased mobility of people, things, signs, and symbols that shape and reshape trance practices and spiritual experiences has significantly widened their scope and outreach. Circulating body techniques, symbols, and artifacts play a major role in the re-organization of spirituality and contribute to the emergence of transnational “spirited publics”.

Marcello Múscari is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Cologne.

Ehler Voss is Managing Director of the collaborative research platform Worlds of Contradiction (WOC) and Private Lecturer at the Department of Anthropology and Cultural Research at the University of Bremen; Chair of the Association for Anthropology and Medicine (AGEM); Editor-in-Chief of the medical anthropology journal Curare; and Co-founder and Co-editor of boasblogs.org.

Martin Zillinger holds the Chair for Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Cologne. He is Speaker of the Center for Research on Media and Modernity and of the Interdisciplinary Research Lab “Mediterranean Liminalities”, both at the University of Cologne; and Co-founder and Co-editor of boasblogs.org.