Making Spirits: Materiality and Transcendence in Contemporary Religions

Academic analyses of religious phenomena have often placed an emphasis on beliefs and ideologies and prioritized the understanding of religious symbols over the material of symbolization. Through the ethnographic analysis of a variety of contemporary religious forms, Making Spirits questions the presumed separation of spirit and matter, and sheds light on the relational dynamics between spiritual and material domains, on the mechanisms and techniques through which they 'make' each other. Such reciprocal interactions and transformations between the spiritual and the material are evident across spirit mediums, fetishes and ritual objects in Cuba, Mexico, Papua New Guinea, Brazil, Bolivia, Japan and Central Africa. With new insights that challenge the taken-for-granted categories of materiality and transcendence, thing and spirit, this book will be invaluable for scholars in religious studies, comparative religion, anthropology and sociology.