| dc.description.abstract | <p>This study draws on 6 months of fieldwork to explore spiritualist ritual practice,
and the relation between these performances, the selves of the participants,
and some of the sosiocultural traits of the larger context in which they are
set. </p>
<p>As experienced by the performers themselves, these rituals are "healing" and
provide for their "spiritual development". This thesis explores the meaning
of these terms, embedds them within spiritualis cosmology, and seeks to explain
the underlying embodied processes on which they are based. I argue, drawing
on the insights of practice theory (e.g. Bourdieu 1977, 1984) and theories of
embodiment (Csordas 1990,1993) that spiritualist ritual practice effects a transformation
of the embodied self that, on the one hand, incorporates into it moral dispositions
that accord with those sanctioned by Spiritualism as such and, on the other,
are experienced as beneficial and positive in phenomenological terms; thus these
rituals come to effect what spiritualist discourse objectifies as "spiritual
development" and "healing".</p>
<p> Consequently, I show how the structure of practice in spiritualist ritual
performance accord with the personal dispositions embodied by individual mediums
and others, and how these are considered to be forms of "spiritual" practice
and moral action that are regarded as 'better' than those held to dominate contemporary
"materialistic" society. Drawing on sociological and anthropological theory
and research on contemporary modern/late-modern society (esp. Giddens 1991),
I show also that these practices break with the logic of modern institutions
and argue that this is a major reason why they are performed. Research and theorising
on modernity/late-modernity point out how it is a social order which gives rise
to certain forms of suffering. </p>
<p>I argue that this is an important thing to consider if we want to understand
the healing efficiency of spiritualist ritual practice. Thus, spiritualist ritual
practice comes to stand as a form of resistance to and a means of coping with
certain features of the social order of modernity/late-modernity and the afflictions
it generates. I draw on Catherine Bell's (1992) notion of the "ritualization"
of practice to explore this continuity between ritual, self, and the larger
social context in which it is set. Although earlier studies of Spiritualism
(Skultans 1974, Cherrytree 2003) have pointed out the experienced therapeutic
efficiency of their practices, none, to my knowledge, have systematically related
this efficiency and the practices as such to the larger structures of modernity/late-modernity.
On the theoretical level, this thesis formulates a conception of 'sickness'
in terms of the "preobjective" (Csordas 1990, 1993) and the "senses of the socially
informed body" as developed by Bourideu (1977:124) and use it to understand
"healing" as an genuinely embodied process and to understand how the social
order of modernity can and does create bodily real affliction. By emphasising
the embodied nature of spiritualist cosmology this thesis also argue for the
methodological need of personal embodied experience and participation in practice
on behalf of the researcher, if genuine insight into the nature of spiritualist
practice is to be gained. If ommitted, the result would most likely severely
miss the point.</p> | nor |