Spiritist Boundary-Work and the Morality of Materiality in Afro-Cuban Religion

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2390940
AutoresD E Santos (0000-0003-4813-7455, Iscte – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, autor de correspondencia), Diana Espírito Santo (University of Lisbon)
Año2010
Volumen15
Número1
Páginas64-82
Fecha de publicación2010-03-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of Material Culture (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1359-1835 • E-ISSN: 1460-3586
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1359183510355226
OpenAlexW2105445048
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas15
Referencias citadas18

This article explores the significance of notions of materiality in the practice of Cuban espiritismo and in the Afro-Cuban religious cults of santería and palo monte. In particular, it pursues an understanding of the kinds of relations that are seen to emerge between the practitioners of these cults and the spirits of the dead - relations produced through their varying interpretations and uses of 'matter', in which corresponding moral implications obtain. The author further examines the importance of 'things' and their absence through an ethnographic analysis of the radically diverging discourses on the nature of spirit mediumship among competing spiritist groups in Havana. At one end of the spectrum lies the highly syncretic practice of espiritismo cruzado (crossed spiritism), characterized by its cosmological and ritual inclusivity, while at the other end is the doctrine-based espiritismo cientifico, where a popular concept of science places stricter limits on what can be understood as legitimately 'spiritual

Aesthetics · Doctrine · Epistemology · Ethnography · Materiality · Materiality (auditing · Morality · Sociology · Theology · Anthropology · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Cuban History and Society · Japanese History and Culture · Philosophy