Social Compass

This paper is based on fieldwork among Portuguese, Italians, Catalans and Spaniards influenced by the transnational Goddess spirituality movement. Through an analysis of ritual narratives the author analyses the role of doubt and uncertainty in contemporary rituals created within Goddess spirituality. She will show that contemporary crafted rituals offer a privileged window on the uncertainty intrinsic in ritual because participants feel less constrained by a long-standing religious tradition and talk more openly about their doubts and their strategies to neutralize them than in the case of secular ceremonies. Drawing on Simon Coleman’s analysis of pilgrimage and ritual (2009, 2013) she suggests that uncertainty may play an important role not only in rituals created in the context of ‘New Age’ spirituality but also in other contemporary rituals created in plural and increasingly secularized Western contexts.

In Lebanon and Syria, a network of Christian female mystics has been forming since the early 1980s. Every year on Good Friday, all these women relive Christ’s sufferings more or less dramatically. Some, crippled with pain, tend to isolate themselves. In contrast, others show the wounds that appear on their bodies to crowds of devotees. This article will focus on the ritual of ‘crucifixion’ (insilâb). Based on a description of Catherine Fahmi’s insilâb, the author will show that stigmatization is both a paradigm and a process: even if it inscribes itself in a long imitatio Christi tradition, which has been formalized and theorized over the centuries, the ritual also contributes to deeply transforming the Passion myth. Uncertainty – along with its subsequent questions, concerns, and hesitations – is key to this process.

In Brazil, the cult of saints brings into focus differences between formerly hegemonic Catholics and an increasing number of Evangelicals. In the context of a small town where a vernacular saint is worshipped, the practice of hagiographic narratives is viewed as a means of testing certainty. Analysis of these narratives (motifs or plots), the order of their episodes and the situations in which they are spoken reveals differing ways of exploring doubt and certainty. The missing elements that leave the story open are seen as ‘commonalities’, which contribute to social cohesion, allowing for creative reinterpretations of past and present events. The paper concludes with a brief comparison of the implications of exchanges of goods and exchanges of words, which demonstrates the role of the latter in the construction of the group’s social temporality.

This article is based on several years of ethnographic research in the Netherlands on contemporary spirituality and Catholicism. The emphasis within the networks of contemporary spirituality discussed here is on finding ‘proof’ of ‘the other side’. This quest for certainty is compared to another religious context, dominated by a discourse of liberal Catholicism, where the emphasis is on learning to deal with uncertainty (previously discussed in this journal: see Knibbe, 2008). Here, uncertainty is experienced as liberating. This comparison is the basis for the development of a theoretical approach to understanding both the quest for certainty and the quest for uncertainty, based on Jackson’s essay ‘Minima ethnographica’ (1998). The article ends with a reflection on the implications of these findings in relation to the tendency within the sociology of religion to look for causal links between societal changes and changes in religion.

Originally from Canada and sent to the Philippines in 1921, the Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Conception (MIC) were entrusted with the administration of the Chinese General Hospital in Manila. This mission put them in contact with many immigrants and residents from China. This paper examines the multiple challenges that the sisters met in dealing with a dying population they were trying to convert in the face of well established Buddhist and Taoist beliefs and practices. The sisters fought against these practices, turning the hospital where they worked into a place of ontological confrontation. Distributing medals and images of the Virgin Mary, the sisters also contributed to the plasticity of the existing Chinese religious traditions, especially the devotion to Santa Maria. The dedication of the sisters to care and education as well as their tolerance allowed them to develop lasting and profitable relationships with their patients. The Christianization of the Chinese nevertheless remained incomplete, their centuries-old traditions persisting. In the anthropological study of missions, this case study shows that misunderstandings often remain at the heart of the conversion process.

Although belief in ghosts or analogous concepts is prevalent cross-culturally, including in contemporary Western cultures, social scientific treatments of spirit belief and experience often dismiss such views as superstitious, or overlook this dimension of culture completely. Using mixed methods, we examine ghost belief, experience, and media consumption, as well as the practice of ‘ghost hunting’ in the United States. Results from a national survey demonstrate that these beliefs and practices are common and concentrated strongly among younger generations of Americans, especially moderately religious ‘dabblers.’ Fieldwork with multiple groups centered on ‘hunting’ ghosts reveals several notable themes, including rhetorical appeals to both science and religion, magical rites, the extensive use of technology to mediate evidence and experiences of ghosts, and the narrative construction of hauntings. We argue that the inherent liminality of spirits as cultural constructs accounts for their persistence, power, and continual recurrence.

In light of the Vatican’s recent doctrinal investigation of American Catholic nuns, this paper considers gender inequality in the Catholic Church immediately before, during and after the Second Vatican Council. Using Weber’s frameworks of authority construction and literature on corporate structures that reify inequality and gendered workplaces, the author argues that viewing the Church as a complex social organization allows for a fuller understanding of the ways in which its structures of power are constructed and reproduced. Ultimately, the author contends that religious sisters are stakeholders in a hierarchical organization that has prevented them from assuming leadership roles and from developing official Church teaching. Finally, he identifies several hegemonic forces that perpetuate gender barriers in the Catholic Church, specifically the obligatory wearing of the religious habit and the ban on women’s ordination.