Spirits can be haunters, informants, possessors, and transformers of the living, but more than anything anthropologists have understood them as representations of something else symbols that articulate facets of human experience in much the same way works of art do."The Social Life of Spirits"challenges this notion. By stripping symbolism from the way we think about the spirit world, the contributors of this book uncover a livelier, more diverse environment of entities with their own histories, motivations, and social interactions providing a new understanding of spirits not as symbols, but...

In recent years, the Southern borders of Europe have become landmarks for the mediatic and academic verve regarding the migration and diasporas towards and beyond 'Schengen Europe'. In these debates, religion is acknowledged as playing a central role in the recognition of major societal changes in the continent, being object of political concern and attention: from the recognition of plural forms of Christianity to the debates on a 'European Islam'. Yet, in this respect, what goes on around the borders of Portugal, Spain, Italy or Greece is still largely uncharted and un-debated. With the...

This volume ethnographically explores the relation between secularities and religious subjectivities.As a consequence of the demise of secularization theory, we live in an interesting intellectual moment where the so-called `post-secular' coexists with the secular, which in turn has become pluralized and historicized.

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license.
This book presents fresh ethnographic work from the regions of Africa and Melanesia--where the popularity of charismatic Christianity can be linked to a revival and transformation of witchcraft. The volume demonstrates how the Holy Spirit has become an adversary to the reconfirmed presence of witches, demons, and sorcerers as manifestations of evil. We learn how this is articulated in spiritual warfare, in crusades, and in healing or witch-killing raids. The contributors highlight what happens to phenomena that people address as locally...