Thomas Csordas

A atividade vivencial a partir da leitura de um texto bíblico - Bibliodrama (ROESE, 2007) - combina com o paradigma da corporeidade proposto por Csordas (2008), que considera o corpo como espaço fenomênico e solo existencial para experiências humanas. No Bibliodrama, texto e leitor formam uma relação de alteridade terapêutica holística que transcende os limites biológicos, capaz de libertar as pessoas de sofrimentos e males profundos. Para Csordas (2008), significados existenciais, experiências de sofrimento, sagrado, cura, prazer e libertação ficam registrados no corpo, o qual não é somente material biológico e instrumentalizado pela cultura ou pela própria pessoa, mas é também, sujeito que interage, constitui e transforma indivíduos e realidades. O que alguém faz por meio do corpo, bem como o que o corpo experimenta e executa definem quem é a pessoa.

Geist- oder Wunderheiler, schamanische, spirituelle oder mediale Heiler: Viele von ihnen verstehen sich als vermittelndes Medium, um mit zumeist unsichtbaren Kräften, Strömen oder Wesen auf Hilfe suchende Klienten einzuwirken. Ehler Voss hat sich auf die Suche nach Medialen Heilerinnen und Heilern in Deutschland gemacht und ist dabei auf verschiedene Szenen des Medialen Heilens gestoßen. Channeling, Schamanismus, Reiki, Bruno Gröning und das Familienstellen nach Bert Hellinger – verschiedene Methoden verdichten sich in dieser Arbeit zu einer Kultur des Medialen Heilens.
Nach modernem Selbstverständnis handelt es sich bei dem Glauben an Geister um Relikte aus vergangenen Zeiten. Diese würden zwangsläufig mit einer fortschreitenden Zivilisierung verschwinden. Aus dieser Perspektive wirkt es zunächst überraschend, wenn auch Menschen in einem hochtechnisierten Land wie Deutschland Hilfe und Heilung in einer »Geistigen Welt« suchen. Dies wird meist als rückständig, lächerlich oder als Hinnahme eines bewussten Betruges gedeutet. Ehler Voss zeichnet in seiner Ethnographie ein differenzierteres Bild und lässt Heilerinnen und Heiler ausführlich zu Wort kommen. Die Interaktionen einzelner Akteure und Kontexte Medialen Heilens werden ausführlich beschrieben. Er folgt dabei nicht einem einheitlichen Schema, sondern arbeitet die unterschiedlichen Besonderheiten der Heilerinnen und Heiler sowie ihrer jeweiligen Situation heraus und unterzieht sie einer eingehenden ethnologischen Analyse. So bietet diese Ethnographie tiefe und vielschichtige Einblicke in die Eigenarten, Themen, Motivationen, (Un-)Sicherheiten, (Un-)Fertigkeiten und Widersprüche im Umgang mit Eigenem und Fremdem und eröffnet damit die Frage nach der menschlichen Identität.

Zusammenfassung Dem Umgang mit Trance und Besessenheit ist in der ethnologischen Literatur viel Aufmerksamkeit gewidmet worden und dementsprechende Fremderfahrungen stellen seit jeher eine Herausforderung für rationale Erklärungen dar. Die Interpretation solcher Erfahrungen führt u. a. zu Fragen nach der Konzeption von Körper und Seele und dem Selbst und dem Anderen. Der emische Diskurs der von mir teilnehmend beobachteten medialen Heilerinnen und Heiler in Deutschland wie auch der etische Diskurs der Ethnologinnen und Ethnologen beschäftigen sich in Bezug auf Trance und Besessenheit vor allem mit dem Ursprung dementsprechender Erfahrungen. Dabei schwanken beide zwischen der Rückführung dieser Erfahrungen auf einen Ursprung innerhalb oder außerhalb des Selbst. Auf der einen Seite werden Geister, unpersönliche Energien oder Ähnliches als autonome Entitäten betrachtet, die das Selbst afizieren, während sie auf der anderen Seite als ursprünglich im eigenen Selbst konzipiert werden, indem man sie als Projektionen des Unbewussten, Imaginationen oder (bewusste) Fiktionen betrachtet. Selbst einige phänomenologische Ansätze, die versuchen Erfahrung jenseits der Dichotomien von Innen und Außen, Selbst und Anderem zu verstehen, wie der vielzitierte Embodiment-Ansatz von Thomas Csordas, verstricken sich in diesen Dichotomien und tendieren dazu, Erfahrungen des Fremden als ursprünglich im Eigenen zu konzeptualisieren. Dieser Vortrag zeichnet die gängigen Erklärungsweisen nach und versucht, durch einen Rückgriff auf die Phänomenologie des Fremden von Bernhard Waldenfels einen Ansatz für die Ethnologie fruchtbar zu machen, der von einer Fremdheit der Erfahrung ausgeht und damit eine Alternative zu einseitig externalisierenden oder internalisierenden Interpretationen anbietet. Schlagwörter Phänomenologie des Fremden-Embodiment-Mediales Heilen-Deutschland Domestications of foreignness. The Interpretation of Trance and Possession in Anthropology and in the Culture of Mediumistic Healing Abstract The handling of trance and possession is often brought into focus in anthropological literature and has challenged rational explanations. The interpretation of such experiences leads to questions concerning the conceptualizing of the body and the soul, and thus "the Self" as well as leading to the question of the relation between "the Self" and "the Other". The emic discourse of the mediumistic healers in Germany I have researched as well as the etic discourse of anthropologists about experiences of trance and possession in religious contexts oscillate between inding the origin of such experiences inside and outside the Self. On the one hand "Spirits", "Energies" and similar things are seen as autonomous entities affecting the Self, while on the other hand they are seen as having originated in the Self through projections of the unsconscious or through imagination. Even some phenomenological approaches which actually aim to conceptualize experiences beyond dichotomies such as inner and outer or the Self and the Other, like the much cited approach of Thomas Csordas, tend to entangle themselves in such dichotomies and tend to trace back experiences of the Other as having originated in the Self. This paper traces different emic and etic conceptions of body, soul, the Self and the Other and, against this background, argues with reference to the German philosopher Bernhard Waldenfels for a phenomenology of otherness which is grounded in the assumption of an otherness of experience itself and offers an alternative to one-sided externalizing or internalizing interpretations.

This book presents an ethnography of nature walks in a rural area of Paraná state, southern Brazil. The event is organized by government agencies responsible for implementing public policies for farming, tourism, the environment and culture, as well as by the local community of small farmers. However, a deeper inquiry into the layers of experiences and practices accumulated over the history of human walking reveals a multiplicity of lines interwoven into this event. Over the course of this book we have presented different aspects and epistemological consequences of the phrase “walking is knowing.” Conceiving movement as an action intrinsic to knowledge may appear fairly unusual in a society in which, as Marcel Mauss had already said, one of the first bodily techniques learnt is sitting. Hence we have looked to show how walking has been marginalized over the course of several centuries, above all through two key aspects. Firstly this type of movement has become an element in the production of distinctions between social classes. During certain historical periods, walking was related to subordination, and in others, to displaying one’s civility, or to the possibility of exploring more valued natural landscapes. Walking was a key object of dispute in the attempts made by the Church, the State and medical institutions to control people’s bodies. The second factor important to the marginalization of walking was the establishment of dualisms between thought and action, mind and body, subject and object, marked the way in which we relate to and situate ourselves in the world, which had consequences for the status of the walk under modernity.

The effort of producing a brief genealogy of the production of this seated society and, consequently, of the disconnection between the acts of walking and knowing – an association so common among the philosophers of earlier periods – is fundamental to being able to problematize the rationalist – and, it is worth adding, the static – principle of a subject who observes and a world ready to be observed. The analysis we sought to develop here is based on the attempt to foreground the perceptual awareness of subjects in a world constituted within the flow of movements. Through this approach, pursued in open dialogue with authors like Tim Ingold, Thomas Csordas and Merleau-Ponty, we have looked to avoid both a hermeneutic conception of subjects as cultural beings suspended in a web of meanings that give sense to the world, and the idea that objects (landscape, the world) are just the result of an arrangement of primary qualities (form, size, structure). We conclude, therefore, by seeking to develop a more phenomenological understanding in which subject and world are mutually sensible and sentient, such that the entanglement of these two domains of life (which are not two distinct domains) is forged through an irreducible web. In presenting the walk via the experience of subjects and their engagements in the landscapes of nature, along with ways in which they are taught to attend to the objects placed along the walking routes.

While globalization paradigms have proven generative for studies of contemporary Pentecostalism, theorists of the Black Atlantic question whether such phenomena as trans-localism and mobility are actually as novel as they are often thought to be. Building off such theorists and drawing on empirical evidence from Mozambique and Brazil, I argue in this essay that Pentecostalism should not be seen as a tradition made diasporic by current globalizing trends. Rather, it is diasporic from the start. Appreciation of this, however, requires a shift in focus from such macro-scale phenomena as missions, media, and migration to the micro-maneuvers of the lived body. Attention to the body, in turn, makes plain that while Pentecostalism is a tradition of mobility, it is not the only one. Particularly in such religiously pluralistic milieus as those of the Black Atlantic, movements within Pentecostal ritual spaces connect with movements beyond them. This point, about the transposable qualities of religious dispositions, is one on which scholars of Pentecostal embodiment widely agree. This essay, however, urges attention to not only the aftereffects but the precursors of Pentecostal mobility. In both the Brazilian and Mozambican cases, pre-Christian modes of embodiment resonate with and help connect people to Pentecostalism. Thus, Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of the habitus—central though it has been for studies of Pentecostal embodiment—is too reductive and unilinear to capture the cross-directional dynamics at play. In its place I propose for Pentecostal studies a phenomenology of embodied indeterminacy.

Initiating a research project and conducting the fieldwork is exciting, but doing research is not easy, especially as an undergraduate student. I realized this while taking "Field Experience in the Borderlands," a course where our field research was conducted in sites close to home: the South Texas-Mexico border. During the first weeks of class, my mentor, Margaret E Dorsey, bombarded us with ethnographic texts on border culture to develop project ideas in the various communities where my colleagues and I are from. For my class project, I revisited written versions of Lower Rio Grande Valley (LRGV) history (both national and local) and compared them to folk versions of that history, as told by certain descendants of multiethnic settler-ranchero families who arrived to my field site directly after The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. While conducting this research, I recognized the power of anthropology to provide the tools for understanding ethnic and class relations along the border. I also learned that my own personal experiences can enrich my research and inform my theoretical perspectives. As a result of this experience, I now plan on obtaining a PhD in anthropology.

Partindo do paradigma da corporeidade, como coloca Csordas (2008), o autor propõe transcender metodologias ao propor um olhar fenomenológico de que o corpo é sujeito da cultura ou sua base existencial. Para Hallowell o self é culturalmente constituído a partir da percepção e o reconhecimento de si. Assim, posso fazer livres associações com meu objeto de estudo através das fotografias selfies onde o corpo tem ampla visibilidade em perfis nas redes sociais.

This book presents an ethnography of nature walks in a rural area of Paraná state, southern Brazil. The event is organized by government agencies responsible for implementing public policies for farming, tourism, the environment and culture, as well as by the local community of small farmers. However, a deeper inquiry into the layers of experiences and practices accumulated over the history of human walking reveals a multiplicity of lines interwoven into this event. Over the course of this book we have presented different aspects and epistemological consequences of the phrase “walking is knowing.” Conceiving movement as an action intrinsic to knowledge may appear fairly unusual in a society in which, as Marcel Mauss had already said, one of the first bodily techniques learnt is sitting. Hence we have looked to show how walking has been marginalized over the course of several centuries, above all through two key aspects. Firstly this type of movement has become an element in the production of distinctions between social classes. During certain historical periods, walking was related to subordination, and in others, to displaying one’s civility, or to the possibility of exploring more valued natural landscapes. Walking was a key object of dispute in the attempts made by the Church, the State and medical institutions to control people’s bodies. The second factor important to the marginalization of walking was the establishment of dualisms between thought and action, mind and body, subject and object, marked the way in which we relate to and situate ourselves in the world, which had consequences for the status of the walk under modernity.

The effort of producing a brief genealogy of the production of this seated society and, consequently, of the disconnection between the acts of walking and knowing – an association so common among the philosophers of earlier periods – is fundamental to being able to problematize the rationalist – and, it is worth adding, the static – principle of a subject who observes and a world ready to be observed. The analysis we sought to develop here is based on the attempt to foreground the perceptual awareness of subjects in a world constituted within the flow of movements. Through this approach, pursued in open dialogue with authors like Tim Ingold, Thomas Csordas and Merleau-Ponty, we have looked to avoid both a hermeneutic conception of subjects as cultural beings suspended in a web of meanings that give sense to the world, and the idea that objects (landscape, the world) are just the result of an arrangement of primary qualities (form, size, structure). We conclude, therefore, by seeking to develop a more phenomenological understanding in which subject and world are mutually sensible and sentient, such that the entanglement of these two domains of life (which are not two distinct domains) is forged through an irreducible web. In presenting the walk via the experience of subjects and their engagements in the landscapes of nature, along with ways in which they are taught to attend to the objects placed along the walking routes.

Industrial growth and the development of the new middle class in South Korea of the 1980s went together with increased consumption and leisure culture, causing growing concerns with health and personal self-cultivation. Accordingly, sŏngin undong (成人運動 sports for adults), mountain hiking and ki suryŏn were on the rise.
People of older generations have lived through Korea’s dramatic transformation from a mostly rural society to an industrial one. Their yearning for the past, in which the “past” is idealized and imagined anew, is directly connected to old Korean mountain culture of immortality, a touchstone of cultural authenticity.
Together with an image of rural “old Korea” in the minds of contemporary people, it becomes a source of inspiration in re-inventing tradition in the spirit of nationalism. This tendency is expressed in new religious and spiritual movements that matured toward the 1980s. Ki suryŏn is an important part of these spiritual-social phenomena. The author Victoria Ten (Jeon Yeon Hwa) is a teacher of GiCheon, one ki suryŏn disciplines, which she researches at academia, combining this with a profession of a lawyer.

This article questions the Cartesian mind/body dichotomy followed by most Western academia. It compares and contrasts two ethnographies of the body that entail different theoretical conceptions of the body, casting doubt on the ‘Cogito ergo sum’ which reduces the body to this ‘common thing’ on which the authority of a superior private mind is exerted. The first ethnography - ‘The Body of One Color: Indian Wrestling, the Indian State, and Utopian Somatics’ by Alter (1993) - seems to follow, at first, this tradition, defending the Foucauldian image of an inanimate and politically benign body inhabited by a multiplicity of external force relations called ‘power’. However, in his conclusion Alter (1993) questions the Foucauldian framework stating that the Indian wrestler does not express his protest rationally, but fundamentally embodies his opposition to state domination. The second ethnography - ‘Words from the Holy People: a case study in cultural phenomenology’ by Thomas Csordas (1994) - introduces his concept of ‘embodiment’ as the way bodies are inhabited in the world prior to all abstract objectifications of it. I conclude with Lambek’s original argument (1998) that the discussed mind/body problem arises from the human capacity of self-reflection and needs to be understood in its specific Western socio-historical context.

Tematem mojej pracy są techniki posługiwania się ciałem praktykowane w grupie Taichi Qigong w Poznaniu. Ćwiczenia te można przypisać do chińskiej tradycji qigong i taijiquan, wiele z nich opiera się jednak na autorskich pomysłach prowadzącego (shifu). Ich podstawowym celem jest przybliżenie człowieka do doświadczania własnego ciała, co określam jako proces ucieleśnienia. Twierdzę, że takie ucieleśnienie ma cechę uzdrawiającą, co oznacza transformujący wpływ na doświadczenie i codzienne życie.  W pracy omawiam wykorzystane metody badawcze. Są to głównie klasyczne metody etnograficzne wzbogacone przez perspektywę sensoryczną. Optykę tę uznałem za odpowiednią dla problematyki moich badań obejmującą różnorodność doznań cielesnych towarzyszących ćwiczeniom taijiquan i qigong. Ważnym fundamentem mojej pracy jest także paradygmat ucieleśnienia. Teoria ta posłużyła mi do zakreślenia pola moich badań, jakim jest ucieleśnienie i doświadczenie percepcyjne. Ugruntowane w paradygmacie ucieleśnienia pojęcie somatycznych trybów uwagi umożliwiło mi dostosowanie obserwacji uczestniczącej do specyfiki badań. W pracy rozwijam także teoretyczne implikacje zaczerpnięte z tradycji fenomenologicznej, zwłaszcza specyficzne dla niej rozumienie ciała. Następnie odwołuję się do źródeł naukowych i kulturowych w celu eksplikacji czucia, dotyku i zmysłów somatycznych. Opisuję także tradycje qigong wraz z zawartymi w niej specyficznymi sposobami rozumienia choroby, zdrowia i leczenia.

W empirycznej części mojej pracy koncentruję się na omówieniu ćwiczeń praktykowanych na zajęciach grupy. Są one wstępem do przedstawienia i analizy kategorii treningu qigong używanych przez prowadzącego grupę do skutecznego wprowadzenia w wykonywanie ćwiczeń. W części empirycznej również korzystam z kategorii fenomenologicznych. Czynię to w celu stworzenia pomostu z teoretyczną częścią pracy i wskazania licznych podobieństw wynikających ze wspólnej problematyki jaką jest percepcja.

This research focuses empirically on the promotion and organization of hiking events as Paraná state’s public policy. In this context, we have investigated the way in which the state's action is related to a range of broader changes that have contributed to turn the environmental issue into a sort of language that is not restricted to the ecological realm, but is instead capable of functioning as a moral, ethic and aesthetic paradigm. In this sense, we are interested in both the institutionalization of environmental issues and in their accommodation with specific contexts of social relations. In order to understand that, we have centered our analysis on the hikers themselves and on the way they experience hiking, giving meaning to notions such as ecology, nature and rural landscapes. We have also examined state actions and their ability to coordinate economic development, ecology, family farming and tourism while promoting hiking events.