Project description
Transnational study in spiritual trance
The objectives of the EU-funded THETRANCE project include the examination of the transnational mobility of practices and concepts related to spiritual healing and trance, the comparison of the application of these practices in the therapeutic trajectories between spirituality and biomedicine in patients in America and Europe, and an investigation of the role of spiritual learning in patients' health and well-being. The project focusses on the cases of people learning spiritual trance for therapeutic purposes: physical and mental health and recovery from substance addictions. It involves an approach that combines social and medical anthropology and the anthropology of religion, creating parallels with research in psychology and psychiatry. The study methodology is based on multi-sited comparative ethnographic research carried out in temples all over the world.
Objective
This multi-sited comparative ethnographic research has three objectives: 1. to examine the transnational mobility of practices and concepts related to spiritual healing and trance; 2. to compare the use of these practices in the therapeutic trajectories between spirituality and biomedicine of patients in North and South America, and Europe; and 3. to investigate the role of religious/spiritual learning in patients' health and well-being. In order to achieve these objectives, THETRANCE asks the following questions: how do therapeutic practices involving spiritual trance move and settle transnationally? How do trance-based healing practices become part of the therapeutic trajectories of people moving between spirituality and biomedicine? How do participants learn and narrate about spiritual trance, with what kinds of consistencies and differences across cultures, and how are these relevant for therapeutic purposes? Through an approach that combines social and medical anthropology, and the anthropology of religion, drawing parallels with research in psychology and psychiatry, THETRANCE focuses upon a specific cases of people learning spiritual trance for therapeutic purposes, for physical and mental health and to recover from substance addictions. The methodology is grounded in a multi-sited comparative ethnographic research in temples of the Spiritualist Christian Order Vale do Amanhecer (Valley of the Dawn) in Brazil, the United States, Portugal and Italy. THETRANCE is innovative in combining the analysis of therapeutic trajectories between spirituality and biomedicine with the focus upon the process of learning spiritual trance through a transnational perspective. In doing so, it unsettles pathological reductions of spiritual trance to understand how these experiences are rather used therapeutically in industrialized societies, contributing to the current debates on the discernment between spiritual and pathological experiences.
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Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinator
00185 Roma
Italy