Table Of ContentThe Dynamic Cosmos
Bloomsbury Advances in Religious Studies
Series Editors: Bettina E. Schmidt, Steven Sutcliffe and Will Sweetman
Founding Editors: James Cox and Peggy Morgan
Bloomsbury Advances in Religious Studies publishes cutting-edge research in the
Study of Religion/s. The series draws on anthropological, ethnographical, historical,
sociological, and textual methods amongst others. Topics are diverse, but each
publication integrates theoretical analysis with empirical data. The series aims to
refresh the interdisciplinary agenda in new evidence-based studies of “religion.”
A Phenomenology of Indigenous Globalization of Hesychasm and the Jesus
Religions Prayer
James L. Cox Christopher D. L. Johnson
A Sense of Belonging Individualized Religion
Stephen Friend Claire Wanless
American Evangelicals Innateness of Myth
Ashlee Quosigk Ritske Rensma
Appropriation of Native American Levinas, Messianism and Parody
Spirituality Terence Holden
Suzanne Owen
New Paradigm of Spirituality and
Becoming Buddhist Religion
Glenys Eddy Mary Catherine Burgess
Community and Worldview among Orthodox Christianity, New Age
Paraiyars of South India Spirituality and Vernacular Religion
Anderson H. M. Jeremiah Eugenia Roussou
Conceptions of the Afterlife in Early Post-Materialist Religion
Civilizations Mika T. Lassander
Gregory Shushan
Redefining Shamanisms
Contemporary Western Ethnography and David Gordon Wilson
the Definition of Religion
Reform, Identity and Narratives of
Martin D. Stringer
Belonging
Cultural Blending in Korean Death Rites Arkotong Longkumer
Chang- Won Park
Religion and the Discourse on
Free Zone Scientology Modernity
Aled Thomas Paul-François Tremlett
Religion and the Inculturation of Human Spirit Possession and Trance
Rights in Ghana edited by Bettina E. Schmidt and Lucy
Abamfo Ofori Atiemo Huskinson
Religion as a Conversation Starter Spiritual Tourism
Ina Merdjanova and Patrice Brodeur Alex Norman
Religion, Material Culture and Theology and Religious Studies in Higher
Archaeology Education
Julian Droogan edited by D. L. Bird and Simon G. Smith
Rethinking “Classical Yoga” and The Critical Study of Non-Religion
Buddhism Christopher R. Cotter
Karen O’Brien Kop
The Problem with Interreligious Dialogue
Secular Assemblages Muthuraj Swamy
Marek Sullivan
UFOs, Conspiracy Theories and the New
Spirits and Trance in Brazil Age
Bettina E. Schmidt David G. Robertson
The Dynamic Cosmos
Movement, Paradox, and Experimentation
in the Anthropology of Spirit Possession
Diana Espírito Santo and Matan Shapiro
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Contents
List of Contributors viii
Introduction: Possession and Paradox Matan Shapiro and Diana Espírito Santo 1
1 Angels and Demons: Notes on Kinship and Exorcism at an Ethiopian
Orthodox Shrine Diego Maria Malara 21
2 Spirit Possessions, Racial Dispossessions: The Second Diaspora of Race
in Afro-Cuban Religious Experience Anastasios Panagiotopoulos 35
3 Between Possessor and Possessed: Warping Spacetime and Agency
through Co-Presence J. Brent Crosson 49
4 Waiting for Deities: Spirit Possession in the Middle Voice Miho Ishii 63
5 The Motion-Power of the Collective, or How Spirits “Come into View”
in Cuba Diana Espírito Santo 77
6 (EN)Spirited Pedagogy: Learning and Simultaneity in Pentecostalism
Bruno Reinhardt 91
7 A Theory of Passage: Paradox and Neo-Pentecostal Expulsion of
Demons in Brazil Matan Shapiro 105
8 The Threshold of the Cosmos: Priestly Scriptures and the Shamanic
Wilderness in Southwest China Katherine Swancutt 119
9 The Mormon Dead Jon Bialecki 133
10 On the Existence of Witches (Or How Anthropology Works)
Marcio Goldman 149
Afterword Michael Lambek 165
Notes 181
Bibliography 190
Index 214
Contributors
Diego Maria Malara is an Assistant Professor of Social Anthropology at the University
of Glasgow, whose research to date has mostly focused on Ethiopian Orthodox
Christianity. He has recently published on topics such as exorcism, secularity, and
religious pluralism; fasting, ethics, and urban temporalities; discipline and lenience;
hierarchy, intercession, and love; and secrecy, magic, and transgression.
Anastasios Panagiotopoulos’ research focuses on Afro-Cuban religiosity, divination,
spirit possession, death, secularism, and the historical imagination. He has published
articles in peer-reviewed journals and is the co-editor, with Diana Espírito Santo, of the
edited volume: Articulate Necrographies: Comparative Perspectives on the Voices and
Silences of the Dead (2019).
J. Brent Crosson is Associate Professor at the University of Texas. His book
Experiments with Power: Obeah and the Remaking of Religion in Trinidad was
published in 2020 and won the 2021 Clifford Geertz Award from the American
Anthropological Association.
Miho Ishii is an associate professor at Kyoto University, Japan. Her current research
focus is on the relationship between spirit worship and environmental movements in
South India.
Diana Espírito Santo is Associate Professor at the Escuela de Antropología, Pontificia
Universidad Católica de Chile. She has researched Cuban espiritismo and the dead
in Afro-Cuban religion, cosmological plasticity in Brazilian Umbanda, and more
recently, technologies, historicity, and the paranormal in Chile.
Bruno Reinhardt (PhD, Anthropology, UC Berkeley, 2013) is an anthropology
professor at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil. His published research
has focused mainly on religious conflict and pluralism in Salvador, Brazil, and religious
pedagogy, power, and authority among Pentecostal Christians in Ghana.
Matan Shapiro (PhD 2013, UCL) is Research Associate at King’s College London. He
is the author of multiple publications on religiosity, cosmology, kinship, ritual, play,
and politics in Maranhão, Northeast Brazil.
Katherine Swancutt is Reader in Social Anthropology, Director of the Religious and
Ethnic Diversity in China and Asia Research Unit, and Project Lead of the ERC synergy
grant “Cosmological Visionaries” (grant agreement no. 856543) at King’s College
Contributors ix
London. For more than two decades, she has conducted fieldwork on shamanic and
animistic religion in Inner Asia. She is the author of Fortune and the Cursed: The Sliding
Scale of Time in Mongolian Divination (2012), co-editor of Animism beyond the Soul:
Ontology, Reflexivity, and the Making of Anthropological Knowledge (2018), and editor
of Crafting Chinese Memories: The Art and Materiality of Storytelling (2021).
Jon Bialecki is the author of Machines for Making Gods: Mormonism, Transhumanism,
and Worlds Without End, and of A Diagram for Fire: Miracles and Variation in an
American Charismatic Movement. His work focuses on Transhumanism, Mormonism,
Charismatic and Pentecostal Christianity, and the anthropology of Christianity.
Marcio Goldman is Professor at the Post-Graduate Program in Social Anthropology,
National Museum, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. He is Researcher at CNPq,
CAPES, and FAPERJ, and the author of Razão e Diferença: Afetividade, Racionalidade
e Relativismo no Pensamento de Lévy-Bruhl; How Democracy Works: An Ethnographic
Theory of Politics.
Michael Lambek is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and the previous holder of
a Canada Research Chair at the University of Toronto Scarborough. He has written
a number of books and essays on spirit possession among people in Mayotte and
Madagascar as well as on religion, memory, historicity, and ethical life. Recent books
include The Ethical Condition: Essays on Action, Person and Value (2015); Island in the
Stream: An Ethnographic History of Mayotte (2018); and Concepts and Persons: The
Tanner Lecture (2021).
