On the premises and possibilities of dialogue: A reading of Joel Robbins’ Theology and the Anthropology of Christian Life

What would anthropology, enriched by theoretical resources drawn from the field of Christian theology, but remaining deeply engaged with the ethnography of everyday lived Christianities, look like? Is there a chance to develop a conversation between anthropology and theology that would be ‘transformative’ for both disciplines? These are the questions Joel Robbins sets out to examine in his book Theology and the Anthropology of Christian Life

Dreaming faith into being: Indigenous Evangelicals and co-acted experiences of the divine

This article examines the role of socio-moral space in people’s experiences of divine presence. More specifically, it addresses the questions of how social others influence people’s experiences of God and Satan among the indigenous evangelical Yine people of Peruvian Amazonia, and the consequences these interactions have for the individual believer and the collectivity. For the Yine dreams are a privileged site of human encounter with other-than-human beings, and they also feature centrally in their Christian lives. It is in dreams that they interact with angels and sometimes with the devil. By examining Yine evangelical dreams as mimetic points of encounter involving not only the dreamer but also transcendent beings and fellow believers as active agents, the article shows that Yine experiences of God’s presence cannot be conceptualised as an individual matter, but are highly dependent on the social other: they come to be as co-acted experiences of the divine

Histories and Historicities in Amazonia

Book review of Histories and Historicities in Amazonia. Neil L. Whitehead, editor. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003. xx + 236 pp., maps, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 0-8032-9817-X

Mutually Exclusive Relationships: Corporeality and Differentiation of Persons in Yine (Piro) Social Cosmos

In Amazonia, body is a central organizing element of social life. Recent discussions in Amazonian anthropology show,on the one hand, the multiple ways in which the body acts in the formation of social relations, and, on the other, how social relations work in the formation of bodies. Bodies are relationally constituted in the diverse embodied processes through which Amazonian peoples form, maintain and regulate relations to each other. It is in this same manner that people also relate to, and are transformed into, different nonhuman persons. This article examines these dynamics of the body among the Yine (Piro) of Eastern Peruvian Amazonia. For the Yine, the body is significant not only because it is through the body that persons can turn into other kinds of persons, but also because it is through corporeal interactions that the boundary between human and nonhuman existence is demarcated. Given that both human-to-human and human-to-nonhuman relationships are characterized by the same “bodily moral” ideals, I conclude that it is only when the consequences of a person’s actions are taken into consideration that the difference between humans and nonhumans becomes visible. Since these relationships are mutually exclusive, simultaneous involvement in interaction with humans and nonhumans and the consequent mixing of these categories leads to madness, withering away, and death. En Amazonia, el cuerpo es el elemento central en la organización de la vida social. Los debates recientes en la antropología Amazónica han monstrado que, por una parte, el cuerpo actúa en la formación de relaciones sociales de múltiples maneras y que, por otra parte, las relaciones sociales tambien jugan un papel activo en la formación de los cuerpos. Los cuerpos son constituidos a través de relaciones sociales en los varios procesos “encarnados” (embodied) a través de los cuales la gente Amazónica forma, mantiene y controla sus relaciones a otras personas. Las personas humanas se relacionan con y se transforman en diferentes personas no-humanas a través de los mismos procesos. Este articulo examina esta dinámica del cuerpo entre los Yine (Piro) de la Amazonía Peruana oriental. A los Yine, la autora afirma, el cuerpo es significante no solamente porque es a través del cuerpo que las personas pueden transformarse en otros tipos de personas, sino también porque es por el intermedio de las interacciones corporales que el límite entre humanos y no-humanos se hace determinante. Puesto que las relaciones tanto entre humanos como entre humanos y no-humanos son caracterizadas por los mismos ideales “corpóreo morales,” la autora concluye que es sólo cuando se considera las consecuencias de las acciones de una no debería ser considerada únicamente como un mecanismo incluyente al servicio de la integración social y el igualitarismo, sino también como un mecanismo excluyente utilizado para reforzar formas de marginación y estratificación social. Puede que los cuerpos amerindios sean socialmente construidos e inscritos, pero lejos de ser monotemáticos, los mensajes que transmiten pueden tener contenidos muy diferentes

Connected with God: Body, the social, and the transcendent

The special issue Connected with God: Body, the Social, and the Transcendent addresses the very topical question of the architecture of religious, especially Christian, experiences. Specifically, it examines the processes in which Christians experience the connection with, and gain knowledge of, God in and through the body, and, in particular, the role of social relatedness and morality in generating and informing these experiences. The issue challenges the view of an individual subjective relationship with God, and argues that Christian experiences of God’s presence are not solely a matter of an individual’s relationship with the divine but are very much made possible, guided, and conceptualised through corporeal relationships with social others – believers and other fellow-humans. Through detailed ethnographic and historical examination, the issue also addresses the question of whether and how the form of Christianity practised influences people’s experiences of divine presence