Social Life of Spirits

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. This book challenges this notion.

About the author

Ruy Blanes is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Bergen and associate researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences in Lisbon. He is coeditor of "Encounters of Body and Soul in Contemporary Religious Practices: Anthropological Reflections." He lives in Bergen, Norway. Diana Espirito Santo is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Research Center in Anthropology at the New University of Lisbon. She lives in Lisbon, Portugal.

Summary

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. This book challenges this notion.

Product details

• Authors: Ruy Llera Blanes, Ruy Llera Santo Blanes, Ruy Santo Blanes
• Assisted by: Ruy Blanes (Editor), Ruy Llera Blanes (Editor), Blanes Ruy (Editor), Diana Esp Santo (Editor), Diana Espirito Santo (Editor), Santo Diana Espirito (Editor)
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 22.11.2013
• EAN: 9780226081632
• ISBN: 978-0-226-08163-2
• No. of pages: 312
• Subjects: Non-fiction book > Philosophy, religion > Religion: general, reference works; Social sciences, law, business > Sociology > Miscellaneous; SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social, Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography, Social and cultural anthropology