Gifts from beyond the grave: reciprocity and hierarchy in kardecist Spiritism

• Grant number: 15/22979-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: June 01, 2016
• End date: February 28, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Marcos Pazzanese Duarte Lanna
• Grantee: Allan Wine Santos Barbosa
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research aims to study the flows of exchanges and interactions involved in ritual and everyday activities of a spiritist center and a group of studies in São Carlos-SP, focusing on both incarnated and disincarnated agents involved in the network. The analysis shall be founded on ethnographic and bibliographic research aimed at apprehending the circuits of gifts and ranking processes involved in the séances, prayers, charity practices and studies of spiritist works. In this sense, the proposal is to understand how the spiritist cosmology organizes the universe hierarchically through plans, or evolution ranges, crossed constantly by flows of spiritual and materials goods, generally (but not only) mediated by a border figure, the medium. Besides the ethnography, such proposals will be discussed in light of literature on spiritism and religion in general, in addition to classic works of gift and hierarchy, for the apprehension of such aspects of spiritism also requires discussions on topics such as the notion of person - enabling the understanding of the composition of the human and spiritual beings -, reciprocity and debt. These themes are mediated by the constant interaction between the physical world and transcendence, demonstrating the porosity and cloudy appearance of the boundaries between these two cosmological fields. Finally, the research also seeks to observe the implications of this set of doctrines in everyday life and sociability of spiritists, particularly concerning involvements made with people "outside" of religion and/or apart from the physical world. (AU)