Ruy Llera Blanes

This volume is an experiment: an enquiry into the possibilities and potentialities of a prospective anthropology of utopia. With different ethnographic contributions studying «empirical utopias» across the world (from ecotopias to religious havens, transnational policies, retirement homes and community agriculture), it looks beyond the commonsense understanding of utopia as a desire, an expectation, a form of imagination stemming from Western political thought. In the process, the volume explores the dynamic dialectic between human imagination and concrete action.

This volume ethnographically explores the relation between secularities and religious subjectivities.As a consequence of the demise of secularization theory, we live in an interesting intellectual moment where the so-called ‘post-secular’ coexists with the secular, which in turn has become pluralized and historicized. This cohabitation of the secular and post-secular is revealed mainly through political dialectical processes that overshadow the subjective and inter-subjective dimensions of secularity, making it difficult to pinpoint concrete sites, agents, and objects of expression.
Drawing on cases from South America and Europe, contributors apply key insights from religious studies debates on the genealogies and formations of both religion and secularism. They explore the spaces, persons, and places in which these categories emerge and mutually constitute one another.

Social scientists and philosophers confronted with religious phenomena have always been challenged to find a proper way to describe the spiritual experiences of the social group they were studying. The influence of the Cartesian dualism of body and mind (or soul) led to a distinction between non-material, spiritual experiences (i.e., related to the soul) and physical, mechanical experiences (i.e., related to the body). However, recent developments in medical science on the one hand and challenges to universalist conceptions of belief and spirituality on the other have resulted in “body” and “soul” losing the reassuring solid contours they had in the past. Yet, in “Western culture,” the body–soul duality is alive, not least in academic and media discourses. This volume pursues the ongoing debates and discusses the importance of the body and how it is perceived in contemporary religious faith: what happens when “body” and “soul” are un-separated entities? Is it possible, even for anthropologists and ethnographers, to escape from “natural dualism”? The contributors here present research in novel empirical contexts, the benefits and limits of the old dichotomy are discussed, and new theoretical strategies proposed.

In recent years, the Southern borders of Europe have become landmarks for the mediatic and academic verve regarding the migration and diasporas towards and beyond ‘Schengen Europe’. In these debates, religion is acknowledged as playing a central role in the recognition of major societal changes in the continent, being object of political concern and attention: from the recognition of plural forms of Christianity to the debates on a ‘European Islam’. Yet, in this respect, what goes on around the borders of Portugal, Spain, Italy or Greece is still largely uncharted and un-debated. With the contribution of renowned anthropologists, sociologists and religious studies scholars, this book critically presents and discusses case studies on the sites and politics of religious diversity in Southern Europe, including the impact of migrant religiosity in national and EU politics.

Este artigo discute, a partir do estudo de caso da Igreja Tocoísta, a dialética entre processos de “presença” e “ausência” em movimentos proféticos em Angola e na diáspora angolana. Retoma algumas teses clássicas de Max Weber sobre carisma e rotinização da liderança para explicar, em função das dialéticas entre presença/ausência e geração/memória, os processos de transformação ocorridos nesta igreja no contexto da Angola de pós-guerra.

This article discusses, from the case study of the Tokoist Church, the dialectic between processes of “presence” and “absence” in prophetic movements in Angola and the Angolan diaspora. It revisits classic Weberian theses on charisma and routinization of leadership, in order to explain, through the dialectics of presence/absence and generation/memory, the transformations experienced in this church in post-war Angola.

In this article we propose to engage anthropology as a romanticist discipline. Revisiting particular histories, we depict the anthropological discipline and its core method (ethno- graphy) as imbued with sensibilities and militancies that define it as a “romantic subver- sion,” an against-the-grain attitude against intellectual hegemonies and conformisms. We do so by focusing on three points: the charting of a romanticist conceptual agenda in anthropo- logy; the analysis of ethnographic intersubjectivity and personal transformation as romantic heroisms; and the discussion of a counterhegemonic militant anthropology. We speculate about an anthropological ethos that is inherently subversive and “quixotic,” following the inspiration of Miguel de Cervantes’ classic novel.

In this panel we propose to discuss anthropological approaches - ethnographic or theoretical - to human interactions and processes of imagination and creativity. Inspired by the proposals set forth by Bourriaud (1998) concerning art as a product of a relational aesthetics that is a 'micro-utopia', a product of communitarian association (or antagonism - see Bishop 2004) working to change the present, we challenge our colleagues to use an understanding of social movement and organization as an art form whereby processes of interaction are understood as generative, transformational, poïetic micro-utopias. We thus propose to move beyond the concrete sphere of artistic production, seeing micro-utopias as part of our morphogenetic élan vital (Bergson 1907), the creativity and improvisation of our unscripted everyday lives (Hallam and Ingold 2008) that is however and necessarily framed as political act produced within historical context (Geuss 2009). Our goal is thus to engage with micro-utopias as 'concrete utopias' (McGuire 2011): examples - from artistic collaborations to architectural configurations, political localisms, economic partnerships, religious community makings, etc. - of relationalities and temporal redefinitions.

In 1998, Nicolas Bourriaud (2002 [1998]: 13) proposed the concept of “microtopias” (PT micro- -utopias, FR micro-utopies), a call to engage with art practices as collective, relational, contextualised endeavours, foregrounding the concrete inter-relations among artists and agents that inform artistic production. This proposal was later subject to critique by Claire Bishop (2004), who noted the ab- sence of plurality and politicised context in her seminal discussion of what has become known as ‘relational aesthetics’. Bishop argued that these art practices did not produce democratic relations but instead built on mechanisms of exclusion that didn’t address the antagonism and inequality in the process of art production pertinent to “the divided and incomplete subject of today” (2004: 79). Re- cently, Roger Sansi-Roca has addressed this debate in his book Art, Anthropology and the Gift (2014), seeing the artist as an active bricoleur, producer of small-scale models as utopian projections of the world, prototypes, experiments that are as political as any other collective movement. Sansi-Roca’s connection of art and anthropology via utopia is an ideal pretext for the outline of this special issue that we advance here, within the wider framework of developing an “anthropology of utopia”, which we see ultimately as a theory of social creativity.
In this special issue we propose to discuss anthropological approaches - ethnographic or theoreti- cal - to human interactions and processes of imagination and creativity. Inspired by the proposals set forth by Bourriaud’s concept of the ‘microtopia’, we challenge colleagues to mobilise an understand- ing of diverse forms of social interactivity as artistic practice whereby processes of interaction are understood as generative, transformational, poïetic microtopias. We thus propose to move beyond the concrete sphere of artistic production, seeing microtopias as part of our morphogenetic élan vital (Bergson 1907), the creativity and improvisation of our unscripted everyday lives (Hallam and In- gold 2008) that is however and necessarily framed as political act produced within historical context (Geuss 2009). Our goal is thus to engage with microtopias as ‘concrete utopias’ (McGuire 2011): examples - from artistic collaborations to architectural configurations, political localisms, economic partnerships, religious community makings, etc. - of the collective elaboration of meaning, temporal redefinition, and new social interstices.

We therefore welcome submissions that explicitly address the concept of microtopia through em- pirical case studies emphasising art, relationality, and/or creativity, such as social movement mobili- sations, spiritual/ethical projects of the self, contemporary art practice, creative processes of labour, instances of community performance, state sponsored cultural politics, architectural projects, urban- ist understandings of revitalisation, etc.

Guest editors:
Ruy Blanes (University of Bergen), Alex Flynn (University of Durham), Maïté Maskens (Université Libre de Bruxelles), Jonas Tinius (University of Cambridge)

Submission guidelines see: http://cadernosaa.revues.org/
Accepted languages: English, Portuguese, Spanish, French

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The editors began discussing this special issue in 2014 through a serendipitous encounter. Ruy and Maïté were interested in the possibility of promoting an anthropology of utopia, and simultaneously an anthropology as utopia. Alex and Jonas, working on anthropological ap- proaches to contemporary artistic practices, were seeking to develop the theorising potential of relational art.  e immanent space of connection was, precisely, the concept of “micro-utopia”. In our discussions, several questions, problems, and challenges emerged about the relevance of micro-utopias for an anthropology of art in particular, but also for an anthropological agenda concerned with core themes of the disciplines, among them agency, creativity, and relationality.

Tal como se señala en la justificación del lema de este XIV Congreso de Antropología de la FAAEE, en un contexto de «movimientos sociales globales de superación y transformación utópica» —como una «espiritualidad global», por ejemplo—, «el reto de la antropología frente a este fenómeno parece ser contribuir a la desmonopolización del pensamiento social dominante, desvelando las alteridades, pero sin renunciar a un modo universal de inteligibilidad que las haga eficaces.»  Este es, en esencia, el propósito del seminario coordinado por los autores: proponer un debate antropológico sobre etnografía y prácticas espirituales desde una perspectiva decolonial. Desde esta perspectiva, la etnografía no se plantea como un ejercicio de traducción y adaptación de unas nociones emic del Otro a unas nociones etic del investigador, sino como un puente hacia el conocimiento de los espíritus no como símbolos, sino como agentes intencionales (Espírito Santo y Blanes, 2014: 15). Desde esta perspectiva decolonizadora se plantea, igualmente, el estudio de lo espiritual desde un punto de vista experiencial, y no exclusivamente como un ejercicio epistemológico, siendo esta experiencia transformadora para el o la investigadora (Koss-Chioino, 2010). Se trataría, en suma, de una experiencia de mutualidad etnográfica (Maskens y Blanes, 2016).

Ninety-seven books on the topic of " spiritual warfare " line one of the shelves in my office. All but a dozen of these have been published in the last ten years. Most of them present some form of " deliverance ministry " and are full of dramatic and triumphant stories. Others are sounding the alarm about " territorial spirits " and make suggestions about identifying them and praying against them. Clinton E. Arnold, Three crucial questions about spiritual warfare. 1