Anna Fedele

In this SPECIAL ISSUE  the contributions of anthropology to the understanding of childbirth as social practice IN PORTUGAL are outlined. Portugal is a country with one of the highest rates of medical intervention in childbirth in Europe, and widespread and diverse opposition to current medicalised approaches to birthing care in Portugal are becoming increasingly visible, yet the “alternative” practice of homebirth exists in a legal void.  This collEction of articles is an attempt to bridge the present gap in knowledge by showcasing new anthropological research from Portugal on pregnancy and childbirth, offering analyses of birth which go beyond generalising descriptions of the oppositional discourses of specific social actors (e. g. doctors, midwives, homebirthers), and instead analyse the various reflections, collaborations, contestations and contradictions, in particular situations and settings. The experiences of women are foregrounded.

"An important and original contribution to the understanding of the dynamics of gender and power in alternative forms of spirituality." – Sabina Magliocco, California State University, Northridge, USA

"Central to spirituality is a desire for personal liberation, we hear again and again. Yet this rich collection of ethnographies demonstrates that it is deeply shaped by performances of gender and power." – Dick Houtman, Erasmus University, Netherlands

Anna Fedele offers a comprehensive ethnography of alternative pilgrimages to French Catholic shrines dedicated to Saint Mary Magdalene. Drawing on more than three years of extensive fieldwork, she describes how pilgrims from Italy, Spain, Britain, and the United States interpret Catholic figures, symbols, and sites according to spiritual theories and practices derived from the transnational Neopagan movement.

Fedele pays particular attention to the life stories of the pilgrims, the crafted rituals they perform, and the spiritual-esoteric literature they draw upon. She examines how they devise their rituals; why this kind of spirituality is increasingly prevalent in the West; and the influence of anthropological literature on the pilgrims. Among these pilgrims, spirituality is lived and negotiated in interaction with each other and with textual sources: Jungian psychology, Goddess mythology, and ''indigenous'' traditions merge into a corpus of theories and practices centered upon the worship of divinities such as the Goddess, Mother Earth, and the sacralization of the reproductive cycle.

The pilgrims' rituals present a critique of the Roman Catholic Church and the medical establishment and have critical implications for contemporary discourses on gender. Looking for Mary Magdalene is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in ritual and pilgrimage.

This paper is based on early fieldwork findings on ‘holistic mothering’ in contemporary Portugal. I use holistic mothering as an umbrella term to cover different mothering choices, which are rooted in the assumption that pregnancy, childbirth and early childhood are important spiritual occasions for both mother and child. Considering that little social scientific literature exists about the religious dimension of alternative mothering choices, I present here a first description of this phenomenon and offer some initial anthropological reflections, paying special attention to the influence of Goddess spirituality on holistic mothers. Drawing on Pamela Klassen’s ethnography about religion and home birth in America (2001), I argue that in Portugal holistic mothers are challenging biomedical models of the body, asking for a more woman-centred care, and contributing to the process, already widespread in certain other European countries, of ‘humanising’ pregnancy and childbirth.

This paper is based on fieldwork among Portuguese, Italians, Catalans and Spaniards influenced by the transnational Goddess spirituality movement. Through an analysis of ritual narratives the author analyses the role of doubt and uncertainty in contemporary rituals created within Goddess spirituality. She will show that contemporary crafted rituals offer a privileged window on the uncertainty intrinsic in ritual because participants feel less constrained by a long-standing religious tradition and talk more openly about their doubts and their strategies to neutralize them than in the case of secular ceremonies. Drawing on Simon Coleman’s analysis of pilgrimage and ritual (2009, 2013) she suggests that uncertainty may play an important role not only in rituals created in the context of ‘New Age’ spirituality but also in other contemporary rituals created in plural and increasingly secularized Western contexts.

This is the English version of an article that has been published in French: Fedele, Anna. 2014. “Doute et incertitude dans les nouveaux rituels contemporains”, Social Compass, 61.4, 497-510. This paper is based on fieldwork among Portuguese, Italians, Catalans and Spaniards influenced by the transnational Goddess spirituality movement. Through an analysis of ritual narratives the author analyses the role of doubt and uncertainty in contemporary rituals created within Goddess spirituality. She will show that contemporary crafted rituals offer a privileged window on the uncertainty intrinsic in ritual because participants feel less constrained by a long-standing religious tradition and talk more openly about their doubts and their strategies to neutralize them than in the case of secular ceremonies. Drawing on Simon Coleman’s analysis of pilgrimage and ritual (2009, 2013) she suggests that uncertainty may play an important role not only in rituals created in the context of ‘New Age’ ...

Although research on pilgrimage has expanded considerably since the early 1990s, the conversation has been largely dominated by Anglophone researchers. This volume challenges the hegemony of Anglophone scholarship by considering what can be learned from different national, linguistic, religious and disciplinary traditions, with the aim of fostering a global exchange of ideas.

This article is based on ethnographic research about the intersections of contemporary forms of spirituality and Catholicism in Italy, Spain, France and Portugal and analyses what social actors mean when they say that they are ‘spiritual but not religious’ (SBNR). We need to go beyond this self-description and try to understand why spirituality is increasingly being constructed in opposition to religion and what our informants mean, when they say that they are spiritual. With this approach we discover that spirituality, religion and secularism are not completely distinct categories but mutually constitute each other (Asad, 2003 ; Fedele and Knibbe, 2013, 2020) and that the SBNR are not necessarily unchurched (Fedele, 2013 ; Fedele and Knibbe, 2013 ; Ammerman, 2013a). Through ethnographic examples I show how spirituality represents a safe middle ground between religion and secularism. It offers a lingua franca that allows describing religious experiences in increasingly secularized s...

Durant les vingt dernieres annees, un nombre croissant de pelerins qui ne se considerent pas etre des catholiques ont pourtant visite des sanctuaires catholiques en France, mais pour y effectuer leurs propres rituels. Il s’agit de sanctuaires dedies a Sainte Marie Madeleine ou bien d’eglises ou l’on venere des statues de la Vierge a la peau sombre que les pelerins appellent « Vierges Noires ». Ces derniers visitent ces endroits pour beneficier de leurs « energies » et pour entrer en contact avec ce qu’ils appellent le « Sacre Feminin » (Sacred Feminine). Cette etude se pose comme objectif de decrire les croyances et les pratiques rituelles de ce genre de pelerinage et de les situer dans le contexte des mouvements de la spiritualite feministe et du neo-chamanisme de Grande Bretagne et des Etats-Unis d’Amerique. Elle nous permet aussi d’observer la maniere avec laquelle ces mouvements s’introduisent lentement dans des pays ou la religion catholique est preponderante comme en Italie ou...

Acknowledgments INTRODUCTION 1. "GOING TO SEE MARY MAGDALENE": STARTING OUT ON A PILGRIMAGE 2. THE LOST CONNECTION WITH THE FEMININE 3. THE SAINTE-BAUME AND ITS MANY LAYERS 4. PILGRIMS DEALING WITH THEIR CHRISTIAN BACKGROUNDS 5. CELEBRATING MENSTRUAL BLOOD 6. WOUNDED MAGDALENES 7. EMBRACING THE DARKNESS 8. ENDING THE PILGRIMAGE AND RETURNING HOME CONCLUSION REFERENCES MAPS

List of illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction Anna Fedele and Ruy Llera Blanes PART I: BODIES AND SOULS IN CATHOLIC SETTINGS Chapter 1. I want to feel the Camino in my legsA": trajectories of walking on the Camino de Santiago Keith Egan Chapter 2. Holding the saint in one's arms. Miracles and exchange in Apiao, southern Chile Giovanna Bacchiddu Chapter 3. Embodying devotion, embodying passion. The Italian tradition of 'La Festa dei Gigli' in Nola Katia Ballacchino PART II: CORPOREALITY, BELIEF AND HUMAN MOBILITY Chapter 4. The Body and the World: Missionary Performances and the Experience of the World in the Protestant Church in the Netherlands Joao Rickli Chapter 5. How to deal with the DutchA": the local and the global in the habitus of the saved soul Kim Knibbe Chapter 6. Is witchcraft embodied? Representations of the body in talimbi witchcraft Aleksandra Cimpric PART III: NEW SPIRITUALITIES CHALLENGING THE BODY/SOUL DIVIDE Chapter 7. When Soma Encount...

"Anna Fedele offers a comprehensive ethnography of alternative pilgrimages to French Catholic shrines dedicated to Saint Mary Magdalene. Drawing on more than three years of extensive fieldwork, she describes how pilgrims from Italy, Spain, Britain, and the United States interpret Catholic figures, symbols, and sites according to spiritual theories and practices derived from the transnational Neopagan movement. Fedele pays particular attention to the life stories of the pilgrims, the crafted rituals they perform, and the spiritual-esoteric literature they draw upon. She examines how they devise their rituals; why this kind of spirituality is increasingly prevalent in the West; and the influence of anthropological literature on the pilgrims. Among these pilgrims, spirituality is lived and negotiated in interaction with each other and with textual sources: Jungian psychology, Goddess mythology, and ''indigenous'' traditions merge into a corpus of theories and practices centered upon the worship of divinities such as the Goddess, Mother Earth, and the sacralization of the reproductive cycle. The pilgrims' rituals present a critique of the Roman Catholic Church and the medical establishment and have critical implications for contemporary discourses on gender. Looking for Mary Magdalene is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in ritual and pilgrimage."

In this introduction to the collection “Birthing matters in Portugal,” the contributions of anthropology to the understanding of childbirth as social practice are outlined. Portugal is a country with one of the highest rates of medical intervention in childbirth in Europe, and widespread and diverse opposition to current medicalised approaches to birthing care in Portugal are becoming increasingly visible, yet the “alternative” practice of homebirth exists in a legal void. The introduction provides a summary of the historical emergence of the current situation, which has scarcely been explored to date by social science scholars. This colelction of articles is an attempt to bridge the present gap in knowledge by showcasing new anthropological research from Portugal on pregnancy and childbirth, offering analyses of birth which go beyond generalising descriptions of the oppositional discourses of specific social actors (e. g. doctors, midwives, homebirthers), and instead analyse the various reflections, collaborations, contestations and contradictions, in particular situations and settings. The experiences of women are foregrounded. The contribution of each of the four papers in the collection is described.

The article is based on research about holistic mothering in contemporary Portugal. Holistic mothering is an umbrella term, used here to describe different mothering choices based on the assumption that pregnancy, birthing and early mothering are important spiritual experiences for the mother and the child, but also for the father. In Portugal, many holistic mothers choose homebirth and avoid what they perceive as excessive medicalization during hospital birth. Influenced by Davis-Floyd’s analysis of birth as an American rite of passage and her distinction between a technocratic and a wholistic model of birth, Portuguese holistic mothers conceptualize homebirth as a rebellious choice that subverts the predominant, biomedical model. The subversive aspects of homebirth are underscored by the fact that it exists in a legal void and is presented in the media and in popular discourse as a dangerous choice that poses an obstacle to the country’s modernization. Drawing on ethnographic data, I argue that the entrenchment of two opposing models, what Davis-Floyd calls the wholistic and the technocratic, is counter-productive and contributes to traumatic experiences for holistic mothers who choose homebirth but who end up hospitalized, and consequently targeted for critique by the medical establishment and the wider social environment, which originates a sense of guilt and/or inadequacy for not being able to follow-through with the birth at home.

This text analyses the gradual spread of the feminist spirituality movement (also
described as the Goddess movement) in traditionally Catholic countries of Southern Europe
such as Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Drawing on fieldwork among Italian and Spanish pilgrims
visiting French shrines related to saint Mary Magdalene (2002-2005) and on later,
ongoing fieldwork on the Feminist Spirituality movement in Spain and Portugal, I will
explore these people’s appropriation and reinterpretation of Christian places and figures
from an anthropological perspective. Refusing the concepts related to gender, corporeality,
and sexuality they received in childhood, the men and women I encountered do not entirely
refuse their Catholic background and reinterpret Christian figures such as Jesus, the
Virgin Mary, and Mary Magdalene. They also claim their right to use Catholic «public»
space such as pilgrimage routes or churches to perform their own rituals. I will argue
that through their discourses and ritual practices the members of the Goddess movement
construct a religious and social critique of the processes of gendered domination they
experienced growing up in traditionally Catholic societies; they propose a new grammar
to describe and experience their own gendered bodies and elaborate strategies to relate to
the social body they belong to.

Cet article se fonde sur une enquête de terrain menée auprès de Portugais, d’Italiens, de Catalanes et d’Espagnoles, en grande majorité des femmes, influencés par le mouvement transnational de la spiritualité de la Déesse. En s’appuyant sur les récits de ces pratiquantes, l’auteure analyse le rôle du doute et de l’incertitude dans les rituels créés dans le cadre de cette spiritualité. Elle montre que ces nouvelles pratiques contemporaines donnent un accès privilégié à l’incertitude inhérente au
rituel, les participantes parlant plus librement de leurs doutes et des stratégies qu’elles emploient pour les dissiper que s’il ne s’agissait de cérémonies consacrées par une tradition séculaire. En faisant référence aux travaux de Simon Coleman (2009, 2013) sur le pèlerinage et le rituel, l’auteure suggère que l’incertitude joue un rôle non seulement dans les rituels de la spiritualité « New Age », mais également dans les autres rituels contemporains, religieux ou profanes, élaborés dans un contexte
occidental, pluriel et de plus en plus sécularisé.

This paper is based on fieldwork among Portuguese, Italians, Catalans and Spaniards influenced by the transnational Goddess spirituality movement. Through an analysis of ritual narratives the author analyses the role of doubt and uncertainty in contemporary rituals created within Goddess spirituality. She will show that contemporary crafted
rituals offer a privileged window on the uncertainty intrinsic in ritual because participants feel less constrained by a long-standing religious tradition and talk more openly about their doubts and their strategies to neutralize them than in the case of secular ceremonies.
Drawing on Simon Coleman’s analysis of pilgrimage and ritual (2009, 2013) she suggests that uncertainty may play an important role not only in rituals created in the context of ‘New Age’ spirituality but also in other contemporary rituals created in plural and increasingly secularized Western contexts.

Keywords
certainty, crafted rituals, Goddess spirituality, New Age spirituality, Southern Europe, uncertainty

This paper is based on ongoing fieldwork at the Catholic pilgrimage shrine of Our Lady of Fatima in Portugal. It analyzes the ritual creativity and religious critique of the pilgrims, drawing on authors who have emphasized the importance of «lived religion» (e.g. Orsi 2006; McGuire 2008; Ammerman 2013). Focusing on one particular place, the so-called «Well of the Angel», the author explores the tensions that exist between the lived religion of the pilgrims and the Catholic cult promoted by local authorities who establish precise places where the devotees should pray, attend mass, or light candles. Analyzing how some pilgrims challenge the sacred topography established by ecclesiastic authorities, the author argues in favor of an ethnographic approach to the study of religion that allows to situate the religious experiences of pilgrims in the context of their life stories and also to capture the ways in which pilgrims creatively adapt their rituals and beliefs according to their personal experiences.

This chapter describes how people learn to re-conceptualize gender and sexuality through engaging with contemporary spirituality. The focus will be on the actual practices and processes whereby this is done, with the intent to go beyond the self-descriptions of spiritual discourses about gender and sexuality. Our aim is to show how spiritual practices, often described as liberating and empowering, may create new gendered hierarchies. Furthermore, we argue that in order to fully understand contemporary spiritual practitioners and their conceptualizations of gender and sexuality it is important to contextualize these against the background of the cultural and religious environment they grew up in (Fedele 2013; Fedele and Knibbe 2013; Knibbe 2013a). We will show that spirituality, and the new ways of relating to oneself, the world and others it entails, is often in dialectical tension with this background, paradoxically keeping it alive while breaking with it. In the cases described below, we

Prendendo le mosse dal dibattito sullo spiritual turn (Heelas and Woodhead 2005) secondo il quale un numero crescente di persone (prevalentemente donne) nel mondo occidentale starebbero abbandonando la religione per volgersi verso la spiritualità, in questo contributo si esplorano i risultati di una ricerca etnografica in Italia, Spagna e Portogallo sulle tracce di donne e uomini che raccontano di aver fatto questo passaggio da un background cattolico verso la spiritualità della Dea. Dalla ricerca emerge che una delle principali ragioni che nei paesi tradizionalmente cattolici del Sud dell'Europe spinge le donne, ma anche alcuni uomini, ad abbandonare la religione cattolica che è stata loro trasmessa, è la loro insoddisfazione verso i valori, le pratiche e le restrizioni legate al genere all'interno della religione cattolica. In questa prospettiva la " religione " viene identificata come patriarcale e gerarchica mentre la " spiritualità´ " emerge come garante di una uguaglianza tra i sessi e di un'assenza di gerarchia. Quando però si analizzano in dettaglio i dati etnografici raccolti, anche da altri antropologi e sociologi che hanno fatto ricerca su diverse forme di spiritualità (per esempio: Ammerman 2013; Knibbe 2013; Trulsson 2013), la distinzione tra religione e spiritualità non è poi così chiara e si scopre che non è facile costruire una spiritualità che sia priva di gerarchie e garantisca un'uguaglianza trai sessi. In questo contesto un approccio etnografico, capace di andare al di là della semplice analisi dei testi o dei dati statistici, permette di meglio catturare il modo complesso e variegato in cui la spiritualità viene vissuta.

This paper is based on early fieldwork findings on 'holistic mothering' in contemporary Portugal. I use holistic mothering as an umbrella term to cover different mothering choices, which are rooted in the assumption that pregnancy, childbirth and early childhood are important spiritual occasions for both mother and child. Considering that little social scientific literature exists about the religious dimension of alternative mothering choices, I present here a first description of this phenomenon and offer some initial anthropological reflections, paying special attention to the influence of Goddess spirituality on holistic mothers. Drawing on Pamela Klassen's ethnography about religion and home birth in America (2001), I argue that in Portugal holistic mothers are challenging biomedical models of the body, asking for a more woman-centred care, and contributing to the process, already widespread in certain other European countries, of 'humanising' pregnancy and childbirth.

The papers in this issue are an outgrowth of a panel
entitled “Ritual Creativity, Emotions and the Body” organized
by Anna Fedele and Sabina Magliocco at the 2011 congress of
the International Society for Ethnology and Folklore
(SIEF) in Lisbon, Portugal.i Through this panel, we sought
to explore the importance of emotions and embodied experience
in the context of innovative contemporary rituals.
We were particularly interested in analyzing the ways
in which ritual experiences manifested themselves through
the body: how do innovative rituals construe the body,
or respond subversively to cultural constructions of the
body? How does ritual creativity manipulate the schemes,
hierarchies and symbol systems inscribed upon the body
in order to bring about sociocultural shifts? What sorts
of contrasts does it create between ritual performance and
social reality outside of ritual? To what extent can ritual
creativity be seen as a force of subversion or resistance?

This text tackles dilemmas around translation and betrayal inherent in ethnography that focuses on religious contexts. Layered life stories (LLS) are presented as an invaluable means of providing a thick and evolving description of informants’ religious worlds that can do justice to their complexity and vitality. Recollected through long-term fieldwork and one or more follow-up interviews, LLS describe the different layers of informants’ evolving religious self-understanding, thereby providing a depth of contact that is essential to understanding religion-as-lived. LLS emerge in the context of an ongoing, mutual exchange with informants during which the ethnographer accepts the risk of becoming vulnerable, willing to share personal experiences, thereby preventing the structural asymmetry that often holds between ethnographer and informant. The use of LLS aims to minimize unwarranted conceptual reduction, highlighting consistencies and changes throughout time and showing how the religious life of informants is embedded in their relationships with friends and family. The use of LLS and of long, verbatim quotations from interviews, also helps to preserve and translate some of an informant’s presence and personality, and infuses academic texts with increased authenticity and vitality. LLS are particularly useful when studying the increasing number of self-identified “spiritual” people in the West who refuse to form part of a precisely circumscribed religious movement. As well, LLS are recommended for better understanding more traditional religions and for ethnographic studies in which religion is not necessarily the focus.


Keywords: lived religion, layered life stories, fieldwork, translation, betrayal, vulnerability, follow-up interviews