This chapter presents a textured ethnography of how religion and culture negotiate alterity in urban-industrial societies, drawing on knowledge from traditional populations. It argues against treating religion as an autonomous reality, instead advocating for understanding others' experiences on their own terms. Following Victor Turner, it positions creativity as emerging from resistance to convention. The text highlights humor, creativity, and the questioning of religious life as legitimate means to improve social relationships and expand knowledge, with a focus on the Brazilian Ayahuasca religion and its context in the Netherlands.
During fieldwork at the Barquinha (a Brazilian ayahuasca-using religious center), a spiritual entity called Vó Nadir, a Preta Velha (Old Black Woman), intervened ritually to help young participants with their difficulties and problems. This intervention created a favorable context for social interaction and problem resolution. The article analyzes this event in terms of ethics, methodology, and epistemology, drawing on interviews with mediums about their personal experiences, conceptions of health and spiritual help, relationships among center members, and interactions with spiritual entities.
The article argues that social scientists often treat mediumship inconsistently, viewing it as a phenomenon of people who "believe in spirits" rather than as a potential feature of the ethnographer's own experience. The author recounts a fieldwork event among daimistas in the late 1980s, during which they incorporated an entity. This experience led the author to develop and inhabit what they call a "(re-)flexible(-ive) ontology." The article explores the analogy between ethnographer and medium, addressing issues raised by the anthropologist's "formation" and the experience of "ethnographic incorporation."
This article describes the form and practice of a specific ritual and its consequences for social relations among participants. The group, based in Alkmaar, adheres to the Santo Daime religion, an Ayahuasca religion originating from Brazil. Ayahuasca is a psychoactive preparation used ritually to generate spiritual and social experiences. The approach contributes to the debate on ritual as a communicative and dynamic event, arguing that the ritual plays an essential role in maintaining and shaping social relations among participants.