Call for Papers
 
Open panel 162. Spirituality and Health: Epistemologies of Healing and the Ethnographic Encounter
 
18th World Congress of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences
Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (UFSC), Florianópolis, Brazil, 16-20 July 2018
 
Convenors:
Emily PIERINI (University of Wales Trinity Saint David)
Alberto GROISMAN (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina)
 
Therapeutic itineraries often unfold across different approaches to wellbeing posing new challenges to patients, healers and medical professionals. This panel explores the entanglements of spirituality and biomedicine in people’s experiences of healing, specifically asking: how do people make sense of and use different epistemologies of illness and healing in their therapeutic itinerary? How to they either draw, shift, or cross the boundaries between spiritual and medical approaches? How do they understand and apply notions of ‘efficacy’ and ‘evidence’ in their therapeutic experiences? How they deal with the power relations between the different approaches? How do they consider the relationships of negotiation and processes of decision implicated?
Researching these experiences, contexts and itineraries, demands that also ethnographers address particular methodological challenges. How could ethnographic knowledge approach the tension between different epistemologies of healing coexisting in people’s experiences? What kinds of methodological and ethical challenges arise in the ethnographic encounter with people in, or moving between, the fields of spirituality and biomedicine? 
We invite papers discussing ethnographic research in groups practising spiritual healing, among patients following both biomedical and spiritual therapeutic itineraries, and health professionals using conventional and non-conventional therapeutic approaches to healing. 
 
Keywords: spirituality; health; wellbeing; healing; therapeutic itineraries
 
Abstract submission: http://www.inscricoes.iuaes2018.org/trabalho/view?ID_TRABALHO=68
Thematic axis: 19. Health and Medical Anthropology
Open Panel. 162 Spirituality and Health: Epistemologies of Healing and the Ethnographic Encounter
Languages accepted for paper presentations: English, Portuguese, Spanish
Deadline: 28 February 2018
 
Please, circulate this to those who might be interested.

7th  ETHNOGRAPHY AND QUALITATIVE RESEARCH CONFERENCE
University of Bergamo (Italy), 6-9 June 2018
 
PANEL: Experiencing the Sacred between Religion and Spirituality
​
Convenors:
Stefania Palmisano (Università di Torino) stefania.palmisano@unito.it
Nicola Pannofino (Università di Torino) nicolaluciano.pannofino@unito.it
Emily Pierini (University of Wales Trinity Saint David / The American University of Rome) e.pierini@aur.edu
 
‘Religion’ and ‘Spirituality’ are terms of a binomial that is at the core of recent debates in the field of religious studies. Their relation is variably understood either as opposition or complementarity. In the first instance, according to the formula ‘spiritual but not religious’ used by those who cultivate a personal relationship with the transcendent beyond institutionalized religions. In the latter one, spirituality expresses the subjective dimension of religion. Both these definitions emphasize lived experience, and especially a sacred that permeates everyday practices, close to the body, to sensory perception and to the agency of the person in transition between multiple secular spheres of society.
In order to delve into this field, we invite contributions grounded in ethnographic research focussing upon the relationship between religion and spirituality in the social contexts of everyday life, and that stress a methodological reflection upon the status of ethnography in the study of lived religion and spirituality.
Some of the areas around which this theme can be developed are:

• spirituality and religion in everyday life
• spirituality and gender
• body, emotions and spirituality
• the perceptive dimension in the experience of the sacred
• health, wellbeing and spirituality
• spirituality and the notion of personhood
• creative expressions of the religious in secular contexts
• the ethnography of spirituality: how the ethnographer perceives the experiences of others

 
HOW TO SUBMIT A PAPER PROPOSAL:
Proposals submission deadline: 22 January 2018.

Notification of acceptance: 12 March 2018.

Registration deadline: 16 April 2018.
To submit your proposal, please send an e-mail to the panel convenors and to the conference committee (erq.conference@unibg.it), indicating:

• the title of the chosen session;
• the title of your talk and an abstract of max. 1,000 words (.doc, .docx, .odt, .txt, .rtf); 

• your contact details (full name, e-mail, post address and affiliation) and those of your 
co-author/s, if any; 

• those who wish may also send a short video talk (2 min. max.), not necessarily on your proposed talk but a sort of teaser trailer for it (by sending the video, you thereby allow the organizing committee to upload the video at its discretion, in full or cut form, on the youtube channel of Etnografia e Ricerca Qualitativa : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTAnycGjE5KzDCr-AnFJwow/feed) . 


Abstracts (and video talks) must be submitted in English. The official languages of the conference are Italian, English, and French. For each session, languages will be used on the basis of the composition of participants.
 
Conference website: http://www.etnografiaricercaqualitativa.it/?page_id=517