Call for papers - dossier Religious experiences and enchanted practices: narratives of daily life

Organization: Emília Guimarães Mota (UFG) and Mariana de Carvalho Ilheo (Unicamp)

In the flow of life, coexistence between beings takes on different arrangements, formats and textures, creating an entangled world. Thinking about this web from the perspective of traditions of African, indigenous and popular origins implies a shift that goes beyond the descriptions of cults, artifacts, rites, myths and symbols; a movement that, in the field of anthropological studies on religions, includes their connections with the surrounding society and their political and economic aspects. In addition to recovering the presence of these traditions in the religious and academic fields, reflections emerge on the way in which these practices and experiences are modulated in relation to their local contexts, and the specificities through which the sacred is woven daily, blurring the boundaries between magic and religion, in addition to enabling the bricolage of elements that make our cultural and regional diversity emerge, as well as power relations and social processes.

This dossier focuses on practices and experiences related to non-hegemonic religious/spiritual traditions, as well as traditions of African, indigenous and other traditional peoples, the different expressions of enchantment and manifestations of popular religiosity. The proposal is to bring together a set of articles that contemplate religious, spiritual and enchanted practices and experiences based on the intersection between the different lines of this entanglement; that is, drawing attention to the dynamics, spaces and ritual creations resulting from the interaction between human beings and those other than humans.

We value ethnographic experiments that mobilize these narratives, pointing to processes such as the production of knowledge based on the education of attention and the development of skills for religious work - especially of masters, specialists and agents collectively recognized for their work, who deal with aspects of the relational dynamics of coexistence with non-incarnate beings. We are interested in expanding perspectives on the intersection between the different lines of life through trajectories and memories that make up a channel of communication and exchanges between beings, mediating a flow that crosses multiple planes.

We will accept contributions that contribute to the debate on the scope of the dossier, covering topics such as:

• coexistence with entities, spiritual guides and enchanted beings, and the different possibilities of communication (dreams, intuitions, whispers, various forms of presence, messages, visions, sensations, livusias, among others)
• religious, spiritual and enchanted expressions and practices related to popular traditions and those of African, indigenous and other traditional peoples
• traditional knowledge linked to enchanted practices and rituals, considering their different motivations

We hope to have productions from different institutions and regions of Brazil and other countries, privileging an interface between anthropology and other areas such as sociology, history, philosophy, education, linguistics, literature and arts.

We accept works in Portuguese, Spanish and English.

ATTENTION

When submitting your article for this dossier, make sure to select the RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCES DOSSIER section. The dossier will be published in the July-December 2025 issue. You can also submit papers in a continuous flow to the FREE SECTIONS. In this case, the submission must be made in the ARTICLE, TRANSLATION, REVIEW or INTERVIEW sections. Translations, reviews and interviews, even when related to the theme of the dossier, must be sent in the corresponding section.

Deadline for submission of papers: until 08/15/25