Sensing the Sacred: Religious Experience, Somatic Inversions, and the Religious Education of Attention
While previous work has focused largely on discourse, contemporary sociological research has started to examine how the embodied, sensory dimensions of religious practice matter in the construction of religious experience. This paper contributes to this development by drawing sociological attention...
| Authors: | ; |
|---|---|
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
|
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Oxford Univ. Press
2022
|
| In: |
Sociology of religion
Year: 2022, Volume: 83, Issue: 1, Pages: 12-35 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Religious practice
/ Embodiment
/ Bodiliness
/ Popular piety
/ Perception
/ Orthodox Church
/ Theravada
|
| RelBib Classification: | AD Sociology of religion; religious policy AE Psychology of religion AG Religious life; material religion BL Buddhism CB Christian life; spirituality KDF Orthodox Church |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | While previous work has focused largely on discourse, contemporary sociological research has started to examine how the embodied, sensory dimensions of religious practice matter in the construction of religious experience. This paper contributes to this development by drawing sociological attention to the religious cultivation of a particular class of embodied experiences: somatic inversions. Somatic inversions, as we define them, are experiences in which dimensions of human embodiment that usually remain in the tacit background of action and perception are brought to the experiential foreground. We demonstrate how these kinds of practically cultivated experiences of inversion—while not religious in any essential way—enable and encourage attributions of religious significance, making purportedly religious phenomena present to the senses and open to further engagement, exploration, and elaboration. We develop our argument through empirical material from the authors’ respective studies of Eastern Orthodox fasting and Theravada Buddhist meditation practices. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 1759-8818 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Sociology of religion
|
| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1093/socrel/srab004 |