Anderson Blanton
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469623979
- eISBN:
- 9781469623993
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469623979.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religious Studies
In this work, Anderson Blanton illuminates how prayer, faith, and healing are intertwined with technologies of sound reproduction and material culture in the charismatic Christian worship of southern ...
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In this work, Anderson Blanton illuminates how prayer, faith, and healing are intertwined with technologies of sound reproduction and material culture in the charismatic Christian worship of southern Appalachia. From the radios used to broadcast prayer to the curative faith cloths circulated through the postal system, material objects known as spirit-matter have become essential since the 1940s, Blanton argues, to the Pentecostal community's understanding and performances of faith. Hittin' the Prayer Bones draws on Blanton's extensive site visits with church congregations, radio preachers and their listeners inside and outside the broadcasting studios, and more than thirty years of recorded charismatic worship made available to him by a small Christian radio station. In documenting the transformation and consecration of everyday objects through performances of communal worship, healing prayer, and chanted preaching, Blanton frames his ethnographic research in the historiography of faith healing and prayer, as well as theoretical models of materiality and transcendence. At the same time, his work affectingly conveys the feelings of horror, healing, and humor that are unleashed in practitioners as they experience, in their own words, the sacred, healing presence of the Holy Ghost.Less
In this work, Anderson Blanton illuminates how prayer, faith, and healing are intertwined with technologies of sound reproduction and material culture in the charismatic Christian worship of southern Appalachia. From the radios used to broadcast prayer to the curative faith cloths circulated through the postal system, material objects known as spirit-matter have become essential since the 1940s, Blanton argues, to the Pentecostal community's understanding and performances of faith. Hittin' the Prayer Bones draws on Blanton's extensive site visits with church congregations, radio preachers and their listeners inside and outside the broadcasting studios, and more than thirty years of recorded charismatic worship made available to him by a small Christian radio station. In documenting the transformation and consecration of everyday objects through performances of communal worship, healing prayer, and chanted preaching, Blanton frames his ethnographic research in the historiography of faith healing and prayer, as well as theoretical models of materiality and transcendence. At the same time, his work affectingly conveys the feelings of horror, healing, and humor that are unleashed in practitioners as they experience, in their own words, the sacred, healing presence of the Holy Ghost.
Penny McCall Howard
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781784994143
- eISBN:
- 9781526128478
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781784994143.003.0004
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Anthropology, Global
Chapter Three begins by examining the importance of boats as technologies for living and working at sea - in contrast to a great deal of literature about the sea and fishing that focusses on ...
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Chapter Three begins by examining the importance of boats as technologies for living and working at sea - in contrast to a great deal of literature about the sea and fishing that focusses on human-environment relations only. The chapter draws on Marcel Mauss’ analysis of techniques to ethnographically and phenomenologically examine the way in which boats and other tools are used to extend people’s bodies and sensory perception deep into the sea. As a result of these extensions, the sea is treated as a familiar workspace and caring relationships of maintenance develop between people and their tools and boats. The chapter investigates how human subjectivities and bodily safety are affected by the struggle to remain in control of the extended practices often used to work at sea. This control also depends on the ownership of boats and their gear. The chapter engages with the history of the Scottish herring fishery, the anthropology of the senses, and Lucy Suchman’s and Michael Jackson’s anthropology of human-machine relations. It also draws on anthropologies of labour-action, enskilment and task-orientation by Michael Jackson, Gísli Pálsson, and Tim Ingold.Less
Chapter Three begins by examining the importance of boats as technologies for living and working at sea - in contrast to a great deal of literature about the sea and fishing that focusses on human-environment relations only. The chapter draws on Marcel Mauss’ analysis of techniques to ethnographically and phenomenologically examine the way in which boats and other tools are used to extend people’s bodies and sensory perception deep into the sea. As a result of these extensions, the sea is treated as a familiar workspace and caring relationships of maintenance develop between people and their tools and boats. The chapter investigates how human subjectivities and bodily safety are affected by the struggle to remain in control of the extended practices often used to work at sea. This control also depends on the ownership of boats and their gear. The chapter engages with the history of the Scottish herring fishery, the anthropology of the senses, and Lucy Suchman’s and Michael Jackson’s anthropology of human-machine relations. It also draws on anthropologies of labour-action, enskilment and task-orientation by Michael Jackson, Gísli Pálsson, and Tim Ingold.
