Touch and American Religions
Loading...
Can’t use the file because of accessibility barriers? Contact us with the title of the item, permanent link, and specifics of your accommodation need.
Date
2009-06-09
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Permanent Link
Abstract
The sense of touch plays an important role in many American religious practices. Yet dismissals of touch as an inferior mode of perception and reliance on textual sources that ignore touch have shaped research agendas. This essay identifies theories articulated by philosophical phenomenologists, students of ritual and performance studies, historians and anthropologists of art and architecture, neuroscientists, and feminist scholars that envision touch as a unique mode of gaining knowledge about the world and oneself and stimulating ethical behavior by working
directly on the emotions to motivate empathetic, compassionate concern for others. The essay
suggests how touch-oriented theories can aid the development of research areas in American
religions where scholars have already begun fruitful explorations of tactility: studies of religious embodiment and ritual and of pain and its alleviation through divine healing or Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM).
Description
Keywords
Citation
Brown, Candy Gunther. Touch and American Religions. Religion Compass 3.4 (July 2009): 770-783.
Journal
DOI
Link(s) to data and video for this item
Relation
Rights
Copyright 2009 the Author
Type
Article