berghahn New York · Oxford

Contents

List of Figures

Introduction: “How Does That Make You Feel?” Writing about the Familial Occult as Therapy
Alexandra Coțofană

Chapter 1. A Chinese American Religious Healer: Towards Filial Ethnography
Kin Cheung

Chapter 2. I am My Mother’s Son: Revelations of the Divine
Earl Clarence L. Jimenez

Chapter 3. Of Bibles and Broads: The familial occult as Academic Lens
Alexandra Coțofană

Chapter 4. Facing My Genies: A Commute between Self, Familial Spirits, and Anthropology
Kamal Feriali

Chapter 5. On Familial Occultism
James M. Nyce

Chapter 6. The Familial Occult in Yakutia: Changeling Children and Tricking Demons
Natalya Khokholova

Chapter 7. Can Ethnography of the Occult Be Transformed into Occult Ethnography? Contextualizing a Local Religious Practice in Abkhazia
Rita Kuznetsova and Igor Kuznetsov

Chapter 8. “My father was a Reader”: Practices of Folk Medicine in Northern Sweden
Annelie Sjölander-Lindqvist and Johan Wedel

Conclusion

References
Index

The Familial Occult

Explorations at the Margins of Critical Autoethnography

Edited by Alexandra Coțofană

Afterword by James M. Nyce

206 pages, 12 ills., bibliog., index

ISBN 978-1-80539-175-3 Hb Published (November 2023)

eISBN 978-1-80539-389-4
web ISBN 978-1-80539-389-4

Details

“I found the book to be compelling and fascinating. Some of the authors’ evocative writing drew me into the … stories which resonated with my own family.” • Gresilda A. Lilley-Tubbs, Virginia Tech

The Familial Occult addresses the presence of occult experiences in some scholars' families and how that has affected their epistemological and ontological worlds, as well as their identities as scholars. Those with backgrounds in the familial occult often experience a series of conflicting relationships and different ways of interacting with binaries such as the subjective and objective, a powerful conceptual couple still governing academic thinking. While much has been written on encountering the occult in fieldwork or becoming an apprentice in an occult practice, little yet has been published in the academic literature about growing up with the occult.

Alexandra Coțofană is Assistant Professor of Social Sciences at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi. Prior to joining Zayed University, she held a Lectureship in History and Anthropology at Butler University.

Series: Volume 47, EASA Series

Subject: Anthropology (General) Sociology Anthropology of Religion

Area:

BISAC: SOC002010 SOCIAL SCIENCE/Anthropology/Cultural & Social; SOC026010 SOCIAL SCIENCE/Sociology/Marriage & Family; SOC005000 SOCIAL SCIENCE/Customs & Traditions