Columbia University Seminar on Brazil by Alberto Groisman: The Ethnographic Incorporation

Announcement

UNIVERSITY SEMINARS

THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK

SEMINAR ON BRAZIL    

The University Seminars are a place where the participants trust each other enough to hold an honest and open conversation across disciplines on new or challenging ideas. 

I have taken my best pains not to laugh at the actions of [hu]mankind, not to groan over them, not to be angry at them, but to understand them.

                                                                              Spinoza

Speaker: Prof. Alberto Groisman, Federal University of Santa Catarina

Title: Ethnographic Incorporation: Research, mediunity and (re) flexible (ive) ontology

Meeting co-sponsored with the University Seminars on Studies in Religion and Contents and Methods in the Social Sciences 

Date: Thursday, March 17, 2022  

Time: 7:00 PM (EST) 9:00 PM (In Brazil). 

Place: 0n Zoom (to receive the link the day of the meeting email bruna.credido@columbia.edu)

Abstract

Reflections on mediunity in the social sciences have often been constructed inconsistently. It seems that this inconsistency is linked to an epistemo-methodological conviction, that is: mediumship is a "phenomenon" of the "other", of the one who "believes in spirits". The "native" statement argues that the researcher is also a medium, whether he wants or admits to be, or not. An unwillingness to accept this theo-cosmological principle is often motivated by the implications of peer prestige. The purpose of this paper is to explore the analogy “medium-ethnographer”, particularly by addressing issues raised from a critical allusion to anthropologist "formation" and the experience of ethnographic incorporation.

 Sid Greenfield, Diana Brown, Vânia Penha-Lopes and John Collins, Co-Chairs