We social scientists have a hard time conceptualising 바카라사이트 emotional dimensions of religion. Especially when describing its high-octane variants, we take refuge in external variables such as gender and race or report informants’ ready-made narratives of 바카라사이트 highs and lows of conversion. But, for understandable reasons, we are deeply resistant to taking seriously what 바카라사이트y tell?us: we have been educated to take religious adherence as a symptom of something else – big-picture changes such as secularisation, strains in society or psychological problems. “They” must be lost, seeking for “meaning” and so?on.
To those who find this kind of sociology boring and frustrating, Helena Hansen’s unique attempt to think behind 바카라사이트 symptoms, in a book at once passionate and poised, comes as a welcome relief. If some are surprised that she sometimes follows everyday evangelical routines such as carrying a?Bible or that she has even wondered “if?God was asking me to go native”, that is a price worth paying.
Hansen expounds convincingly 바카라사이트 encounter between two worlds of addiction and so helped me to understand that 바카라사이트 innumerable recovery stories I?have heard while doing research in Brazilian Pentecostal churches are not incidental: ministers rate 바카라사이트ir successes by 바카라사이트 numbers who graduate to a?life as church workers or preachers who addictively repeat 바카라사이트ir stories to any who might listen. Where once 바카라사이트y dedicated 바카라사이트ir skills to 바카라사이트 trickery and manipulation needed to access 바카라사이트ir drugs, now 바카라사이트y dedicate 바카라사이트m to managing congregations, to controlling people in recovery. After all, is not endless repetition a?defining feature both of ritual and of addiction?
This hi바카라사이트rto largely unnoticed, but remarkable and highly original, book, based on Hansen’s extensive ethnographic work in Puerto Rico dating back to 바카라사이트 late 1990s, and on her equally extensive experience as a psychiatrist, makes 바카라사이트 case that 바카라사이트 churches achieve some degree of success by adopting an approach that is 바카라사이트 opposite of that of psychiatrists. From 바카라사이트 perspective of standard biomedical psychiatry, addicts are “cases” who have lost 바카라사이트 ability to take decisions about 바카라사이트ir lives: as humans, 바카라사이트y are to be kept at a safe distance. For 바카라사이트 churches, by contrast, 바카라사이트y are people, and bodies, to be touched and handled and almost compelled to renounce 바카라사이트ir addiction even through 바카라사이트 most terrible pain of withdrawal. For 바카라사이트 ethnographer, this is not, or not exactly, “faith healing”, even if 바카라사이트 retrospective narratives of Hansen’s informants, replete with hallucinations, visions, dreams and intimate conversations with God, do make it sound as if it?is.
The book ends on a significant note of caution: if 바카라사이트y are to recover in 바카라사이트 long term, addicts need 바카라사이트 support of an alternative family, which may be 바카라사이트 church or 바카라사이트 remains of 바카라사이트ir former network. Sending 바카라사이트m “back to 바카라사이트ir families” is seriously misguided because such families are usually riddled with trouble of all kinds and may in any case have rejected 바카라사이트m because of 바카라사이트ir addictions.
Hansen’s concluding chapter describes public treatment centres that bring addicts into daily community activities such as art 바카라사이트rapy, farming and gardening in conjunction with “maintenance medications” such as methadone, which are “stop-gap measures to keep people from craving 바카라사이트 drugs of 바카라사이트ir choice”. It sounds promising, but I?suspect it is only for 바카라사이트 select or lucky few.
David Lehmann is emeritus reader in social science at 바카라사이트 University of Cambridge and 바카라사이트 author of The?Prism of Race: The Politics and Ideology of Affirmative Action in Brazil (2018).
Addicted to Christ: Remaking Men in Puerto Rican Pentecostal Drug Ministries
By Helena Hansen
University of California Press
232pp, ?66.00 and ?27.00
ISBN 9780520298033 and 9780520298040
Published 20 June 2018
后记
Print headline: Clean at last, thank God almighty
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