What is a spiritual entity?

Pragmatic approach to a "nameless religion" of the Sino-Indian margins.
Seminar of the École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE), Religious Sciences section

Grégoire Schlemmer

Every other Wednesday, from 3 March to 19 May, 10am-12pm

Gods, spirits, genies, ghosts, etc. What realities do these words designate, both for those who think them and for the researcher? How can we approach these evanescent entities, but at the heart of what we call the religious? How can we account for the way they are conceived, lived and, above all, what is built around them? What do they reveal about a society? These are some of the questions that will animate this seminar. This research will be based on a specific ethnography - that of the Kulung people of Nepal - which is part of this singular cultural area on the Sino-Indian margins. Using data from this society, we will seek to simultaneously develop the object, the methodology to account for it, and its epistemological underpinnings, which will lead us to revisit numerous themes from anthropology and religious sciences.