Science and Religion
My earliest work was a study of the "public understanding of science" and the "anthropology of science" when these fields were in an early stage of development. The book was influenced by the currents of post-structuralism in anthropology at the time; the method is comparativist within the scope of the field site.
The central finding was that a historical distinction in a heterodox research field in North America and Europe--the transition from the case study methodology of psychical research to the experimental method of parapsychology--had become associated with different positions in the religious-psychotherapeutic field among Catholic intellectuals, the medical community, and Spiritists in Brazil. I found that Jesuit critics of Spiritism drew on parapsychology, whereas Spiritists tended to turn to the older field of psychical research with its attempts to find evidence for post-mortem survival. This was one of the first, full ethnographic monographs in the anthropology of science and especially on the intersections of science, medicine, and public understanding. Although I did not explicitly use the term "field," I used the similar concept of an "arena" and was influenced by Bourdieu, whom I read first in Portuguese in Brazil, and by Brazilian scholars influenced by him, such as Carlos Rodrigues Branda-o. In effect I was studying the role of science in negotiating field position at the intersections of the religious and medical fields. Many Spiritist intellectuals were also medical professionals, and many of the country's first psychiatric hospitals were founded by Spiritists. I benefited greatly from my mentors at that time: James Boon, Roberta DaMatta, Davydd Greenwood, Tom Holloway, and David Holmberg.
On returning to the U.S., I had a new perspective on similar science-religion relations in the New Age movement, and I wrote Science in the New Age, which analyzed the New Age movement from a cultural perspective that included gender politics, American cultural repertoires such as the frontier, and relations with skeptics. DaMatta and I also also developed book in the comparativist tradition of Brazilian studies, The Brazilian Puzzle. After that, I decided that issues of science and religion were very marginal in the Science and Technology Studies field that I was joining after getting the job at Rensselaer, and as a result I turned to topical problems that were more connected with the field's focus on health and the environment. However, the use of comparative and cultural methods (the latter in the sense of understanding problems first from the perspective of publics and informants) and the thematic concerns with knowledge, technologies, publics, and movements is continuous with many of my subsequent projects.
Selected Publications
2000 "Medical Integration and Questions of Universalism." [Portuguese] In Laura Graziela Gomes, ed. Twentieth Anniversary Commemoration of Carnavais, Malandros, e Heróis. Rio de Janeiro: Editora da Fundação Getúlio Vargas. This paper connects my work on Spiritism and religious therapies with the second project on complementary and alternative medicine. Paper available here.
1995 The Brazilian Puzzle: Culture on the Borderlands of the Western World. Coedited with Roberto DaMatta. Columbia University Press. Introduction, Conclusions, and "Hierarchy, Hegemony, and the Construction of Brazilian Religious Therapies" by Hess. Theoretically, an attempt to bridge hierarchy and hegemony (culturalist and social structural approaches) in the study of the religious system in Brazil. Paper available here.
1995 "Preface." Magico-Religious Healers of Brazil, by Nagato Azuma and Patric Giesler. Tokyo: Arechi-Syuppansha Inc.
1994 Samba in the Night: Spiritism in Brazil. Fieldwork account. Columbia University Press.
1993 Science in the New Age: The Paranormal, Its Defenders and Debunkers, and American Culture. University of Wisconsin Press. Chinese translation: Jiangxi Education Press, 1998. Chapter 7 (Theoretical Conclusions) here. Google Scholar Preview here.
1992 "New Sciences, New Gods: Spiritism and Questions of Religious Pluralism in Latin America." Occasional Papers of the Thomas J. Watson Institute for International Studies, "Conference on Competing Gods: Religious Pluralism in Latin America." Brown University. A paper that questioned the current view of some scholars that Latin American was becoming Protestant by discussing the continued vitality of spirit mediumship religions. Paper available here.
1992 Knowledge and Society Volume 9: The Anthropology of Science and Technology. Coedited with Linda Layne; series editor Arie Rip. JAI Press. Article by Hess:"Disciplining Heterodoxy, Circumventing Discipline: Parapsychology, Anthropologically." Link to PDF file here. Link to Elsevier press here.
1992 "Umbanda and Quimbanda Magic in Brazil: Rethinking Aspects of Bastide's Work." Archives des Sciences Sociales des Religions. 79: 139-53. A structuralist analysis of Umbanda and Quimbanda rituals with the theoretical argument that Bastide over-estimated “religious degredation” of African religion in his studies of Umbanda. Paper available here.
1991 Spirits and Scientists: Ideology, Spiritism, and Brazilian Culture. Pennsylvania State University Press. Introduction available here. Google Scholar Preview here.
1991 "On Earth as It Is in Heaven: Reading Spiritist Otherworldly Ethnographies." In Roberto Reis (ed.), Toward Socio-Criticism: Selected Proceedings of the Conference "Luso-Brazilian Literatures, A Socio-Critical Approach." Arizona State University at Tempe, Center for Latin American Studies. This paper showed how Spiritist and American descriptions of the spirit world showed important cultural differences related to this-worldly Brazil and the U.S. Paper available here.
1990 "Ghosts and Domestic Politics in Brazil: Some Parallels between Spirit Infestation and Spirit Possession." Ethos: Journal of the Society for Psychological Anthropology 18(4): 407-38. This was the first paper to link families that believe they have a spirit attack (infestation, poltergeist) to domestic violence. Final article here.
1989 "Disobsessing Disobsession: Religion, Ritual, and Social Science in Brazil." Cultural Anthropology 4(2): 182-193. Early version of chapter in Spirits and Scientists. This paper argued that positions among social scientists Spiritism among social scientists in Brazil had homologies with positions in the religious field. Final article here.
1987 "O Espiritismo e as Ciências [Spiritism and the Sciences]." Religião e Sociedade 14(3): 40-54. Early version of chapter in Spirits and Scientists.
1987 "The Many Rooms of Brazilian Spiritism." Luso-Brazilian Review 24.2: 15-34.
1987 "Religion, Heterodox Science, and Brazilian Culture." Social Studies of Science 17: 465-477. Portions appeared in Spirits and Scientists. Paper available here.
Research was partially supported by dissertation research grants from the Fulbright Commission and the Social Science Research Council. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding agencies.
The central finding was that a historical distinction in a heterodox research field in North America and Europe--the transition from the case study methodology of psychical research to the experimental method of parapsychology--had become associated with different positions in the religious-psychotherapeutic field among Catholic intellectuals, the medical community, and Spiritists in Brazil. I found that Jesuit critics of Spiritism drew on parapsychology, whereas Spiritists tended to turn to the older field of psychical research with its attempts to find evidence for post-mortem survival. This was one of the first, full ethnographic monographs in the anthropology of science and especially on the intersections of science, medicine, and public understanding. Although I did not explicitly use the term "field," I used the similar concept of an "arena" and was influenced by Bourdieu, whom I read first in Portuguese in Brazil, and by Brazilian scholars influenced by him, such as Carlos Rodrigues Branda-o. In effect I was studying the role of science in negotiating field position at the intersections of the religious and medical fields. Many Spiritist intellectuals were also medical professionals, and many of the country's first psychiatric hospitals were founded by Spiritists. I benefited greatly from my mentors at that time: James Boon, Roberta DaMatta, Davydd Greenwood, Tom Holloway, and David Holmberg.
On returning to the U.S., I had a new perspective on similar science-religion relations in the New Age movement, and I wrote Science in the New Age, which analyzed the New Age movement from a cultural perspective that included gender politics, American cultural repertoires such as the frontier, and relations with skeptics. DaMatta and I also also developed book in the comparativist tradition of Brazilian studies, The Brazilian Puzzle. After that, I decided that issues of science and religion were very marginal in the Science and Technology Studies field that I was joining after getting the job at Rensselaer, and as a result I turned to topical problems that were more connected with the field's focus on health and the environment. However, the use of comparative and cultural methods (the latter in the sense of understanding problems first from the perspective of publics and informants) and the thematic concerns with knowledge, technologies, publics, and movements is continuous with many of my subsequent projects.
Selected Publications
2000 "Medical Integration and Questions of Universalism." [Portuguese] In Laura Graziela Gomes, ed. Twentieth Anniversary Commemoration of Carnavais, Malandros, e Heróis. Rio de Janeiro: Editora da Fundação Getúlio Vargas. This paper connects my work on Spiritism and religious therapies with the second project on complementary and alternative medicine. Paper available here.
1995 The Brazilian Puzzle: Culture on the Borderlands of the Western World. Coedited with Roberto DaMatta. Columbia University Press. Introduction, Conclusions, and "Hierarchy, Hegemony, and the Construction of Brazilian Religious Therapies" by Hess. Theoretically, an attempt to bridge hierarchy and hegemony (culturalist and social structural approaches) in the study of the religious system in Brazil. Paper available here.
1995 "Preface." Magico-Religious Healers of Brazil, by Nagato Azuma and Patric Giesler. Tokyo: Arechi-Syuppansha Inc.
1994 Samba in the Night: Spiritism in Brazil. Fieldwork account. Columbia University Press.
1993 Science in the New Age: The Paranormal, Its Defenders and Debunkers, and American Culture. University of Wisconsin Press. Chinese translation: Jiangxi Education Press, 1998. Chapter 7 (Theoretical Conclusions) here. Google Scholar Preview here.
1992 "New Sciences, New Gods: Spiritism and Questions of Religious Pluralism in Latin America." Occasional Papers of the Thomas J. Watson Institute for International Studies, "Conference on Competing Gods: Religious Pluralism in Latin America." Brown University. A paper that questioned the current view of some scholars that Latin American was becoming Protestant by discussing the continued vitality of spirit mediumship religions. Paper available here.
1992 Knowledge and Society Volume 9: The Anthropology of Science and Technology. Coedited with Linda Layne; series editor Arie Rip. JAI Press. Article by Hess:"Disciplining Heterodoxy, Circumventing Discipline: Parapsychology, Anthropologically." Link to PDF file here. Link to Elsevier press here.
1992 "Umbanda and Quimbanda Magic in Brazil: Rethinking Aspects of Bastide's Work." Archives des Sciences Sociales des Religions. 79: 139-53. A structuralist analysis of Umbanda and Quimbanda rituals with the theoretical argument that Bastide over-estimated “religious degredation” of African religion in his studies of Umbanda. Paper available here.
1991 Spirits and Scientists: Ideology, Spiritism, and Brazilian Culture. Pennsylvania State University Press. Introduction available here. Google Scholar Preview here.
1991 "On Earth as It Is in Heaven: Reading Spiritist Otherworldly Ethnographies." In Roberto Reis (ed.), Toward Socio-Criticism: Selected Proceedings of the Conference "Luso-Brazilian Literatures, A Socio-Critical Approach." Arizona State University at Tempe, Center for Latin American Studies. This paper showed how Spiritist and American descriptions of the spirit world showed important cultural differences related to this-worldly Brazil and the U.S. Paper available here.
1990 "Ghosts and Domestic Politics in Brazil: Some Parallels between Spirit Infestation and Spirit Possession." Ethos: Journal of the Society for Psychological Anthropology 18(4): 407-38. This was the first paper to link families that believe they have a spirit attack (infestation, poltergeist) to domestic violence. Final article here.
1989 "Disobsessing Disobsession: Religion, Ritual, and Social Science in Brazil." Cultural Anthropology 4(2): 182-193. Early version of chapter in Spirits and Scientists. This paper argued that positions among social scientists Spiritism among social scientists in Brazil had homologies with positions in the religious field. Final article here.
1987 "O Espiritismo e as Ciências [Spiritism and the Sciences]." Religião e Sociedade 14(3): 40-54. Early version of chapter in Spirits and Scientists.
1987 "The Many Rooms of Brazilian Spiritism." Luso-Brazilian Review 24.2: 15-34.
1987 "Religion, Heterodox Science, and Brazilian Culture." Social Studies of Science 17: 465-477. Portions appeared in Spirits and Scientists. Paper available here.
Research was partially supported by dissertation research grants from the Fulbright Commission and the Social Science Research Council. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding agencies.