Possessing and Being Possessed: Managing Agency in the Liminal Self

Research project funded by the BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grant. This ethnographic study explores the phenomenon of spirit possession within the religious context of Afro-Brazilian faiths. As such, the project aims to further our understanding of consumer / human agency within the broader field of post-humanist ontologies, and examines how through dissociation or trance-like spirit possession rituals, mediums who become possessed by spirits can effectively recraft their self narratives. The study contributes to ongoing debates in the realms of extraordinary experiences, transformational consumption, religious / spiritual consumption, and also the distribution of agency across a variety of actants.