Making Sense of the Paranormal

This book is a study of how people collaboratively interpret events or experiences as having paranormal features, or as evidence of spiritual agency. The authors study recordings of paranormal research groups as they conduct real life investigations into allegedly haunted spaces and the analyses describe how, through their talk and embodied actions, participants collaboratively negotiate the paranormal status of the events they experience.By drawing on the study of the social organisation in everyday interaction, they show how paranormal interpretations may be proposed, contested and negotiated through conversational and embodied practices of the group.

The book contributes to the sociology of anomalous experience, and explores its relevance to other social science topics such as dark tourism, participation in religious spaces and practices, and the attribution of agency. This book will therefore be of interest to academics and postgraduate researchers of languageand social interaction; discourse and communication, cultural studies; social psychology, sociology of religious experience; parapsychology, communication and psychotherapy.

Focuses on the ways in which social interaction contributes to paranormal interpretations of events Draws on draw an empirical approach to conversation analysis Elaborates the linkage between individual experiences and social support structures for paranormal experiences

Autorentext

Rachael Ironside is Senior Lecturer at Robert Gordon University, Scotland. Her research interests include social interaction and anomalous experience. She has also published more widely on the role of supernatural folklore and how it impacts our experience and understanding of place and cultural heritage.
Robin Wooffitt is Professor of Sociology at the University of York, UK. He is interested in language, interaction, and anomalous experiences. He is author or co-author of eight books.

Inhalt

1. Language, Embodiment And Anomalous Experience.- 2. The (Absent) Body In Research On Paranormal Phenomena.- 3. Talk, Bodies And Tools In Interaction With Spirits.- 4. What Is That?.- 5. Embodied Sense Making.- 6. Experiencing The (Anomalous) Moment.