The construction of meaning in religious healing

The present paper addresses the production of meaning in religious healing. Using ethnographic examples from research among Pentecostals and adepts of Afro-Brazilian religion, it poses three main questions that are held essential for the study of religious healing. The first question deals with the concept of understanding: what do we mean when we affirm that the therapeutic practices promoted by religious groups transform people’s understanding of their affliction? The second develops this issue further, examining the close relation between meaning and the senses in the construction and maintenance of the identity of the healed person: what are the relations between the sensuous experiences cultivated in therapeutic contexts such as healing rituals and the attribution of new meanings for experience? The third question addresses the role of objects in the making of the intersubjective agreements that sustain the transformation of meaning: how are we to understand the participation of material objects in the therapeutic scene?