Self-identity, authenticity and the Other: The spirits and audience management in stage mediumship

Wooffitt, Robin; Jackson, Clare; Reed, Darren; Ohashi, Yasushi; Hughes, Isaac

doi:10.1016/j.langcom.2013.01.003

Cited by 8 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…In the class that I took in psychic/client relations through the church, Pastor Denise offered us paperwork that included advice for “audience management practices” (refer to Wooffitt et al 2013), including a mock trial for practitioners at events, a list of rules for readers that represent the church, an ethics handout, and a story about unethical fortune-tellers. She commented that “clients think that we are therapists, and we are not.” She then advised us to have crisis-care resources available for patrons, like contact cards for psychologists and social workers, hotlines for suicide and domestic violence, and other emergency contacts.…”

Section: Interactional Trialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

On Spiritualist Workers: Healing and Divining through Tarot and the Metaphysical

Lavin

2020

Journal of Contemporary Ethnography

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In the following article, I explore how tarot card readers (and other spiritualist workers) “control the future” to heal and empower their clients, emphasizing the porous roles of therapy and advocacy that assorted “psychics” perform. I examine how these workers navigate interactional trials, including misassigned identity, ethical challenges, and interactional boundaries in readings at psychic fairs and in private practice. Tarot card readers and other “psychics” are independent contractors and (self)help workers that are cast aside from both science and religion, labor outside of conventional credentialing systems, and are reputationally marginalized. I argue that this cultural and structural marginalization allows these “libertarian spiritualist” workers to construct amalgamate identities, exercising role flexibility as readers and querents, and healers and survivors.

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Section: Interactional Trialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

On Spiritualist Workers: Healing and Divining through Tarot and the Metaphysical

Lavin

2020

Journal of Contemporary Ethnography

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“…The use of reported speech increases the perceived credibility of statements by presenting information as though it is coming directly from someone with authoritative knowledge (Riessman 2008; Sawin 1992). Moreover, by claiming only they have the ability to communicate with the spirits, psychics create an “epistemic asymmetry” that gives them control over the presentation of supernatural “facts” (Wooffitt et al 2013).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Manifesting Spirits: Paranormal Investigation and the Narrative Development of a Haunting

Eaton

2018

Journal of Contemporary Ethnography

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Using a paranormal investigation of a reportedly haunted hotel as a model, I propose a five-phase narrative development process that integrates media representations of ghosts, place-based tales of hauntings, and accounts that emerge through processes of interactive interpretation. By attending to both preexisting and emergent supernatural stories, the model illustrates how idiocultures function as mediating structures between established narratives and accounts that result from shared experiences. The narrative account of a haunting is thus a product of interpretive processes in which established ghost stories serve as resources for the collective co-construction of an account that both resonates with external expectations and supports idiocultural authority structures. Ultimately, idiocultural factors have greater influence upon the final narrative than folklore, media, or place-based supernatural tales.

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“…The design of a story may also reflect the teller’s tacit inferences about wider cultural conventions. For example, Wooffitt’s analyses of reports of paranormal experiences shows that accounts are routinely designed to address potential sceptical explanations of claimed paranormal experiences (Wooffitt, 1992, 2006; Wooffitt and Gilbert, 2008; Wooffitt et al, 2013; see also, Hayward et al, 2015; Woods and Wooffitt, 2014). The target data for this analysis exhibits precisely this degree of recipient design.…”

Section: Managing Motives and Mysterymentioning

confidence: 99%

Coincidence by design

Stockbridge

Wooffitt

2018

Qualitative Research

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In this article we develop an approach to coincidences as discursive activities. To illustrate the range of empirical questions that can be explored in the analysis of coincidence accounts, we examine one single written account, which was submitted to a website of a research project to investigate the statistical dimensions of coincidence experiences. Our analysis is broadly ethnomethodological in that we examine this single case to identify how structural and narrative components work to constitute the recognizably coincidental quality of the events so described. The analysis identifies a mirror structure that resembles chiasmus, a figurative device found in classical texts. The analysis also describes how the account is designed to address inferential matters related to the site to which it was submitted. In the discussion we reflect on the implications of this approach for other approaches to coincidence.

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Self-identity, authenticity and the Other: The spirits and audience management in stage mediumship

Cited by 8 publications

References 14 publications

On Spiritualist Workers: Healing and Divining through Tarot and the Metaphysical

On Spiritualist Workers: Healing and Divining through Tarot and the Metaphysical

Manifesting Spirits: Paranormal Investigation and the Narrative Development of a Haunting

Coincidence by design

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