Lisa Spinelli

Rythmic Routines: Folk music, Religiosity and Well-Being across China’s Borders

Keywords:

• Folk Music;
• Lived Religion;
• Well-Being;
• Cultural Hegemony,
• Cultural Creativity.

1) Researcher’s academic background

Lisa Spinelli holds a MA in Chinese Studies and a MSc in Cultural Anthropology obtained in Venice, Beijing and Utrecht. She conducted ethnographic research in Yunnan, China and in Lisbon, Portugal. In the first case, she studied the connections between the landscape and the religiosity of Naxi people under the influence of Chinese environmentalist policies. In the second, she explored the musical and religious practices of a group of young fado musicians living a southern European globalized urban center.

She is currently studying for a PhD in Anthropology in Lisbon, at ISCTE/Nova Universities, and working as a visiting researcher at CRIA (Centro em Rede de Investigação em Antropologia), where she is affiliated with NAR (Network for the Anthropology of Religion). Her research focuses on the intersections between lived religion, popular culture and well-being practices. She explores these as individual and collective creative responses to cultural contexts dominated by hegemonic political actors, with a focus on the effects of globalization.

2) Abstract and Research Questions

The research she is currently conducting consists of a comparative ethnographic study of Tibetan and Naxi folk music, religiosity and well-being practices. It focuses on musicians belonging to these culturally proximate groups in Nepal and Yunnan.

This project sets out from a need of understanding contemporary lived religion and the varied ways according to which it transforms transnationally in the presence of hegemonic cultural actors and under the effects of globalization.

On one hand, it aims at studying the creative ways in which concepts and practices linked to religiosity adapt to different (and changing) cultural contexts and respond to the well-being needs of particular local practitioners. In order to do that, it focuses on folk music, on the edge between religiosity and popular culture, examining, from an emic perspective, its “therapeutic” potential.

On the other hand, it has the objective of understanding how local practices are shaped and respond to the influence of hegemonic cultural currents (e.g. state policies toward religions and biomedical perspectives on health). This focus, informed by Sherry Ortner’s serious game theory, provides a perspective on the interactions between dominant cultural strands and subjective or small groups agencies (2006). The choice of Nepal and Chinese Yunnan as field-sites, is meant to highlight the differential impact of the two socio-political background where the Tibetans and the Naxi practice their folk music.

Summarizing, this research examines: the importance, function and role of folk music in collaborators’ lives; the way it fulfills them; its intersections with its practitioners’ lived religions and well-being practices; and the relation of these intertwined practices with dominant cultural and political currents within each society where they are performed.

3) Scientific and social relevance

This research focuses on contemporary popular strategies of well-being production by means of practices that are deemed therapeutic and religious by their practitioners, but are usually categorized as forms of popular culture both in commonsense and academia.

Its innovative character consists in interweaving two strands of thought: the importance of religiosity within personal and social well-being (McGuire 1996; Manderson 2005) and the religious aspects of music (Taylor 2007). Its theoretical significance consists in pointing at the haziness of the confines that conventionally separate the study of religiosity, health and popular arts and traditions.

Additionally, this project presents an opportunity to analyze the way research participants conceptualize and live a debated issue: the interactions between religiosity, secularism (intended as an ideological stance that is mainly political) and scientific forms of cognition, as well as the connections of these to the socio-cultural agents they stem from.

Finally, researches in the field of ethnomusicology and religion show that community and public spaces have a central role within music-spiritual performances. The social relevance of this project consists in further investigating their role – and potentially indicating to policy makers the importance of their protection in view of the well-being of the populations of their states.

4) Methods and techniques

This project is based on an ethnographic research that will take place in 2023-2024 in the urban and rural areas of Kathmandu (Nepal) and Kunming (Yunnan, China).

During fieldwork, the author will engage in participant observation, unstructured conversations, semi-structured interviews as well as research techniques as photo- and audio-elicitation and walking- interviews, with the objective of creating a horizontal communicative space.

During the phase of writing, collaborators’ feedbacks will be considered fundamental.

5) Preliminary findings

Work in progress!