The Efficacy of Intimacy and Belief in Worldmaking Practices (published by Routledge in 2024), edited by Urmila Mohan, is a collection of essays that engage with the idea of ‘efficacious intimacy’ to analyse inter-subjective experiences and worldmaking practices in different contexts. In addition to the multidisciplinary perspectives it offers, this book brings together ethnographic accounts from various locations across continents. The diversity of social practice and objects that the essays engage with is notable as they discuss religious rituals, healing practices, and artwork in the form of live performances, paintings, textiles, and design among other things to understand the relationship between objects and bodies through the effectiveness of belief.   

The book begins with an introduction by the editor who sets the conceptual basis of the ideas related to the body, beliefs, emotions, and intimacy running throughout the book. The idea of “efficacious intimacy”, Urmila Mohan describes, “explores how bodies and objects relate via practices as part of a framework drawn from the anthropology of religion/belief and material culture” (p. 1). It approaches the effectiveness of beliefs and emotions, through the concept of intimacy, as something that goes beyond the individual and the private and becomes visible at the level of the social through bodies, objects, and practices. This does not mean that the latter are only manifestations of unchanging beliefs and knowledge systems, but that the constitution of objects and bodies through practice, by way of its emotional appeal, closeness and familiarity, effectively shapes dispositions while it also re-configures traditions.

The book is divided into three sections that explore distinct yet interconnected themes. The essays in each part are centred around questions related to the body, practice, and power. One notable feature of these essays is the reflexive nature of the ethnographic accounts where, many times, the authors are immersed in the social and cultural setting through practice. For instance, one of the contributors, Patricia Rodrigues de Souza becomes part of the Umbanda spiritual practice of making sacred objects. De Souza realises that the bodily knowledge of creating something of sacred value is acquired during the making of the object- the intimacy of which is in turn linked to the process of becoming a devotee.

The first part titled “Making the Innermost” contains three essays where the efficacy of belief and intimacy is analysed with respect to the practices of spirituality, healing, and art that are centred around the body- the ‘innermost’- through which the most intimate emotions can be experienced. The essay, “Inexpressible Reading: The Efficacious Non-discursivity of Drinking the Qur’an” by Hanna Nieber is the author’s ethnographic analysis of healing practices in Zanzibar. Nieber analyses the use of the medicine kombe which is “water that contains Quranic verses” (p. 27). The practice of drinking kombe for healing is characterised by its non-discursivity- the absence of a visible text- which makes it difficult for people to describe the experience itself. Nieber offers an “affective reading” (p. 29) to understand this inexpressibility by looking into their conceptions of the body or mwili that through its residing life forces interprets the verses and brings their healing power into effect. 

The second part named “Techniques and Rituals of Intimacy” focuses on the effects generated through social practices. The four ethnographic essays in this section explore this through their accounts of artistic performance from France, ritual enactment in India, ceremonial textiles in Indonesia, and considerate or thoughtful (kokoro-dzukai) practices in Japan. The distinguishing feature of each practice is the intricate relationship it holds with the belief systems of each society. Simashree Bora, in her essay “Rituals and riverine flows: Negotiating change in Majuli Island, Assam”, examines two rituals by the local communities where the efficacy of intimacy becomes apparent through ritual performance. The ecological landscape is crucial in this analysis as the riverine ecosystem has a bearing on the social lives, knowledge and belief systems of the local community comprising “fishermen, boatmen, potters, and goldsmiths” (p. 92) such that their ritual practices are oriented to the river and its processes which themselves are intertwined with the political, economic, and ecological circumstances of the communities.

The third part, called “Intimacies of (dis)Enchantment”, has four essays that take up the question of inequalities of power, especially relating to the forms of social control generated through regimes of capital and the nation-state. It discusses the responses to social control where intimacies arise through the reconfiguration of social relationships among people, living and nonliving entities as well as social imaginaries, thereby leading to the creation of “alternative worlds and futures” (p. 15). Elena Romashko’s chapter “Intimate with the Enemy: Nuclear Presence, Vernacular Art, and Post-Chornobyl Transformations” explores these reconfigurations among those affected by the nuclear explosion in Chornobyl in 1986. Focusing on the region of Polesie and its culture, Romashko discusses the efficacy of religious beliefs to cope with the displacement and ill effects caused by the explosion. The account shows how people made sense of the presence of radiation (something that they cannot directly perceive through their senses) in their lives through a reconfiguration of their spiritual beliefs to negotiate their environment as well as to create material objects like artwork.

With its rich collection of ethnographic accounts, this book offers to be an informative read for those interested in exploring themes related to material culture as well as belief and spirituality. It provides an enriching perspective on the role of belief and emotion in society, as what would usually be understood in terms of its effects on the individual, is analysed for its ability to relate with material changes and objects through social practice. Not only this, but the contributions place these practices and experiences within the questions of power and social change that connect the different essays in the volume. All these features contribute to making the methodological and conceptual themes developed in this book relevant for the upcoming research on the subject.

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Sumra Alam is a PhD Student at the Centre for the Study of Social Systems (CSSS), Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi.