Theoretical Appliqué and Comparative Contextualization in Cristina Rocha ’ s

This article looks at two sorts of conceptual work in Cristina Rocha’s John of God: The Globalization of Brazilian Faith Healing (2017): theoretical appliqué and comparative contextualization. The first involves using an ad hoc set of concepts to set out series of partial interpretations. Despite not offering one unified interpretation, this approach has the advantages of respecting the complexity of the case and indicating a range of relevant interpretative pathways. The second involves the standard work, in the study of religion, of placing the religious movement or other object of study in relation to its religious landscape, influences and competitors, by comparing and contrasting beliefs and practices. Though the book would be better if both of these dimensions of conceptual work had been pushed further, Rocha’s theoretical appliqué is worth considering for its value as a model for other work. The goal of this article is to highlight the value of theoretical appliqué and to suggest how it could be done effectively.


Introduction
This is a review article with a meta-theoretical agenda. 2 It takes Christina Rocha's book (2017) on the the John of God movement and its foreign participants as a jumping off point for an exploratory discussion of the place of theory in the ethnography of spirit incorporation/possession.The many strengths and few weaknesses of Rocha's book offer hints about best-practice work with theory.I focus on a single book because my topic is not spirit work but scholarly writing about it.Rocha's book asks how healing comes to be -efficacious cross-culturally‖ (73).Its main answer is that -cultural translators‖ -glocalize‖ John of God's cosmology for transnational consumption (5,11,23,24,151,152,153,164,226).A variety of insightful and valuable points are made over the course of the book, and readers come away with a solid sense of the beliefs, practices and religious context of the John of god movement, and of its appeal to non-Brazilians.My focus here is on the conceptual work: how does Rocha try to make sense of her subject?I argue that her approach offers a different but valuable model for theorizing religion, and spirit incorporation/possession more specifically.This agenda makes this article a somewhat hybrid form of academic writing: part review essay and part independent meta-theoretical contribution.I look in depth at Rocha's book in order to argue that its conceptual work could be developed and extended to yield a more general approach to working with theory.This approach can be especially effectively for studying spirit work (incorporation, possession, etc.).
I use the word -theoretical appliqué‖ to describe this approach to using theory that I find -between the lines -in Rocha's book. 3 This is a neologism, and this is justified because the potential contribution to discussion of theory is distinctive.Appliqué is -ornamental needlework in which small decorative pieces of fabric are sewn or stuck on to a fabric or garment to form a pattern or trim....‖ (Oxford English Dictionary).The basic idea of the metaphor is that scattered pieces are placed alongside each other to invoke an overall image or pattern: the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.Here, ‗appliqué' refers to the way that distinct theoretical frames are juxtaposed in one analysis in order to evoke a more general interpretation, one that is particular to the case at hand.It is not a way to apply a single theory: it is the use of elements of a variety of theoretical perspectives, brought to bear in response to the case itself.This ad hoc meta-theoretical stance warrants the distinct technical term.Other established terms -‗definition,' ‗analysis,' ‗framework,' ‗bricolage' etc. -have established meanings that differ from the one I invoke; they thus fail to pinpoint the core issue of juxtaposing theoretical frames in the context of a specific case to broader interpretive effect.The word ‗mosaic' suggests itself: but the elements of a mosaic have no relevant meaning before being put in place: they are atoms used to make a pattern.Appliqué transposes elements with meaning in one context into a new context, that of the case at hand: it takes pieces of existing fabric, with their own colours, textures and patterns, and combines these into a new whole.It is the conjunction of those two features -bringing together different theoretic elements, and doing so in response to the case under study -that leads me to propose the technical term, theoretical appliqué.
My argument thus starts with Rocha's book but extends beyond it.On the one hand, theoretical appliqué is implicit in the book.On the other hand, Rocha does not use it self-consciously and, I will suggest, the book would could have been even more successful if it developed that model more.It provides important food for thought regarding how it is that we think and write about religious traditions, and this article is an attempt to further that discussion.

The book and its conceptual work
John of God-João de Deus-is an internationally famous Brazilian faith healer.He was born João Teixeira de Faria in 1942 in a small village in Brazil's central-western state of Goiás and discovered a talent for healing in his late teens; in 1979, he moved to the small town of Abadiânia, Goiás, 100 km.southwest of Brasília, where he established the Casa de Dom Inácio (Saint Ignatius of Loyala's House) (55)(56)(57).He heals with both -invisible‖ and -visible‖ surgery, the latter involving patients' -having their flesh cut, their eyes scraped with a kitchen knife, or their nostrils poked with surgical scissors with no asepsis or anesthetic‖ (79, 8).
In the last 15 years, the perceived success of healings at the Casa and related sites has resulted in tens of thousands of Brazilians and, increasingly, foreigners, visiting Abadiânia in -a mix of spiritual and medical tourism‖ (137).He has been visited by important figures in the New Age and self-help movements (e.g., Shirley MacLaine, Ram Dass, Wayne Dyer), visited and featured by Oprah Winfrey, and discussed, often critically, by journalists in Brazil and abroad.Books and documentaries have appeared around the world; tour guides market tours in various languages; and the healer has appeared at healing events in Australia, Austria, Germany, Greece, New Zealand, Switzerland and the USA (2-3).
The book is based on a decade of research, with fieldwork and interviews in Abadiânia and abroad.Portions of the book have been published previously in various articles and chapters (Rocha 2009;2010;2013;2015;2016). Rocha's own positioning and participant and observer is explicit.She gives abundant details of her fieldwork and reflects deeply and insightfully on her trajectory as participantobserver, including John of God's (successful?unsuccessful?)attempt to heal her own serious health problem.Her task of studying the foreigners who visit a Brazilian healer was facilitated-though interestingly also hampered at points-by the fact that she is Brazilian (M.A., Universidade de São Paulo) but based since 1998 at Western Sydney University in Australia, where she did her Ph.D. and is currently an Associate Professor.She writes sympathetically, less critically than some readers might wish: -if people tell me that they have been healed by religious practices ... I accept it‖ (16).
Though Rocha calls her book an -ethnography of the John of God movement,‖ her focus in not on the movement itself but on how non-Brazilians come to understand it (228)4 : What attracts foreigners to John of God's cosmology and healing practices?How do they understand their own experiences (of healing or lack of healing) at the Casa de Dom Inácio?How do these radical experiences of the sacred transform people's lives?How well do John of God's cosmology, sacred objects, and healing practices travel, and how are they localized in different ways in the West?How are conflicts ironed out when foreigners' worldviews and John of God's cosmology do not dovetail?(4) She suggests that -John of God's striking healing methods‖ provide three things: -hope when biomedicine has given up on them‖; -a sense of community‖; and -a radical experience of the sacred‖ (8-9, original emphasis; see 104-105).
The book is a useful and largely successful ethnography, well written and rich with detail.
There are two different types of conceptual work going on in the book.I discuss each briefly in the following two paragraphs.A critical discussion of each takes up the remainder of the article.
The first type of conceptual work is what I call ‗theoretical appliqué.'It is a patchwork approach to theory that uses different conceptual swatches to evokerather than rigorously develop-a broader interpretive design. 5Where quilt makers create an image by stitching small pieces/swatches of fabric alongside and over each other -using the technique called ‗appliqué' -scholars of religion might consider working with elements of different theoretical perspectives, juxtaposed in a manner that is responsive to the case, not imposed from above like a mold or Horizonte, Belo Horizonte, v. 16, n. 49, p. 223-256, jan./abr. 2018-ISSN 2175-5841 228 lens.This is implicit in Rocha's book, and this article aims to draw that out and recommend it as a more general technique for working with theory.
Rocha's work here is unusual, both because of the range of conceptual frames that is used, and because there is little attempt to produce a unified theoretically informed interpretation by forming those conceptual elements into a coherent whole.The variety of conceptual lenses produces a kaleidoscopic interpretation that is both a strength and a weakness.Rocha's ability to integrate a variety of concepts and theoretical elements into her analysis is exceptional, and this makes the book consistently engaging, insightful and thought provoking.Some of the conceptual frames work together very effectively and productively; others less so.The concepts are often introduced by citing major theoretical figures, e.g., Thomas Csordas, Pierre Bourdieu and Homi K. Bhabha, but the perspectives of these scholars are not developed or applied.These tensions and the divided focus means that no line of interpretation is as well developed as it could be.Different readers might see this either as a problem with theorizing or as an innocuous sideeffect of a rich discussion.It is a bit of both and something more.On the downside, no well-developed interpretive frame is presented to the reader, because none of the conceptual approaches is developed very far.On the up-side, the theoretical appliqué presents readers with a whole series of theoretical affordances, points at which a much broader range of valuable insights are hinted at, and at which readers could further interpret that material on their own.Like appliqué in the textile sense, a sense of a larger image is evoked by the juxtaposition of these discrete conceptual swatches.This technique could have been even more effective if used more self-consciously, if the interpretive possibilities of different conceptual frames had been pointed out more explicitly, and if the nature and value of the broader and necessarily unfocused interpretation that resulted were spelled out more clearly.
The second type of conceptual work is the kind of contextualization that readers would expect in any ethnographic study of a new religious movement: placing it in relation to its religious landscape, influences and competitors, by comparing and contrasting beliefs and practices.Rocha notes, for example, that John of God's ‗cosmology' is rooted to some extent in Umbanda and that the ability of non-Brazilians to make (limited) sense of that cosmology reflects previous exposure to New Age beliefs and practices, given that these are also found in the John of God movement.I will suggest that Rocha could have pushed further in this comparative work, underlining this point by briefly comparing Rocha's book to a more descriptive ethnography of spirit incorporation/possession.I argue that the limitations of the book's comparative work reflect tensions with the second register of conceptual work, its use of a wide variety of conceptual frames (i.e., its theoretical appliqué).
These two conceptual approaches are related: the standard, descriptive comparative work is supported by Rocha's choice to use the various concepts that she works with in a fairly standard register.If she had worked with a more radical theoretical frame-perhaps pushing the post-colonial line that she hints at at various points-the issue of mutual relations between religious traditions and preexisting cultures would have been less relevant, if not contradictory.There is a payoff from her choice to hint at a broad, plural, inchoate theoretically informed interpretation, rather than to develop a single line: we learn more about the religious landscape of Brazil and how it interacts with the religious background of foreign participants in the John of God movement.The interplay between these two conceptual approach could have been more effective if pushed further.

Theoretical appliqué
Paying attention to the conceptual work in Rocha's John of God leads to valuable points about how theory works in the study of religions.If this were simply a book review, it would be finished by now.But looking at the way different concepts are used in the book highlights an important question.Is it better to close off one's interpretation by pushing a single a coherent and consistent interpretive frame, or to show readers a more kaleidoscopic range of conceptual approaches, an interpretative mosaic or appliqué?Is it better to give the impression of wrapping things up neatly for readers--We will make sense of this case just so‖-or give a less polished sense of competing perspectives, hinting at paths not taken but which readers might wish to contemplate or even follow up themselves?More than any book I have read, Rocha models the latter approach.I will briefly discuss eight conceptual frames that form part of the book's theoretical appliqué: (i) tourism, (ii) globalization/glocalization, (iii) modernity, (iv) healing, (v) culture, (vi) habitus and embodiment, (vii) hybridity, and (viii) cultural translation.(Others could be added to the list, e.g., agency, authority, privatization and sacred/supernatural.)These draw on different sets of literature and they interact to varying extents.By pushing further, the analysis could have synthesized elements of all three to produce a more original interpretation.In addition, some of these frames are presented in an ambivalent way: e.g., the themes of body, healing and hybridity are introduced by citing the work scholars who use the concepts to radically challenge standard conceptions; but Rocha's analysis then proceeds by reading the concepts in a standard not radical way.Even so, there are interesting advantages to this approach, as the theoretical appliqué opens up a variety of potential interpretive pathways for readers.
The first conceptual frame is tourism.Work on religion and tourism is cited to support the claim that -Abadiânia is a node in a global network of pilgrimage sites, which has made it more like other pilgrimage sites than like a rural town in central Brazil‖ (131).This literature is used mainly to characterize both the reasons that -Western‖ or -foreign spiritual tourists‖ come to Brazil and the complexity of their relations with Brazilian residents (5,107,110,144).As a -touristic borderzone,‖ Abadiânia is -a site of creative cultural coproduction and of struggle‖ (112, drawing on Edward M. Bruner).Because the book focuses almost exclusively on foreign spiritual tourists, an opportunity was lost to compare their New Age motivation to the mainly Kardecist frame that motivates Brazilian spiritual tourists.6 Similarly, the distinction between spiritual tourists and the seriously ill who seek a cure is recognized but not developed (e.g., 224).The book makes a straightforward descriptive appeal to religion-and-tourism publications, where that literature could have provided more interpretive leverage, especially in light of important, relevant publications that were not mentioned or cited (e.g., Ivakhiv 2003; Rountree 2006; Timothy and Olsen 2006; Stausberg 2011; Voigt and Pforr   2013).For example, intersections between ‗pilgrimage' and ‗tourism' are limited to description (e.g., 23, 112, 123, 132, 137, 176, 225, 230).
A second set of framing concepts is rooted in studies of globalization: global/local/glocal phenomena (-homogenizing global impulses‖ vs. -heterogenizing local forces‖ [111]), diaspora, transnational connections, deterritorialization/reterritorialization, etc.This informs a claim that -global cities are not the only places profoundly transformed by globalization; smaller towns also may participate in this process and become centers of international flows‖; -local attachments to fixed paces, such as Abidiânia, are intrinsic to the process of globalization‖ (112,196).This set of concepts is used mainly to re-describe the material-to highlight its international dimensions-but it is not really used to cast light through interpretation, beyond rehearsing the globalization/glocalization distinction in a Brazilian context (see Engler, 2011a).
Discussions of globalization are linked to third conceptual frame, ‗modernity.' Rocha relates (i) modern/late modern -nostalgia‖ and -dissatisfaction with the present‖ (168) in -the West‖ (4, 5, 19, 23-5, 97, 156, 215) and -the Global North‖ (4,24,123,126,132, to (ii) foreigners' -imaginary of Abadiânia and the Casa as pre-modern‖ (170).This leads to a conclusion that -the Casa and Abadiânia function as the homeland for a diasporic imagined community of 6 Spiritualism, referred to later in this article, is the American tradition of spirit work (séances, turning tables, etc.) that began with the Fox sisters in 1848 and which remains prominent in the UK, Canada and Iceland and other countries.(There are only a small number of practitioners in Brazil today.)Spiritisme is the distinct French tradition that emerged from Spiritualism and which is found throughout Europe and in many places abroad; it is rooted in the works of Allan Kardec [Hippolyte Léon Denizard Rivail, 1804-1869], Léon Denis , Gabriel Delanne  and others.It is more theoretically developed than Spiritualism, e.g., with a core emphasis on the concept of reincarnation.I use 'Kardecist' to refer to the more religious, healing-oriented form, Kardecist Spiritism, that is found throughout Latin America, especially Brazil.It is useful to reserve 'Spiritism' for the broader set of religious traditions formed by hybridization between Kardecism and Indigenous, Afro-Latin-American, and esoteric traditions.On the latter distinction, between Kardecism and Spiritism, see Engler and Isaia 2016, Engler forthcoming-a., Belo Horizonte, v. 16, n. 49, p. 223-256, jan./abr. 2018-ISSN 2175-5841 232 adherents dispersed around the world‖ (167).The theme of modernity is used to offer an explanation for the motivating force of the John of God movement's international appeal: -It is the recurring feeling of nostalgia for the locale that motivates people to establish transnational connections when they are abroad....

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[I]n late modernity, people long for an idealized, cohesive and stable past as a refuge form the uncertain, insecure and rapidly changing world‖ (196).However, much more could have done with ‗modernity,' especially by connecting it to the post-colonial concept of ‗hybridity,' as discussed below.
‗Healing' is a fourth conceptual frame.Rocha cites Csordas to support her approach to -healing as a cultural process‖ (23,73,83,223), and she adds her -voice to those scholars who have decentered biomedicine and Western rationality‖ ( 222).Yet she draws a methodological rather than theoretical lesson, following his -suggestion that researchers focus on people's stories of healing and transformation rather than the healer's practices‖ (104).In the end, the concept of healing is used in a relatively untheorized manner in the book.
This evokes ‗culture' as a fifth conceptual frame, related to ‗cultural translation,' which is discussed below.Given the discussion of Csordas, we might expect ‗culture' to emphasize a broader, embodied dimension.Csordas himself argues that -the body is the existential ground of culture‖ and this leads him to a particular view of ‗culture': he views -culture not only in terms of symbols, schemas, traits, rules, customs, texts, or communication, but equally in terms of sense, movement, intersubjectivity, spatiality, passion, desire, habit, evocation, and intuition‖ (Csordas, 2002, p. 87, 4).But Rocha does not emphasize this embodied sense of ‗culture.'On the one hand, she cites post-colonial theorists to frame culture as relational and fluid: cultures -are neither discrete nor autonomous‖; -culture is always hybrid‖ (20,111).And she rejects a simplistic linkage of culture and nation: -we cannot homogenize national cultures‖ (20); foreigners do not encounter some monolithic Brazilian culture in Abadiânia.On the other hand, the book works with a fairly traditional sense of ‗culture,' framed primarily in conceptual and geographically-rooted terms, and the variety of uses leaves the concept's purchase somewhat unclear.Rocha writes of -cultural forms,‖ -cultural paradigms,‖ -cultural systems,‖ -cultural setting,‖ -cultural identity,‖ -cultural coproduction,‖ -local culture,‖ -Anglo culture,‖ -popular culture,‖ and -communities within cultures,‖ with a nod to -material culture‖ (158,220,97,84,35,132,14,133,144,151,162,231) Rocha seems to universalize the hybridity of culture, which occludes important issues.If all cultures are hybrids, and all hybrids are third spaces, then how do we characterize the place of difference that hybrid cultures occupy?What are the One and the Other, if all cultures are in between?While it makes sense to note that all cultures are hybrid, there are differences between modes of hybridity (Engler, 2006;2009;2015).
Though Rocha cites Bhabha as her warrant for talking of the hybridity of cultures, her analysis stands in tension with his views.For Bhabha, colonial culture is hybrid in a distinct way, as is contemporary culture.His colonial discourse analysis makes power the criterion for distinguishing between the third space of migrants and the dominating, colonial cultures that they resist.His focus on hybridity and liminality explores the tension between the illusory stability of the colonial discourse of pure cultures and the agency of the oppressed, the colonized.
Hybridity is a problematic of colonial representation and individuation that reverses the effects of the colonialist disavowal, so that other ‗denied' knowledges enter upon the dominant discourse and estrange the basis of its authority-its rules of recognition.... What is irremediably estranging in the presence of the hybrid ... is that the difference of cultures can no longer be identified or evaluated as objects of epistemological or moral contemplation: cultural differences are not simply there to be seen or appropriated.(Bhabha, 1994, p. 114).
For Bhabha, to talk of hybridity is to talk of situations of contested authority and to foreground the third space as a site of destabilization, displacing existing structures of authority and the discourse of mixed anterior purities, producing rather than echoing cultures.
For Rocha, by contrast, cultures are prior to mixture, and cultural differences are there to be seen.This premise underlies her uses of ‗hybridity' and, more importantly, her comparative work (discussed in the following section) that looks at influences of different Brazilian traditions and the international New Age on the John of God movement.The value of the latter would be undermined if she took a less standard take on culture.and a certain mode of modernization is hybridity.To call these all ‗hybridity' is to empty the concept of all but a general sense of mixture between existing phenomena.Where precisely is the third space?Who is resisting what dominant, colonizing discourse?Rocha focuses both on the agency of John of God himself as the movement's leader and on the agency of foreigners, those who come from abroad to visit and those who act as cultural and religious mediators in Abidiânia.
This makes sense insofar as her goal is to offer a typical ethnography of the movement.But it underlines that her nod to post-colonial theory serves not to support the analysis but to hint at a path not taken.These two views reflect two different academic literatures on cultural translation: social anthropology and post-colonial cultural studies respectively (Pym, 2009, p. 139-149; see Asad, 1993Asad, [1986]]; Bhabha, 1994, p. 212-235).Given her nod to postcolonial conceptions of hybridity, readers might expect Rocha to take the postcolonial line on cultural translation, but-as with ‗hybridity'-she takes a more standard line.
Rocha does not discuss or cite any works that deal with the concept of cultural translation, with the exception on one post-colonial literary scholar, with whom she takes issue:7 Huggan (2001: 24) notes that cultural translation means ‗not so much a process of convergence, mutual intellection ... but rather the superimposition of a dominant way of seeing, speaking and thinking onto marginalised peoples and the cultural artifacts they produce.'However, I argue that this is not the whole story.On a related note, Rocha -also investigates instances of ‗friction' ... and ‗cultural untranslatability'‖ (5, drawing on Anna Tsing and Tulasi Srinivas).
Untranslatability occurs in -cases ... in which the cosmology of the Casa cannot be translated into an alternative frame of interpretation‖ (158).For Rocha, -cultural translators defuse situations of potential friction‖: -instances of friction may be generated when foreigners' expectations of Abidiânia may be generated when foreigners' expectation of Abidiânia as an unpolluted, pristine, and sacred site do not eventuate, or when spiritual tourists come face to face with the Casa's Catholicism or spiritist concepts, such as ‗obsession,' which are hard to translate into New Age spirituality‖ (152,135).
‗Untranslatability' is a central concept in Bhabha's work, and this is another point at which Rocha could have drawn on post-colonial theory but chose not to.
For Bhabha, untranslatability is about the resistance of migrants and those in intercultural, third space positions: -The migrant culture of the ‗in-between', the minority position, dramatizes the activity of culture's untranslatability....‖; -the anxiety of the irresolvable, borderline culture of hybridity ... [evokes], at once, the time of cultural displacement, and the space of the ‗untranslatable'- (Bhabha 1994, 224, 225, original emphasis).For Rocha, -untranslatable spheres‖ are characterized by a more straightforward problem of representing the unfamiliar in terms that are culturally familiar (164).But all that is to see the glass as half empty, where I prefer to see it as threequarters full.As a group, these concepts highlight various facets of the John of God movement: local, global, Brazilian, foreign, discursive, practical, healing-focused, a site of international movements and of cross-cultural boundary work, shaped by the push and pull of different interests, shaped by modernity and framed by imaginaries of the pre-modern.The range of concepts that Rocha applies in describing and interpreting her subject succeeds in conveying to readers these many facts and something of their inter-relations.To have champion one or two of the concepts that form her theoretical appliqué would produce a more unified interpretation, but at what price?Rocha is right to insist that the John of God movement is more complex than that approach would suggest.Her theoretical appliqué honours that complexity.
My critique is not that this polyvalent use of concepts, this smorgasbord of potential interpretive paths, is the wrong way to go.Quite the contrary, I think it offers a valuable model for scholars of religion to consider My critique is that the theoretical appliqué did not go far enough.Pushing just a bit bit farther down each interpretive path, and flagging potential intersections between the various lines that are hinted at, would have helped readers in two ways.They would get a clearer picture of the complex, polymorphous interpretation that the appliqué evokes through its juxtaposition of conceptual frames.And they would see their way more clearly to following up one or two of these lines on their own, if so inclined.
As an example of how the book's theoretical appliqué could be usefully extended, Bhabha's take on hybridity involves his claim that the discourse of colonialism is linked to modernity.Rocha points to -the trope of the ‗happy primitive'-(143, see 112, 133; citing Edward M. Bruner): -Brazil becomes the primitive, traditional, exotic Other‖; -foreign tour guides ‗hook' the healer's practices to a Western imaginary of the developing world, and Brazil in particular, as a primitive, traditional, exotic place in which spirituality is present in everyday life‖ (134,23).This valuable point is treated as part of a play of perceptions, of marketing, albeit related discussion of cultural translation.Applying Bhabha's analysis here could highlight that these perceptions of Brazil as not-fully-modern indicate something more interesting.The John of God movement's international dimension could be read not in terms of hybridity-as mixture, but as an index of the inherently complex hybridity of modernity itself, of colonial origins bubbling to the surface, of resistance to modernity modes of knowledge.To give another example, if Rocha had engaged Bhabha's concept of ‗hybridity' she would have been in a position to offer a valuable critique, because the John of God movement occupies a different sort of third space, where the colonizers are in (at least temporary) diaspora, and where the power relations implicit in cultural translation are more complex.That engagement might have led to push the concepts of cultural translation and untranslatability further, perhaps by engaging with Wolgang Iser's more dynamic and relation view that -all translations produce a residual untranslatability that can only be narrowed down in the act of interpretation‖ (Iser, 2000, p. 185).
Theoretical appliqué has great potential value for dealing with religious movement in their complexity, without the one-sided and reductionist views that can emerge from pushing one's case through the colander of a single conceptual frame or theoretical approach.But, to capitalize fully on that approach, it is necessary to develop the concepts farther.
This illustrates the complex relation between the two conceptual agendas in the book-theoretical appliqué and comparative contextualization.Rocha's emphasis on ‗cultural translation' leads her to analyze New Age elements in this narrow context: the New Age movement is presented mainly as a -foreign‖ phenomenon: -foreigners' attraction to and understanding of John of God's healing system is due to their own habitus being inflected by a New Age ... worldview‖ (10).
More importantly though, the book does not look at the other side of things: at the presence of New Age in Brazil.The choice to present the Casa cosmology narrowly as rooted in Kardecism, Umbanda and Catholicism downplays its resonance with a broad range of New Age and esoteric groups in Brazil.(It is not Afro-Brazilian-style Umbanda but esoteric Umbanda with New Age influences that informs such therapeutic techniques as crystal beds.)Rocha notes that -Umbanda and Kardecism ... have been incorporating New Age and alternative medicine concepts and practices‖ (71) but this does not go far enough in acknowledging the prominent presence of New Age sensu lato in Brazil.Andrew Dawson's New Era-New Religions (2016[2007]) and Anthony D'Andrea's O self-perfeito e a Nova Era (2000) are cited but not used to develop this point; various relevant Brazilian publications do not appear (e.g., Amaral, 2000;Magnani, 1999;2000;Tavares 2003;Maluf, 2005;Steil and Sonemann, 2013;see de la Torre, Gutiérrez Zuñiga, andJuárez Huet, eds. 2016 [2013]).terms that happen to form the discourse of an area, field or discipline.This contextualization may be optional when using certain narrow theoretical perspectives, but it is essential when pursuing theoretical appliqué.

Assessing Theoretical Appliqué
The similarity between this meta-theoretical approach and grounded theory is a productive context within which to address issues of the consistency, coherence, end-point and assessment of the approach (see Engler 2011b, p. 262-267).Theoretical appliqué involves middle-level conceptual work within a holistic semantic context.It does not involve mixing high-level theories or over-arching meta-theoretical frames (no sewing finished quilts to finished quilts).
Assessment of the relative unity or coherence of the resulting appliqué must take into account the initial re-description of the case at hand -i.e., remaining faithful to the data.Its success or failure does not reflect the completeness or coherence of any of the theoretical frames that are drawn upon: e.g., it is not that Rocha's fails to move over/apply enough of Bourdieu's or Bhabha's theoretical apparatus, thus misrepresenting their theory; rather, she does not translate/move over enough of their "theory" to do justice to her case, thus potentially misrepresenting her data through an underdeveloped analysis.Assessing the degree of success of theoretical appliqué is always ad hoc -case-by-case -as the interplay between different conceptual elements will suggest paths of analysis to be explored.For example, more on embodiment would add to Rocha's analysis because (i) she is talking about healing and spirit-work, in which bodies are central (ethnographic field notes that failed to describe postures, gestures, movement, clothing, eye-contact, etc. would be non-starters) and (ii) embodiment is a midlevel conceptual lever in the work of two of the theorists she drew on, Csordas and Bourdieu.
Defending this view of theorizing in a more robust way would involve looking closely at the initial re-descriptive move.The risk of a vicious circularity raises its head when theoretical success is measured in relation to one's initial , Belo Horizonte, v. 16, n. 49, p. 223-256, jan./abr. 2018-ISSN 2175-5841 252 representation of a case (the religious phenomena themselves are always already re-described in scholarly work).This circularity is inevitable, but its viciousness can be avoided by choosing concepts that both highlight key features of the case and show multiple resonances between the theoretical concepts drawn upon.

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Theoretical appliqué generates a few key conceptual levers (embodiment, translation, culture, modernity in this case).In a manner strictly analogous to grounded theory, the claim that these are adequate or effective key concepts is not a priori but emerges from the ongoing process of doing the work of theorizing: working data, method and mid-level theory/concept work over and over until it starts to gel.This leaves readers with a challenging question about the purpose of theory.

Conclusion
Should we try to cut an interpretation out of whole cloth, aiming to be as coherent, consistent and complete as possible; or is it better to stitch blocks of conceptual fabric into a varied and textured appliqué that honours the complexity of one's subject, even if it leaves a few threads hanging loose?By training and preference, I would have insisted on the first when I sat down to read this book.Now I am not so sure.Though none of the conceptual frames was pushed as far as I would like, they all cast valuable light on the case.I came away with a richer sense of dialogue between Rocha's quilted analysis of her subject and my own work.Given Rocha's striking model of variegated, multi-vocal conceptual work, this would be a great book for graduate students to read, regardless of area, in order to practice thinking critically about conceptual work and theorizing.My criticisms here are aimed at highlighting how this approach could be done even more effectively.
Rocha uses ‗hybridity' in different ways that all hinge on a very general sense of a mixture of existing cultural forms: -modernity ... has taken root in the country[Brazil]  in multifarious ways as it hybridized with local traditions‖ (20); -John of God espouses a hybrid set of beliefs and practices‖; -This hybridity is not new in the Brazilian religious field, in which people may have multiple affiliations at once, move from one religion to another, or keep a main affiliation and use other religions when needed‖ (70-71); -the Casa is singular in the sense that the elements of each of these religions are arranged in a particular fashion, but it fits well in the Brazilian religious field in which hybridity is prevalent‖ (72).Modernity interacting with local traditions, the mixing of religious beliefs and practices, and affiliation in multiple religious groups are very different things.This is very far from Bhabha's sense of ‗hybridity,' leading readers to wonder about the point of that authorizing citation.The divergence is in part because the relative positioning of the players in the book is ambivalent: the mixture of two Brazilian religions is hybridity; the encounter between ‗Western' and Brazilian cultures is also hybridity; It is time to review the points that emerge from considering these eight conceptual frames (among others) at work in Rocha's John of God.None of these conceptual approaches is developed enough to offer anything like a complete, cohesive or coherent interpretation of the subject of the book.Yet any one of them could have been developed to offer that sort of unified frame.As the book stands, the reach of each concept limited.A very traditional sense of ‗culture' informs a more conservative and limited approach to conceptual work.The first three conceptual frames-religion and tourism, globalization / glocalization and modernity/ tradition-are all used to describe the John of God movement, and that (re-)description highlights significant aspects that could be central to a more developed analysis along each of those lines or their inter-relation.But the discussion stops for the most part at description.This allows for interesting insights: e.g., -John of God and the town of Abadiânia became sources of powerful global flows ... [demonstrating] that flows may depart from the Global South and shoot in different directions, not only toward the Global North‖ (225).But a more nuanced analysis in terms would offer more wide-reaching reflections, for example on social change in the face of processes of glocalization and the multiplicity of modernities (a concept that does not appear in the book), or on the nature and place of religion and healing today.Other conceptual frames (healing, habitus, hybridity, cultural translation) are introduced by pointing to scholars who have used them in challenging and even radical ways(Csordas, Bourdieu, Bhabha).Yet Rocha does not follow down any of these theoretical paths, placing almost no emphasis on themes like embodiment, power and diaspora.Why cite path-breaking scholars if you are not going to follow their paths?Rocha suggests that the postcolonial view is -not the whole story,‖ which suggests that her account will supplement it (140).In fact, it is a radically different story.Here decision not to write a work of post-colonial critique makes perfects sense, but the book would be stronger if she had at least sketched a vision of what that line of interpretation would look like, allowing readers to get a sense of the potential contribution of that element of the theoretical appliqué.In these and other ways, the book does not follow through with the concepts that it brings to the table.
This article looked at two sorts of conceptual work in Cristian Rocha's John of God: The Globalization of Brazilian Faith Healing (2017): theoretical appliqué and comparative contextualization.The first involves using an ad hoc set of concepts to set out series of partial interpretations.This has the disadvantage of not offering anything like a single coherent, cohesive, complete interpretation.It has the advantages of respecting the complexity of the case and indicating a range of relevant interpretative pathways, allowing readers to get a sense of those viewpoints and, potentially, to follow up themselves if they so choose.The second involves the standard work, in the study of religion, of placing the religious movement or other object of study in relation to its religious landscape, influences and competitors, by comparing and contrasting beliefs and practices.I argue that the book would be better if both of these dimensions of conceptual work had been pushed further.Despite this, the book is rich and valuable as it stands.Most importantly, Rocha's theoretical appliqué is worth considering for its value as a model for other work.It evokes a larger sense of theoretical possibilities, where a more customary scholarly approach would be to foreclose most interpretive possibilities in order to develop one.
But the ‗embodied' aspect of Bourdieu's concept is not developed.Rocha's choice to evoke but not work with Csordas' embodied view of healing and its relation to culture marked one point at which she declined to place weight on theorization of the body.In citing Bourdieu on habitus but not The key conceptual point is that cultures are increasingly globalized and transnational: -national cultures ... [have become] unmoored from the territory of the nation-state‖; -culture is deterritorialized and reterritorialized through the mobility of people, ideas, practices, material culture, finance, and through information and communication technologies‖ (225).In sum, Rocha's use of ‗culture' does offer important conceptual leverage-intersecting with other themes, like globalization and hybridity-but it is used diffusely, with more traditional understanding balancing off more recent approaches, e.g., embodied and postcolonial.‗Habitus,'asixthconceptualframe, also points toward, but does not develop, the issue of embodiment.‗Embodiment'doesnotcome into Rocha's analysis, and mentions of ‗body' are largely limited to New Age ideas of the body as expressed in interviews.Yet, she appeals explicitly to the concept of habitus, citing Bourdieu at various points: -foreigners' attraction to and understanding of John of God's healing system is due to their own habitus being inflected by a New Age ... ‗Habitus' is lifted out from Bourdieu's theoretical frame-swinging free of its core relation to ‗capital' and ‗field'-making it just a place-marker for a very general sense of ‗embodied disposition.'Culture is always hybrid.... [Globalization] is a process that entails a tension between homogenizing global impulses and heterogenizing local forces, creating hybrid cultures.ForBhabha (1994: 218-219), a hybrid is not simply a mixture of the two previous identities, but a ‗third space,' a place for ‗the negotiation of incommensurable differences, [...] where difference is neither One nor the Other but something else besides, in between.' (111) This emphasis on the agency of Brazilians-‖local people and John of God‖clouds the waters by equating cultural translation with -control of the process of religious expansion.‖She insists, after all, that it is foreigners in Abidiânia who are the agents of cultural translation.
Horizonte, Belo Horizonte, v. 16, n. 49, p. 223-256, jan./abr.2018-ISSN 2175-5841238 but Rocha chose not to develop that line of interpretation.She offers instead a version of the social anthropological view of cultural translation: representation of one culture in terms of and for members of another.That is fine as far as it goes, and it justifies the more descriptive and comparative work of laying out the John of God movement's relation to other religion traditions (discussed in the following section).That, after all, is something that most readers would expect in an ethnography of a new religious movement in a radically pluralistic religious landscape like Brazil's.
It seems as though the complex overlay of theoretical appliqué has distracted from the more traditional scholarly work of ticking off the boxes of comparison.More clarity and detail would be helpful for making sense of this In sum, the work of comparative contextualization is on the right track, but it does not go far enough.Given that ‗cultural translation' is given so much weight, readers need more on popular Catholicism, on New Age and esoteric movements in Bridges between Worlds is an ethnography of mediums and the spirits that they work with in Akureyri, a small city of close to 20,000 inhabitants in northernIceland (2016; see Engler, 2017b).In an -attempt to steer close to Icelandic experiences and understandings,‖ Dempsey's focus is on anecdotes by and about mediums and spirits.She does almost no explanatory or interpretive work: -This task of humanizing the unfamiliar is still not the same as explanation.I am emboldened-if not beholden-to stop short of explanation by practitioners who, as a matter of course, do the same‖(Dempsey, 2016, p. 11, 10).
Horizonte, Belo Horizonte, v. 16, n. 49, p. 223-256, jan./abr.2018-ISSN 2175-5841246 because ‗spirit possession' is not a concept that offers any interpretive leverage; it is a phenomenon that needs interpreting, and one that is notoriously hard to pin down theoretically.In fact, it has been something of a blank slate on which scholars write their passing concerns with theoretical vogues.As Janice Boddy noted in her well-known review essay from over two decades ago, -spirit possession has long