Making Sense of the Paranormal: The Interactional Construction of Unexplained Experiences - Hardcover

Ironside, Rachael; Wooffitt, Robin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 3030884066 ISBN 13: 9783030884062

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022

Synopsis

This book is a study of how people collaboratively interpret events or experiences as having paranormal features, or as evidence of spiritual agency. The authors study recordings of paranormal research groups as they conduct real life investigations into allegedly haunted spaces and the analyses describe how, through their talk and embodied actions, participants collaboratively negotiate the paranormal status of the events they experience.By drawing on the study of the social organisation in everyday interaction, they show how paranormal interpretations may be proposed, contested and negotiated through conversational and embodied practices of the group. 

The book contributes to the sociology of anomalous experience, and explores its relevance  to other social science topics such as dark tourism, participation in religious spaces and practices, and the attribution of agency. This book will therefore be of interest to academics and postgraduate researchers of languageand social interaction; discourse and communication, cultural studies; social psychology, sociology of religious experience; parapsychology, communication and psychotherapy.

About this title

About the Author

Rachael Ironside is Senior Lecturer at Robert Gordon University, Scotland. Her research interests include social interaction and anomalous experience. She has also published more widely on the role of supernatural folklore and how it impacts our experience and understanding of place and cultural heritage. 

Robin Wooffitt is Professor of Sociology at the University of York, UK. He is interested in language, interaction, and anomalous experiences. He is author or co-author of eight books.

From the Back Cover

This book is a study of how people collaboratively interpret events or experiences as having paranormal features, or as evidence of spiritual agency. The authors study recordings of paranormal research groups as they conduct real life investigations into allegedly haunted spaces and the analyses describe how, through their talk and embodied actions, participants collaboratively negotiate the paranormal status of the events they experience. By drawing on the study of the social organisation in everyday interaction, they show how paranormal interpretations may be proposed, contested and negotiated through conversational and embodied practices of the group. 

The book contributes to the sociology of anomalous experience, and explores its relevance  to other social science topics such as dark tourism, participation in religious spaces and practices, and the attribution of agency. This book will therefore be of interest to academics and postgraduate researchers of language and social interaction; discourse and communication, cultural studies; social psychology, sociology of religious experience; parapsychology, communication and psychotherapy.

Edition details

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 3030884066
• ISBN 13: 9783030884062
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 151