MAKE A PLACE – DWELL IN TIME
ethnographic field work. Her tales about entering the Bedouin society made me expect that I would “experience the place from a certain point of view shaped by my upbringing, gender, sexuality, and and not least my theoretical education” (Bratseth 2012). My father could not accompany me, as in Abu-Lughod's case, at least not physically. But my history and identity was with me and came in large part to influence my perception of KF. Like in other cultural groups and sub-groups, the KF members consciously and unconsciously transmitted and imitated or resisted as part of the socialization among members. Scheper-Huges and Lock (1987) has made a tripartite distinction between the 'individual body' (Husserl's Leib, or lived, self referential body), the 'social body' (which engages in semiotic, representational performance) and 'body politic' (the social control of bodies, individual and collective). Looking at the connections between these three aspects of the body, the social control may, for instance, dictate the wearing of a habit. This symbol of consecrated life, which may determine the wearer's experience of him or herself as a particular type of person (like a member), who has particular types of (spiritual) experience. As stated by Mauss (1979), “attention to bodily techniques or habitus – the acquired ability and faculty, is a fruitful way to approach the study of religious culture” (Mauss 1973). In accordance with the phenomenological tradition habitus is seen as a “lived-through structure-in-process, and the product of the power and pre-reflective tendency of the body subject to habituate and maintain structures and experience that has proven valuable or useful” (Crossley 2004:39-40; Merleau-Ponty 1962). Staying with people who wanted to make me feel like “family”, who wanted to make me see the world like they did, I started to act as them (figure 4, 5 and 6 as examples). This chapter is used to explore the transmission of KF culture not to write an autobiography. In KF, like in Focolare Movement (Bowie 2003:55) and other religious groups, the way we dressed and ornamented ourselves, how we smiled and moved around became part of an external performance of bodily techniques. In the context of a spiritual environmental community in Japan a shared experience were mediated through habitus. The lines I will follow tells of being in KF.
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