Actants and their complexity: Between thinning thick actants and thickening thin actants

This chapter focuses on therapeutic networks built around “thick actants,” that is to say, actants endowed with a relatively high degree of intentionality, feelings, some degree of consciousness, and the capacity to become central actors of moral regimes, defining good and evil. In particular, it discusses the trajectories of three women (two from Buenos Aires and one from Rio de Janeiro) deeply involved in charismatic forms of Christianity, popular forms of Catholicism and curanderismo. Their therapeutic networks mobilize thick actants, constructing a highly relational notion of personhood that is in sharp contrast with fundamental concepts related to “therapeutic culture.”