ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the process of religious mediation. Individuals and local communities find ways to make the immaterial of religious life visible, tangible, visceral, and material. Beliefs are communicated, morals lived out, emotions expressed, and spirits manifest. The internal is externalized. The extra-human enters the realm of the very human. Mediation is a process that happens amid multiple social contexts: immediate ritual frames, local community life, regional politics, national economies, global flows, and historical tradition. An interest in mediation reflects the "media turn" in the anthropology of religion. Bodies are used to establish that the spirits are present, to make religious identities visible, and as a site of mastering devotional tradition. An anthropologists use food to unlock all manner of cultural puzzles, from what counts as food to the way dining practices reveal social structures and the symbolic power of food and eating. This chapter helps one to think about the deeply social nature of religious life.
