Making sense of the paranormal: the interactional construction of unexplained experiences.

Ironside, Rachael; Wooffitt, Robin

Abstract

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.

Citation

IRONSIDE, R. and WOOFFITT, R. 2021. Making sense of the paranormal: the interactional construction of unexplained experiences. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan [online]. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88407-9

• Book Type: Monograph
• Online Publication Date: Jan 4, 2022
• Publication Date: Dec 31, 2021
• Deposit Date: Jun 1, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 1, 2024
• Publisher: Springer
• ISBN: 9783030884062; 9783030884079
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88407-9
• Keywords: Parapsychology; Conversation analysis; Anomalous event; Sense-making practices; Social interaction
• Public URL: https://rgu-repository.worktribe.com/output/1563398
• Additional Information: The file accompanying this record is a representative chapter. The full work can be purchased from the publisher's website: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88407-9.
• Contract Date: Jul 22, 2020