"Efficacious intimacy" and the making of embodied worlds through belief practices

This article is written from an anthropological perspective that emphasizes making and motion in material culture studies as ways to understand the embodied, social aspects of religion. It summarizes key aspects of the ‘efficacious intimacy’ framework as developed by the author over the last decade, linking the bodily-and-material to subject, object, and worldmaking processes, affects and effects, and emphasizes the relevance of these ideas for the interdisciplinary study of material religion. The author draws extensively upon her previous publications and collaborations to trace the development of her ideas from ethnographic fieldwork on Hindu devotionality in India to the creation of a global digital platform, dedicated to innovation in material religion studies. In addition, belief practices from Brazil, Indonesia, and the U.S. are presented in contexts of decolonization, heritage, and care, suggesting other possible applications of the efficacious intimacy framework in the future. This article argues for a more rigorous and diverse theorization of embodiment in material religion that pays attention to context, interpretation, and the inclusion of scholars’ positionalities.