Pain and suffering as part of religious life: The Mauritian Thaipusam kavadi
In a pop-science article published in Dingir, E. Kundtová Klocová discusses the various socio-cultural aspects of the Thaipusam Kavadi ritual as practiced in Mauritius.
A Research expedition to the island of Mauritius
In July 2018 team LEVYNA set out for its regular research expedition to the island of Mauritius, our primary field side. Together with other collaborators, we were collecting data for six different projects focused mainly on religious beliefs and behaviors.
Eva Kundtová Klocová led the project surveying people's perceptions of bodily postures involved in prayers as well as in other daily activities and their emotional associations. Peter Maňo spearheaded a survey researching devotees' reasons to participate in particular rituals, while also running an iPad based experiment (co-designed with Dimitris Xygalatas, Radek Kundt, and Eva) that looked at people's mating preferences in various religious and non-religious contexts. Jan Horský contributed immensely with the recruitment of participants and mentoring of local research assistants.
On top of that, we were lucky to join forces with Aiyana Willard from Brunel University to experimentally test her ideas regarding local witchcraft beliefs; and with Kirsten Lesage from the University of California who researched parents‘ and children's’ intuitions about diseases. Last, but not least, we teamed with Dimitris, the head of the Experimental Anthropology Lab at UConn, to help him run an experimental field study looking at people's bodily perceptions and the resulting social biases and inferences. In less than a month, we managed to recruit over 1000 participants, mostly thanks to our skilled research assistants from the psychology program at the University of Mauritius. In conclusion, 2018 has been a truly rewarding and fruitful field season.
