Transpersonal Ether: personhood, family and religion in modern societies

Abstract This article consists of a theoretical review of the conjunction between lived experience of family belonging and religious encompassment in modern societies, resorting to data resulting from a comparative study of personhood, family and religion in urban Brazil, concentrated in a network of upper social strata and in a medical context of palliative care. In both contexts people move in what may be called a “transpersonal ether”, a complex enmeshing of personhood in kinship and religious experiences that far exceeds the limits of the rational, autonomous, units privileged by hegemonic scientific knowledge and individualistic ideology. Our interest is to contribute to the understanding of the processes and characteristics of the “extended self” in general modern conditions and to explore the circumstances in which these dimensions tend to become more explicit, as phenomenological limits and counterparts to the individualization and disenchantment that has characterized Western modernity.