"It's been said that Oaxacans "believe in images." Visual manifestations of saints and loved ones are a fundamental part of life there. Oaxacans also seem to have a special relationship with La Santa Muerte, a female reaper-like figure whose cult has grown rapidly as violence in Mexico has increased ... . In this book, Myriam Lamrani recontextualizes Santa Muerte within Mexican Catholicism by looking at how intimately devotees interact with images (including effigies, tattoos, artworks, photographs, even dreams) of the infamous saint. For Lamrani, focusing on the intimate modalities through which people interact with their images offers insight into religious, social, and political life, as well as anthropology itself. The "media turn" in anthropology often considers religion as mediation, and media as a bridge with the divine. Lamrani suggests that it is intimacy with (rather than mediation through) such images that make the dead, be they former humans (loved ones) or divine entities (Santa Muerte), present for the living. She is essentially using aesthetics and affect theory to make intimacy her theoretical frame, rather than visual analysis or the "media turn." The manuscript has six chapters divided into three sections. The first section explores what constitutes an image, how to move beyond the idea of it as medium, and how dreams play into these ideas. Part two unpacks her ideas about intimacy, particularly "devotional intimacy" and the "very special dead" (loved ones and saints). The final section covers how images transcend boundaries through different scales of intimacy, from an individual's devotion to their ofrenda (altar) to the Mexican nation's famously intimate relationship with death. A conclusion reflects on devotion to Santa Muerte in Mexico within the landscape of popular religion and political unrest, and summarizes the central argument of this book that "intimacy-understood as a scalable index of closeness which traverses all spheres of sociality-is an anthropological tool to make sense of how people "understand their worlds." (Publisher description) more

"This pioneering study examines television’s impact on an Amazonian river town from the first broadcasts in Gurupá, in 1983, to the present." (Publisher website)