Witches, Healers, Identity Blenders: Understanding the Movement Cross-Affiliations of Reclaiming Socio-Religious Movement Participants

• In Event: 463 - Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 06. Gender and Religion in Social Movements

Abstract

This paper begins by examining the broader universe of religious and activist groups that might send and receive people to/from Reclaiming and the week-long “Intensive” recruiting and training events. Reclaiming encourages members to frame themselves as “magical activists” and to blend progressive social activism with feminist, magical religion. The movement uses what I refer to as an inclusive “and logic” which enables participants to label themselves as affiliated with “Reclaiming and” other groups or movements rather than creating an exclusive affiliation with a single movement. I discuss the contrast between the movement origins and destinations of Intensive participants after illustrating that Intensive event participants did not return to the exact same groups and movements that they reported being linked to prior to the event. The data used in this discussion come from a multi-method, multi-site study of Reclaiming Intensive events in the U.S. and Canada conducted between 2004 and 2007. I find that healing-related groups did not figure prominently into the inflow and outflow patterns, but people within the community did have connections to Reiki healing, training in massage, or professional identities as doctors, nurses, and medics. These people participated in healing work in their everyday lives and during the Intensive itself yet curiously they had not explicitly integrated healing into their magical activist identities. I conclude by arguing that in spite of these puzzling findings regarding healing the “and logic” does helps foster diversity within Reclaiming broadly and specific regional communities that run Intensive events.

Author

• Elizabeth A. Williamson, University of Chicago