@article{ref1,
title="Failures of being The Christian promise of acceptance in Sinja, Nepal",
journal="HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory",
year="2022",
author="Poletti, S.",
volume="12",
number="3",
pages="872-888",
abstract="&quot;Being&quot; can be a heavy burden to carry in Sinja, Nepal. The lack of a given self comparable to the Christian soul makes the struggle for being a potentially life-threatening affair, especially when circumstances impede the fulfillment of social expectations. Suicides that flow from the incapacity to embody what a person is socially expected to be illustrate the phenomenological dimension of what &quot;social death&quot; might really mean for people whose being is articulated in and through webs of social ties. Conversion to Christianity provides social misfits with a community of fellow believers that promises to guarantee them a full-fledged presence in the world vis-à-vis the potentially devastating outcomes of an utter failure of being, yet which also poses entirely new chal-lenges. Ernesto de Martino's concept of &quot;presence&quot; captures the existential stakes of conversion better than sweeping tropes about the in/dividuality of personhood, circumventing the impasse faced by long-standing debates in the anthropology of Christianity. © 2022 The Society for Ethnographic Theory. All rights reserved.<p /><p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="2049-1115",
doi="10.1086/722034",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/722034"
}