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Although liminal theory explains transitional periods in consumers' lives – such as preadolescence – the impact of these transitions on emotionally connected actors and the transformations that the latter endure have been largely overlooked. Through a qualitative study of the mothers of preteen girls, we show that liminality spills over and that mothers transform from fully needed to authoritative-friendly moms. During this process, these mothers engage in spilled-over liminal consumption (SOLC), which comprehends concomitantly loosely and creatively crafted rituals and new and re-signified routines. However, amid the process of assuming a new mother's role and helping their daughters' transformation, these mothers unreflectively reinforce traditional gender norms. Based on our findings, we discuss the process of SOLC and how it ends in reproducing gender and class-based stereotypes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study takes a process-oriented approach to answer the research question: how may long-standing religious festivals promote sustainable development by modifying various ritual elements? The contribution of one-time events to overarching long-term sustainability goals may be hindered predominantly by their transitory nature. Based on a case study, this research examines a 400-year-old annual Hindu festival, Durga Puja, as a potential contributor to sustainable development. The data comprises online news articles on the Durga Puja published between 2002 and 2022 in the Indian daily, The Times of India. Based on a thematic data analysis, the research findings highlight three processual themes related to altering various ritual elements: artefacts, scripts, performance roles and audience. These themes include subverting the patriarchal, adopting a proactive approach to invitation and facilitation, and incorporating visual storytelling. The study's findings have theoretical implications regarding the broader discussions on sustainability, such as sustainable development goals (SDGs) and the potential of festivals to contribute to them through ritual modifications. As such, festival organisers, policymakers and practitioners may find the study helpful in promoting sustainable development through ritual changes in festivals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of the origin of goodness in the Xunzi is an important key to understanding Xunzi’s thoughts. Current interpretation approaches are mainly divided into the sage-centered and Heaven-centered approaches. The sage-centered approach holds that goodness originates from the intelligence or the good potential of the sages. However, this explanation either conflicts with Xunzi’s idea that the gentleman and the petty man have the same endowment or with the theory of bad human nature. The Heaven-centered approach maintains that goodness originates from the Heaven or Dao. However, this approach leads to the problem of the rigidity of moral norms or contradiction with Xunzi’s naturalistic Heaven. In this paper, I point out a third approach, arguing that goodness originates from customs. This interpretation is compatible with Xunzi’s theory of bad human nature and naturalistic Heaven. Also, it avoids the problem of giving special humanity to the sages and the rigidity of moral norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consumer research has established a rich understanding of dominant consumption rituals, yet the tensions that emerge during celebratory rituals remain under-researched. Through the context of hen party rituals, we examine the emergent tensions in consumption rituals. Our insights are developed from in-depth interviews with hen party participants and netnography of Reddit forums on hen party planning and experiences. Our prioritisation of emergent tensions of rituals contributes to richer understandings of consumer ritual performance. We find consumers deploy self-policing as a form of boundary-work to reduce emergent tensions during ritual performance. We identify two forms of self-policing: shielding and remedying. In doing so, we contend that the evolution of hen party rituals can be both a celebration and a burden, steeped in feelings of anticipation and obligation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although rituals are commonplace in marketer-consumer interactions, extant research devotes limited attention to how 'marketplace actors' or MAs (marketers and stakeholders enacting the roles of marketers) leverage these events in the marketplace. We scrutinise this gap by examining literature in the top 50 major marketing journals. We ask: What functions do marketplace rituals fulfil for MAs, as they leverage these rituals when shaping customer experiences? Our analysis finds MAs leverage rituals to support seven broad functional categories that pertain to customer experience: cognitive, cultural, emotive, logistical, relational, social, and transformative. We illuminate how MAs leverage these functions to meet specific goals. We propose an agenda for future research on marketplace rituals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Newsworkers have utilised the game format to create innovative storytelling through newsgames, a hybrid form of journalism. Newsgames blend journalism's pursuit of truth with the fictional elements of video games, creating a tension between “fact” and “fiction”. Existing literature lacks sufficient exploration of how this tension is managed in the production and consumption of newsgames. This study addresses this gap by examining how newsgame practitioners navigate truth claims and how players engage with these claims. Through semi-structured interviews with practitioners (n = 27) and gaming sessions with players (n = 28), the study reveals that practitioners take deliberate steps to justify newsgames, while players employ various strategies to evaluate their truth claims. These findings underscore the performative dimension of truth negotiation in newsgames, positioning audiences as active participants at the heart of this process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID-19 has changed the way people grieve the loss of their loved ones. Lockdown and social isolation have made it difficult for them to express their grief and connect with others emotionally. Religious beliefs and attitudes towards health recommendations influence the viewpoints of people from various religious backgrounds. The Islamic traditions are the source of Islamic law’s prohibitions on death, yet Muslims across the world observe a range of death ceremonies and traditions. This review article highlights the death rituals, grief, and mourning within the Kashmiri Muslim community amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autism is a neurological disability characterised by a number of 'deficits' in multiple areas of functioning and everyday life. Or is it? Damian Milton's theory of the 'double empathy problem' attempts to empirically posit that the socialisation and communication difficulties present in autistic people are due to bidirectional differences in ways of communication between autistic and non-autistic people. This Current Issues piece extends said theory to encompass the restricted and repetitive behaviours that are commonly observed in autistic people, arguing that such behaviours may also be present in non-autistic people, albeit in a less stereotypical, more socially acceptable way. Because autism is characterised in part by the presence of restricted and repetitive behaviours, this piece fundamentally challenges the manner in which autism spectrum conditions are diagnosed in individuals and seen far and wide, ultimately promoting the view of cognitive-behavioural difference in autistic people instead of 'deficit'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on death rituals among funeral directors (FDs) (N = 134), we administered a questionnaire and conducted three focus group interviews (N = 21). The merged results showed that the FDs perceived significant disruptions to all rituals but mostly to memorials. Infection control, social distancing, the constraints on attendee numbers and difficult prioritisation of who to be allowed into the rituals, highly impacted the grief of the bereaved and their own ability to convey care. Despite low burnout scores, the FDs found their work life stressful, changed and challenging amid the pandemic but still filled with meaning and job satisfaction. Our recommendations include for spacious venues, prioritising efforts for feasible memorials, maintaining stable numbers and distance restrictions, ensuring participation for children and easily left out groups, creating a prioritising guide for quantity restrictions, and offering digital support for funeral staff. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines three research projects that investigate the response of urban black churches and communities to anti-black racial violence and social marginalization. The projects focus on the impact of gentrification, disinvestment, and dislocation on black and brown communities in Chicago and Atlanta. The article emphasizes the use of ritual practice and townhall deliberations as means of healing and empowerment in the aftermath of violence. It also discusses the economic challenges faced by pastors and seminarians in urban areas and the negative effects of gentrification on church membership and finances. The article underscores the importance of church leaders being prepared for these challenges and the psychospiritual effects of social violence. [Extracted from the article]

The onset of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in late 2019 gave way to the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic that changed the world. These changes impacted many spheres of ritualised social life, including burial, funerary and cultural rituals, and rites of passage. In this article, we focus on the reorganisation of life and the reimagining of rituals arising from the Covid-19 pandemic in relation to ancestral veneration in Cacadu and Queenstown (Eastern Cape, South Africa), burial practices amongst Basotho (Lesotho), state funerals in Lusaka (Zambia), funerary and mortuary practice generally in South Africa, and everyday cultural practices of care in Eldorado Park (Gauteng, South Africa). In these sites, lockdown regulations saw ritual, burial and funerary practices carried out in novel, uncanny ways that unsettled communal support systems and obligations. This included the slaughtering of animals, or lack thereof, and changes in customary mourning practices at both communal and state level. In extrapolating the above, this article relies on ethnographic data gathered by way of in-depth interviews, participant observation and auto-ethnography, to explore and discuss how the pandemic has changed and (re)shaped burial, ritual and funerary practices in Southern Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The arena of international schools is continuously growing. One under-researched 'traditional' grouping is the United World College (UWC) movement. Its idealistic long-term mission to facilitate global peace and sustainability by 'sparking change' in young peoples' lives represents an important area of study. As well as preparing young people for the two-year International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme amidst a background of co-curricular experiential learning, the UWC movement offers 'Short Courses' each year around the world. Our paper explores, for the first time, the 'Short Course' and its potential to transform and build character for social change. We present five vignettes of participants' experiences and perspectives of a 'Short Course', revealing how the every-day rhythm and interactions of the course rituals coupled with an intentionally deeply emotional experience can transform young people and empower them with the positive emotional energy needed to 'spark change' in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the major paradoxes embedded in religion is the complex dynamics between enchantment and disenchantment. This article takes a critical look at the theoretical implications of the political dynamics of enchantment by examining its stages in depth. We use the term 'enchanted moments of place' to challenge the use of the term 'enchanted' as a static historical or historiographical designation. It takes long-term ethnographic work at a recently emerging pilgrimage site in the north of Israel/Palestine commonly known as the Shrine of Mariam Bawardy, as an empirical point of departure to explore the dynamics of enchantment. We suggest an anthropological theory of enchantment that embraces an analysis of the ways time/place intermingles religious and everyday grassroots political dynamics. This perspective sheds light on the creation of sacred place during moments of renewed creativity, the reformulation of indigenous identities, the process of reinvented rituals, and the restoration and staging of material objects and place. Uncovering these moments can clarify the ways sacred places are politically voiced and spatialized by pilgrims, and appropriated by visitors and religious agents. Our analysis shows that these 'enchanted moments', places are more fragile and susceptible to changes caused by macro- and micro- political shifts. Enchanted moments are more sensitive to local decision-making processes, creativity, contingencies and rivalry among native agents and their aspirations for place and territoriality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jungian psychotherapist Dr. Edward Tick has worked with American veterans of foreign wars for decades. During that time, he learned that one of the most effective paths to healing was to guide Vietnam veterans back there to retrieve their souls that had been left behind, often for decades. He took the acronym PTSD and translated it as Post-traumatic Soul Distress. Those in the medical profession worked with the physical injuries of traumatized veterans; however, they overlooked the trauma to the souls of these returning warriors. Tick and his wife, Kate Dahlstedt, founded Soldier's Heart () in order to travel more deeply into the mythology, spirituality, and psychology of woundedness. He continues his work today in branching out to a larger population suffering the wounds of a society itself in need of soul intervention. There, too, he deepens his interest in ancient forms of healing in the tradition of the ancient healer Asklepios, by guiding pilgrims to ancient healing sites in Greece. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To teach about race is to recognize how there are communities whose worlds are shaped by violence, death, and resurrection, such as Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Emmett Till, George Floyd, and the many unnamed. Resurrection invokes the zombie figure. Zombies are iconic, and as implemented in an interdisciplinary course, a means to foster opportunities to engage with a social figure whose multiple meanings are cultural, historical, and political, and also notions of race and racial meaning-making. Through the figure of the zombie, this autoethnographic revisiting of a course takes up what Lugones calls playful "'world'-travelling." To unpack "'world'-travelling" we examine how it was facilitated through the "world café," a teaching modality. This article examine an educational environment where students engaged in the complexities of race relations in the US by hacking learning rituals that foster understanding racism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigated cultural practices and the exclusion of girls from access to education in southern Tanzania using mixed methods. Primary data was collected using key informant interviews and focus group discussions. Purposive sampling was followed to sample 39 participants, including primary school students, teachers, parents, initiation ritual trainers, and education officers. The research found that the age of initiation rites changed from 12 to 18 years to 5 to10 years. Although the age for participation in initiation rituals was reduced, training content remained the same. Training content focused on preparing the passage from childhood to adulthood, focusing on sexuality and marriage. Initiation rituals resulted in girls as early as five years old being detracted from classroom instructions. The research recommends two sets of training related to initiation rites: that the first training be conducted before puberty for girls to navigate adolescence, fine-tuning the contents to focus on menstrual hygiene management and self-efficacy, while discouraging early engagement in sexual conduct; Second, that another training be conducted at age eighteen, or just before marriage, to prepare girls for family life. Finally, the research recommends policy action to set a minimum age for participation in initiation rites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly impacted the rituals and practices surrounding death, dying, and grief worldwide. This study examines how the pandemic has influenced grief and rituals of parents who have lost a child. Using an explanatory sequential research design, this mixed-methods study collected quantitative data through an online survey and qualitative data from in-depth interviews and open-ended survey questions. A total of 112 parents completed the survey, and eight parents participated in the in-depth interviews. The merged results demonstrated that the pandemic had a severe impact on all the rituals associated with the death of a child. However, most parents felt able to say goodbye to their child in the best possible way. The merged findings also show that most parents experienced a high level of grief after the death of their child, particularly mothers, whereby their grief was negatively impacted by pandemic restrictions and lack of social support. The viewing of the deceased child was associated with lower levels of grief, while upsetting viewings, establishing a digital memory page, not wanting a memorial, and conducting an alternative service were associated with higher levels of grief. Higher levels of grief, including unexpected death, female gender, lower educational attainment, and living in rural areas, were associated with higher levels of grief. Our findings highlight the need for follow-up care during and after a pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasingly industrial character of meat production has entailed significant changes to the relations we have to the animals we eat. In this article we first describe some of the practices and rituals that characterized slaughter in Norway up to the first decades of the 20th century. In this period, Norwegians drew on rituals to make the killing of an animal meaningful and acceptable. Then, by exploring the original impetus toward "humane slaughter" in the early to mid-20th century, we show how ritual transformations of animals into meat gave way to laws and regulations to justify animal killing. Finally, we provide a contemporary example of how far this "judicialization" of animal killing has come, and argue that this process has enabled the widespread denial of the animal origin of meat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neak Ta and Arak are two indigenous beliefs which have existed together in traditional Khmer spirituality. This article presents the results of fieldwork in Lộc Khánh commune, Lộc Ninh district, Bình Phước province (about 200 km. north of Hồ Chí Minh City) where Khmer people have continuously maintained their traditional social structure including their strong local beliefs in spiritual power. Using qualitative research methods in combination with document analysis, the article shows that Neak Ta is representative of male power that is confirmed by the power and position of the elder council of the village, while Arak is representative of the female power that is displayed only through a woman appointed by the village clan that controls Arak from a theoretical power clan in the village. As result, it is analysed and examined the link of the theocratic power of Neak Ta and Arak through the rituals and the spirit mediumship in Lộc Khánh commune all which is a positive consequence of gender power balance between patriarchy and matriarchy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Iran has witnessed an increase in cohabitation relationships, or so-called white marriages (izdiwāj-i sifīd), which has caused wide political and religious efforts in cultivating religious selves based on an Islamically defined moral order. This article examines the symbolic re-enactment of the wedding of Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad, and Ali, the Prophet's cousin and the first Shiʿi Imam, a ritual which participants use to receive spiritual legitimation for their cohabitation practices. These re-enactments are organized by the Shirazis, the designation given to followers of Muhammad al-Shirazi (1928–2001) and of his brother Sadiq al-Shirazi (b. 1942). Shirazis use the aesthetic enactment of the wedding of Fatima to build an alternative to state-centred structures of domination within Iranian society. Through using the materiality of representations, Shirazis in Iran aim to counter societal changes around sexual relationships and cohabitation practices, which young Iranians use to express political disobedience. Women of this study, however, shared embodied experiences of seeing Fatima and constructed their own collective identity and articulation of political dissensus. Refusing the defined moral order of both the regime as well as the Shirazis, women fight for their politics of recognition by defining their own sexual identities and gender relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why are consumers drawn to spiritual products? Leveraging theorising regarding the psychological need to perceive the world as orderly and non-random, we posit that products imbued with religious/spiritual significance help manage concerns about randomness and uncontrollability (e.g. when a product is unreliable or exposes the consumer to random uncontrollable processes). When randomness concerns were salient, religious consumers showed increased desire to attach religious significance to secular objects (e.g. having item blessed, physically attaching a religious symbol). For spiritual consumers, spiritual products (vs. non-spiritual physically equivalent products) were seen as having (i) non-material efficacy (i.e. efficacy not bound to the purely material world) and (ii) unfalsifiable efficacy (i.e. efficacy that is immune to contrary evidence). Evidence is found across a variety of religious and spiritual contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numbers have long been central to the practice of journalism. But most journalists use numbers with relatively little critical engagement. This practice presents journalists with a dilemma: how can they, and their stories, maintain their credibility when such key pieces of information are not verified? This article takes a mixed-method approach to journalists' use of numbers in their coverage of seven humanitarian crises in 2017. This includes a content analysis of news articles (n = 978) and semi-structured reconstruction interviews with journalists (n = 16). The findings highlight how journalists rarely verify the numbers they use. In place of verification, they engage in two processes. First, the constant construction of a hierarchy of trustworthy sources. Second, the discursive twinning of data with certainty – elevating databases above the most trustworthy institutional source. These two practices are aimed at ensuring the credibility of the numbers they use and maintaining the credibility of their profession by hiding behind trusted sources. These findings provide a rationale for why journalists trust certain sources over others, a detail lacking in the existing literature. It also puts forward a numbers-specific take on "strategic rituals" in the idea of "quantification as strategic ritual". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some sacrifices are cosmogonic acts. Along with (re)creating the world, they create male social bonds by ritually appropriating and transcending women's corporeal reproductive powers. Departing from these androcentric representations, this paper considers when, why and how (differently) women sacrifice. I compare an exclusively female domestic worship to the mother/midwife goddess Periyacci in Singapore from which men are forbidden with a male-centric sacrifice to tutelary deities by a patrilineage in rural Tamil Nadu, India. Focusing on women as active ritual sponsors and sacrificers, rather than as is usual, ritually prohibited and symbolically denigrated objects, I scrutinise sacrifice's avowed theological, ritual and ethical claims regarding reproduction. Women's native fertility, customarily denigrated to counterintuitively locate reproduction in the sacrificial covenant between men and their tutelaries, is centred in Periyacci's worship. Dwelling on the body and its frailties, failures and infertility, women-led sacrifice demonstrates that life is only possible through women. Women's actual sacrifice of their own bodies and labours to organically generate and nurture life negates the need for the dramatic symbolic sacrifice of animal surrogates. Entangling body and mind, sacrifice and subsistence, ritual and the routine, Periyacci's worship offers alternative ways of thinking about sacrifice and its creative imperatives. Sacrifice need not be spectacular event but can also be an everyday sacrament. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Every year, in a variety of countries, current higher education students welcome newcomers with a set of ritualised practices in which the latter submit to the former through tests that entail varying degrees and types of violence, but also an important element of playfulness. In Portugal, these rituals are known as 'praxe académica'. This is a complex and multidimensional social phenomenon whose origins go back centuries, but is constantly reinvented and helps socialise new arrivals in accordance with the norms of the group into which they are to be integrated. Using sociological contributions to understand these rituals and their effects, we analyse the Portuguese case, arguing that these customary ways of greeting new higher education students have a triple effect on student life, contributing to: (1) the initiates' integration into a differentiated group; (2) the demarcation and attachment of symbolic value to the group members, compared to non-students and students who refuse initiation; (3) the structuring of positions and relations of power that mark the student world beyond the ritualised moments. Moreover, these rituals provide meaning and a sense of ontological security to the present, in the face of the biographical uncertainty that characterises contemporary youth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the demise of the socialist state in 1990, Mongolia was plunged into a process of neoliberal economic reform. The social and economic uncertainty that followed in its wake, combined with recurrent winter calamities, created an escalating vulnerability among the mobile herders. This article brings into focus the revived local offerings to the spirits of the land at ovoos as significant nexuses for managing unpredictable weather phenomena and the contingency of economic hardship, thus providing an exploration of ritual practice as embedded in multifaceted entanglements of lived lives and societal changes. It is argued that an ovoo provide a moment for Mongolian herders to act upon their ability and agency to influence future results. While the ovoo ritual is not in itself characterised by intrinsic ambiguity as a means to, or de facto, produce efficacious outcomes, its ambiguity resides in the explanatory modes that encompass the ritual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

That rituals are ambiguous phenomena has been long established in anthropology. However, while this ambiguity is often assumed to be resolved in one way or another through the course of a ritual and taken as contributing to the efficacy of rituals, we propose in this introduction that much can be gained by studying ritual ambiguity apart from its relevance for efficacy. We argue that while rituals often depend on and help create a sense of ambiguity, this ambiguity is far from always resolved. Rituals can instead highlight and intensify ambiguity, making it an enduring feature. While rituals often are seen as potential problem solvers, by participants and many anthropologists alike, we argue that much can be gained by looking at rituals as highly problematic phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For members of the Pentecostal congregation Christ is the Answer Church in the highland province of Ifugao, the Philippines, Sunday services are important rituals with which they address societal and environmental problems. Through mediating forms such as testimony, singing praise and worship songs and praying, they attempt to make God present and thus bring about societal transformations. However, as I show in this article, these mediating forms contain also the possibility for the presence of Satan, and in many cases, the actual outcome of these mediating forms remains uncertain. While many have debated the 'problem of presence', this article draws on the ambiguity of mediating forms and demonstrates the problems that presence potentially creates. I use this case further for developing an approach to rituals that goes beyond the instrumental view on rituals that has often dominated anthropology and which emphasises their hazardous character. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on Asef Bayat's 'art of presence,' this paper analyses how Malaysian Indian Hindus reinvent the Tirtha – a sacred location identified for building a Hindu temple – and make it liminal. I contend that the reinvention is a quiet encroachment strategy for Indian Hindus to safeguard community temples against urban development. I base my argument on empirical data gathered from in-depth interviews and ethnographic approaches. I anchor my argument on a case study concerning a demolished and relocated Hindu temple in Penang. I additionally demonstrate how the liminality of a Hindu temple is rationalised and made plausible with rituals for relocation, namely the Balathanam ceremony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The appropriation of local ritual practices and their expansion as part of the Inca imperial ideology is a well-documented mode of dominance in the Central Andes. However, there is still no relevant evidence on how it worked in the southern areas of the empire. We show how the Incas might have appropriated some local ritual practices that consisted of burying caches of skulls with perforations, possibly associated with ancestor veneration cults. However, the meanings associated with this practice seem to have changed during the Inca expansion to Chile, serving as a device for coercion over local populations in the Copiapó valley. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Roadside memorials are made up of objects, usually flowers, candles and crosses, placed at the roadside to mark the sites of fatal accidents. The paper introduces the potential of Lefebvre's concept of rhythmanalysis and geography of rhythms in exploring roadside memorials. The aim of the paper is to investigate rituals and rhythms at roadside memorials in Poland. Data were collected during two-year field observations of 12 roadside memorials and from 10 semi-structured interviews. Polish roadside memorials are part of widespread rituals which either generate material changes to roadside memorials, like cleaning up works, leaving candles and flowers at memorials or which do not generate such changes, like saying prayers or reminiscing about the deceased. The specifics of roadside memorialisation in Poland are expressed in prayers being said and no personal belongings being left at the sites. We found that the coexistence of individual and social rhythms at roadside memorials was deeply rooted in Catholic liturgy and commonly accepted cemetery rituals in Poland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When I began writing this paper, I was amid coping with several losses. I had lost a beloved friend and a family member to COVID-19, and though it seemed that we were coming out of the woods in the US, the juggernaut virus was burning through my native country of India, where most of my family lives. As a candidate starting analytic training in 2020, Freud's Mourning and Melancholia was particularly poignant as it lays the foundation for object relations borne out of a process of coping with loss. Freud described mourning as an agonizing process of identification, disinvestment and reinvestment. He emphasized the role of intrapsychic factors in the capacity to mourn. Since then, analysts have countered by writing about the highly social nature of the task of mourning and the importance in grieving of a loving communal embrace. In this paper, I explore one's early experiences with Winnicott's holding environment and transitional phenomena as an explanation of the capacity to mourn. I will extend mourning to another form of loss, namely, transience, i.e., temporariness of time and experience. Finally, I will consider how the developmental achievement of the capacity to be alone is inherent in specific intrapsychic modes of mourning transience and could be extended to intrapsychic capacity to mourn in bereavement. I will explore these ideas with a backdrop of traditional Indian rituals and spiritual practices, which embody and uniquely elaborate other essential Winnicottian features, including paradox, dialectics and the third area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the theoretical issues regarding rituals of death and the "afterlife of death" in urban life. Through an analysis of the five articles in this special issue on "Death and the City" that examine how death is controlled as a necessary component of urban social order, I suggest these case studies shed light not only on the essential technologies of social rules and polices regarding death, but they also reveal important truths about how humans join the material reality of death to death's metaphysical meaning, or the "afterlife of death." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

National values or imagined communities are often reflected in a country's educational system. In this paper, a teaching course for migrant teachers in Sweden is used to reflect on how some of these national values and practices are presented and subsequently negotiated by course leaders and course participants. While measures that emphasise national values are often criticised as assimilationist, building partly on Goffman's work it is argued that a discussion of national values can also serve to unveil hidden rituals that are otherwise taken for granted, while also pointing both to the potential usefulness and pitfalls of civic education. For example, while course teachers try to avoid presenting the Swedish value system as superior to that of other countries, certain 'sacred' national values, such as a commitment to gender equality, are seen as non-negotiable. For participants, their previous teaching identity can be used both as a resource in navigating the course and for work practice. But for some participants, their previous teaching identity is seen as in need of adjustment in order for them to follow Swedish teaching and school 'rituals'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the pandemic began to affect the performance world, both festival artists and producers started to adopt creative approaches to moving their work online. In the study presented here, we focus on the 2020 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, which offered a unique opportunity to understand how performers coped with the enforced switch to digital. Underpinning the Fringe Festival ethos is the attitude of experimentation, and we propose that there is much to learn from the response of performers and producers to this unprecedented situation. As one interviewee put it; 'we got given a hefty dose of lemons, and the point of all of this was, just go and make lemonade and see what happens' (Yvette). In this article, we focus on the challenge of managing the audience experience in the digital space, particularly before and after a performance. We note that familiar rituals play a key role for physical audiences and we position this idea within the Trajectories Framework, identifying coherent journeys through a user experience (Benford and Giannachi 2011. Performing Mixed Reality. The MIT Press. ISBN:978-0-262-01576-9), in order to frame it with digital audiences in mind. We provide recommendations regarding aspects for performers and producers to address as online and digital becomes an increasingly accepted part of the festival landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Religious ceremonies and practices have long influenced human perceptions and uses of nature. Plants in particular play a prominent role in rituals and socio-religious practices and provide the cultural and historical depth of these relationships. Understanding human-floral relations is often fundamental to the cause of meaningful wildlife conservation. This research aims to investigate the cultivated and wild plant species used for rituals and religious purposes among the Moroccans, and to further understand the symbolism of these rituals. Intensive fieldwork was carried out between January 2016 and January 2020 in different parts of Morocco by an investigation approach, applying different tools such as semi-structured interviews, individual interviews, field observations, participation in the ritual activities, and published papers. The scientific name of plant species was identified using standard and relevant literature. The results revealed the Moroccan people possessed a sound knowledge of the ritual plants and the great diversity of plants used in many Morocco rituals and religious ceremonies. From the results, we identified a total of 112 plant species used for rituals and socio-religious ceremonies. These rituals and religious purposes plant species were classified into 21 categories. The most frequently mentioned families were Apiaceae (10 species), followed by Fabaceae and Lamiaceae. This study demonstrates that many plant species play an important role in rituals and socio-religious ceremonies in Morocco. However, further research is recommended for an in-depth understanding of the role of the links between traditional uses of plant resources and the conservation of biodiversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In religious traditions, emphatic utterances that activate good feelings are referred to as blessings. Interviews with a wide variety of service providers indicate that they routinely use such utterances regarding the choices and prospective choices of their customers. Further, such service blessings typically show characteristics that are consistent with both religious traditions and rituals of everyday politeness. A controlled experiment indicates that service blessings can have substantial and broad benefits to customer satisfaction. These findings have both theoretical and practical implications for improving the management of retail customer service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the expectations and culture that first-year students encounter when entering higher education. Induction activities are the first encounter with the new institutional setting and cultural context of the study programme, thus the students' first opportunity to develop ideas about what studying entails and what is expected of them. The study is based on data produced through participant observations in induction activities, and interviews with the senior students organising these activities, for the following three study programmes at a Danish university: biotechnology, philosophy, and film and media studies. By applying the concepts of rituals, the implied student and students' identity work, the analysis explores a ritual within each programme. The findings show that the rituals reflect patterns and cultural elements that the students also experience later on in their first year. The rituals differ in how they relate to the content of the programme and which available identities they present to the students. However, in all three programmes, senior students play a key role in communicating norms and traditions. We argue that although transitioning is an ongoing process throughout higher education, it is still relevant to consider what happens during induction and what is communicated to the students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wine producers have built their businesses on the concept of sharing, typically explored in the context of the communal consumption of wine among consumers. In this paper, we offer an often-overlooked area of the supply chain that can play an important role in the communal consumption of wine, that of direct selling companies utilizing the party plan sales strategy. By breaking down the production-consumption network through the Systems of Provision (SoP) and Actor-Network Theory (ANT), this research explores the supply chain in influencing consumption. The direct selling party plan allows for active engagement in the production-consumption network and is explored in this research as a material artifact of the communal wine consumption experience. An analysis of the 10Cs categorization of the SoP is conducted within two direct selling wine companies, Traveling Vineyard and WineShop at Home. The analysis expands an often fragmented view of communal sharing (usually viewed through the lens of end users) to include more actors and how these direct selling actor's roles can impact the future of the production-consumption social network in the wine marketplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay challenges the salience of the caste question for writing a social history of modern Assam. It argues that pre-colonial records contained enough indicators for arguing that caste in Assam was never a rigid and impermeable social grid. The variegated nature of Assam's geo-political and cultural past meant that the progress of Brahmanical culture here was neither smooth nor unmitigated. The essay argues that the region's social and cultural intricacies could not be comprehended through an interpretive framework developed in a pan-Indian context. The same was, however, used by the census officials to streamline the region's discrete patterns into rigidly structured hierarchies and uniformly imagined categories. Through a close reading of the pre-decennial and decennial census reports and other records from the nineteenth century, this essay identifies numerous misreading of local level empirical data that enabled the British to produce a uniform caste history for the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores ways of making chapel services more accessible and meaningful for people with dementia through rituals and sensory stimulation. I was a participant-observer for 6 months at weekly chapel services at an aged care home in Sydney, Australia, and interviewed residents after those services. I also led small group sessions where residents engaged in 'Ignatian meditation' on a Biblical narrative. The theoretical schema for this research is von Hügel's three 'Elements of Religion.' The best way to respond to the diminution of the 'Intellectual Element' for people with dementia is to increase the attention and nurture we give to the other two "Elements" - the 'Mystical' and the 'Institutional.' Focusing particularly upon the 'Institutional Element' through rituals and sensory stimulation can enhance experiences of God for people with dementia during corporate worship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the history of rainmaking rituals in Zimbabwe from 1890 to 2000. Beyond Africans' relationship with nature, the history of rainmaking rituals shows how religion was a powerful political tool used by the chieftaincy to influence and control the subjects. The paper argues that the rainmaking institution was a powerful tool to try and control nature through propitiating ancestors and ultimately worked in favour of the chieftaincy to control their subjects. The perceived control of rainfall through rainmaking rituals benefitted not only the chieftaincy but the greater part of the community by providing reassurance and a sense of comfort. The rainmaking institution, and the rituals, show the way Africans related with nature. The culture–nature relationship is revealed in the places where rain rituals took place, the ingredients used, and the belief that nature was the provider. Over a longue durée, different political hierarchies at various levels, from clan to chieftaincy, have utilised the rainmaking institution to monitor and control their subjects. In the process, societies developed a sophisticated view of nature and observed various prohibitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the royal acclamation ceremonies of the Portuguese crown in order to grasp the responsiveness of the institution of the monarchy and regime to the challenges of modernity throughout the delicate watershed period of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Portuguese Catholic and absolutist monarchy of the ancien régime had a strict protocol and a set of insignia of power that acted together at the moment of the acclamation and legitimation of each new king. The purpose of this research is to assess the adaptation and reinvention of these insignia and rituals according to the revolutionary demands of social change and secularization brought about by the turbulent period of the beginning of the nineteenth century: the French military invasions (1807–11); the departure of the royal family, court and administration to Brazil (1807); the liberal constitutional revolution (1820); and the civil war pitting liberals against absolutists (1832–34). The new constitutional monarchy that came out of this revolutionary flow faced many challenges of legitimacy, including the test of its capacity to create a modern royal imaginary updated to the cultural mindset of national and secular societies, and capable of bonding rulers with their people. The authors believe that the study of the acclamation ceremonies in the Portuguese constitutional monarchy can give us an accurate perspective on the quality of the symbolic image of the crown, therefore assessing the political efficiency of rituals as one of the structural aspects for institutional legitimization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how young unaccompanied refugees living together within the confines of an asylum centre in Denmark construct different kinds of social relations and the meanings attached to these relationships. By investigating their routinised practices of everyday life as 'rituals', I analyse how young refugees negotiate different kinds of relatedness that enable them to exert agency. The ethnography points to the progression and expansion of different modes of relatedness to include friendships as well as consociate relationships, both with peers with whom they create a sense of community, and with adults who help them navigate the asylum landscape. The study underscores the deeply social nature of the young refugees' agency. I argue that in the intensity of living together they transform weak ties into strong ties, described through idioms of friendship and kinship, that express the profound meaning of these relationships in the context of the uncertainty they face. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advertising is omnipresent and cannot be ignored. The advertisers intertwine the cultural practices prevalent in the country to make a lasting impact on the viewers. The culture of the nation has a deep impact on the psychology of the individuals and therefore can increase the recall value. India is extremely rich in culture and heritage; thus, the advertisers get opportunities to project cultural values in different ways. One such way is to use emotional appeals in the advertisements so as to reach the heart of the target audience. There are deluge of advertisements targeting young consumers which reflect Indian culture. The study attempts to develop a model for depiction of culture in the advertisements taking into account the rituals, clothing, language, jingoism, festivity, religion etc. The analysis of 200 print advertisements is done to identify significant cultural values that are transmitted to consumers. A model is proposed by using exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis and then impact on recall value is determined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is about power in pre-colonial polities of the Chishona-speaking people who lived in the north-eastern parts of the Zimbabwean plateau from the late 16th century to the end of the 19th century. It is an examination of how ruling lineages rationalised their claims to authority and how their subjects and others contested those claims. Paying attention to chiefly lineages' narratives and to ritual politics central to social health and to the actions and voices of individuals for whom rituals were performed, and those who performed them, the article demonstrates the limits of chiefly power and the power of autochthonous communities in these polities. Further, the article addresses questions of gender, fertility, politics and contestations over authority among the pre-colonial inhabitants of the Zimbabwean plateau. In this way, it shifts scholarly attention from ruling families to those who belonged to these communities but were not of the ruling lineages. More importantly, it demonstrates the ways in which we can use oral traditions and archives to write a social history of power among pre-colonial southern Africa's chieftainship-based polities. The article moves beyond the empire- and dynasty-centric histories of pre-colonial Zimbabwe – histories that turn out to be more about the ruling lineages than they are about the many people who constituted these societies – while privileging local social processes in the making of pre-colonial Zimbabwean polities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social scientists who study the minds of gods claim that the omniscient gods of monotheistic religions are aware of the intent of their followers, unlike gods who are not omniscient. For this reason, omniscient gods do not place emphasis on their followers' precision in carrying out rituals, focusing rather on the intent and/or identity of the practitioners. The present article challenges this perception by focusing on several spheres of Orthodox Judaism in Israel. In each of these spheres, less attention is paid to the actual intent and identity of those practising the ritual, with far more attention directed to not only the actual execution of the ritual, but also the precision with which it is executed. Moreover, when rituals of healing are involved, imprecise or incomplete execution of such rituals can be used to explain their failure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is fourfold. First, we seek to elicit the practices of middle-aged and elderly Moroccan Muslim women regarding mourning and remembrance. Second, we aim to find out whether differences are observable between middle-aged and elderly women's practices. Third, we seek to explore the role of religion in these practices. Fourth, we aim to document how the actual practices of our participants relate to normative Islamic literature. Interviews were conducted with middle-aged and elderly Moroccan women living in Belgium (n = 30) and with experts in the field (n = 15). This study reveals that religious beliefs have a great impact on the practices of Muslim women. We found striking similarities between our participants' practices and normative Islamic literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This editorial is a response to the recent COVID-19 pandemic and underlines the valuable role that critical social science approaches to risk and uncertainty can play in helping us understand how risk is being understood and mitigated. Drawing on Heyman's approach to understanding risk as a configuration of probabilistic knowledge, time-framing, categories and values, I explore COVID-19 risk in relation to each of these features while also emphasising how different features stabilise one another. I suggest lines of inquiry into each of these features and their interrelatedness. I then move to present some important insights from the work of Mary Douglas which are especially germane to studying the risk of COVID-19 and, again, I raise possibilities for future research. Emphasising the centrality of ritual to Douglas's theory, I develop these considerations to encourage an exploration of magic and magical thinking, alongside rational approaches to COVID-19 risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present the Marange Community Museum as an empirical example of how decoloniality can be approached within the museum practice. We argue that the Marange community made use of indigenous ontologies and epistemologies in establishing their museum where rituals and cultural objects are connected in use and in an ongoing dialogue. Ritual processes associated with burials of chiefs and rain petitioning ceremonies are discussed in this paper as inseparable from the physical fabric of cultural objects on display in the Marange Community Museum. We also posit that the way in which this museum was formed is an empirical illustration of how the museum practice can be decolonised because it embraces collaborations with community members. Hence, a decolonial perspective represented by a community museum acknowledges that objects are not mundane but rather represent the coming together of a multiplicity of factors and it also questions the binary division between tangible and intangible heritage knowledge production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]