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Conversations around rites of possession and object animation within the Hindu performative sphere have a long history of being relegated to a marginalized space unworthy of academic investigation. Using the concept of dramaturgy popularized by Erving Goffman, this article shifts the gaze from object animation and spirit possession to its social performance, in which a temporary egalitarian social scheme is exhibited. In exploring the case of a specific possession rite locally called taranga devata, which is practiced along the west coast of India, this article introduces the transformation of the deities housed in local shrines as entities capable of movement and communication known as taranga. In so doing, I reassess some local Hindu religious practices that were eschewed in the past. Keywords: Hinduism-possession rites-object animation-vernacular religion-western India-dramaturgy, Rites of possession, characterized by their 'extreme multivocality, fundamental issues of emotion, aesthetics, language and personal identity' (Smith 2006, 15), have begun to gain momentum as objects of investigation in [...]

Badagas, peasants in the South Indian Nilgiri region, take great care to prepare for the annual festival of the god Jedayasamy. In the festival week all activities are monitored to achieve a perfect performance. This article argues that devotees and visitors are affected by the special atmosphere of the place. According to the philosopher Gernot Bohme an atmosphere is a semi-object; it exists between individuals and the surrounding environment, and those who are affected by the particular atmosphere are its co-creators. Based on the concept of social aesthetics, this article examines several contexts. Devotees walk in a procession from village to village, dance in public places, and on the final day firewalking takes place. The festival atmosphere is planned, performed, and evaluated. The impact of the festival atmosphere is created by sensuous perceptions, symbolic public performances, and metaphorical references to social categories, here called reduplication. Keywords: Hinduism--Badagas--worship (puja)--atmosphere--social aesthetics-firewalking, This article opens with a riddle: It is invisible, omnipresent, immaterial but considered almost like a thing, it influences me, and I am part of it. What is it? In [...]

This article focuses on the phi muang, a collective of primordial spirits who live among the Khamti in Arunachal Pradesh, Northeast India. I first look into contextualizing the ritual expressions associated with the phi muang, based on the description of two associated territorial cults: the ceremony carried out in the context of wild elephant capture operations, and those carried out at the village level for all inhabitants during the agricultural New Year celebrations. My ethnographic descriptions highlight the essential characteristics of phi muangs among the Khamti. Subsequently, by drawing from writings regarding the history of the region, I return to the question of origins, as well as the relations that the Khamti maintained with each of the phi muangs, as the latter's respective territory was delimited. Following Mus (1933) and more recently Schlemmer (2012), the conclusion considers phi or 'force of the place.' Moreover, uncovering the spatial configuration of these local forces allowed for the formulation of several hypotheses about the integration of the Khamti into a region that was and still is located at the margins of India. Keywords: ritual--territorial cult--divine appropriation--Khamti--Arunachal Pradesh--Northeast India, This article focuses on the cult dedicated to the phi muang, a type of primordial divinity for the Khamti people, (1) a Shan population that inhabits Arunachal Pradesh in India. [...]

Introduction The Kadazan of the Papar District of Sabah form a branch of the Kadazan Dusun, Sabah's single largest indigenous ethnolinguistic group. They speak a variant of the Coastal Kadazan [...]

Introduction The Rungus longhouse differs significantly both culturally and structurally from the descriptions of longhouses in other Borneo societies. Do those previous accounts faithfully present the cultural-specific view in each [...]

I. The Mother of all Knack Stories The story of 'Cook Ding' (Pao Ding [phrase omitted], Zhuangzi 3.1 (1))--who actually acts not so much as a cook, but as a [...]

While the burial at the end of Sophocles' Ajax is often interpreted as offering a form of ritual closure, this paper argues that the burial equally undermines closure. I use van Gennep's rite of passage model and Aristotle's Poetics to establish that both ritual and tragedy follow analogous, predictable tripartite progressions. On this foundation, I show that, as the Ajax's plot progresses from beginning to middle to end, the three principal ritual scenes in the play together depict a reverse ritual progression from end to middle to beginning or, in van Gennep's terms, from post-liminal to liminal to preliminary. This clearly defined chiastic structure offers one explanation for the ambiguity of the play's exodos., Sophocles' Ajax ends with the ritual motions preliminary to the hero's funeral as Teucer commands the Chorus to dig a grave, prepare ablutions for the body, and bring Ajax's armor, [...]

Copyright of Sociology of Sport Journal is the property of Human Kinetics Publishers, Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article provides an overview of how scholars in the discipline of folklore have approached the topic of folk drama over the past one hundred fifty years, arguing that, despite relative neglect in the field, folk drama is a valuable window into culture and should be taken more seriously. I begin with nineteenth century ideas about ritual drama that stem from Sir James Frazer. I then discuss the growing emphasis on context that emerged in the twentieth century, including overlaps between ideas about folk drama, performance, and theories of play more generally. I conclude by providing a brief overview of the relationship between play, drama, and politics, and suggest that contemporary digital realms, such as YouTube, offer a new ecology of folk drama that brings traditional questions about actors, context, play-frames, audience and transformation to the fore in new and interesting ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Hipogrifo: revista de literatura y cultura del siglo de oro is the property of Hipogrifo: revista de literatura y cultura del siglo de oro and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Scientists are as sceptical as they come -- but many still engage in personal rituals or use totems in the lab and field., Author(s): Kendall Powell [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) a freelance writer in Boulder, While investigating how experience can influence brain circuitry, students and postdocs in Robert Froemke's neuroscience lab have developed [...]

ABSTRACT In the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, chronic economic uncertainty has seen social relations stretched to breaking point. Informants speak of a 'war between men and women'. While [...]

I used to think of rituals as rather mindless, automatic behaviors that have lost their meaning. However, that is not necessarily the case, as author Caitlin O'Connell points out in [...]

The article offers the author's insights on the ritual apprenticeship that explores the musical discourse among the farmers in the Newar society in Kathmandu Valley, Nepal through dhimay drum teaching. Topics mentioned include the mimetic syllables of the musical compositions that are perceived the voice of music and dance local god Nāsadyaḥ, the origin of the instrumental pieces that imitate the drum sounds which were used in religious processions, and the link to acrobatics.

African slaves played a key role in the colonization of Minas Gerais in the interior of Brazil during the eighteenth century. Popular healers from Africa and of African descent were important providers of health care in the region during the colonial period. Relying on a variety of healing practices, their activities often came under the scrutiny of religious authorities as they were denounced to the commissioners of the Inquisition of Lisbon or to priests in the local parishes. The most commonly denounced healing practice was a spirit possession ritual referred to as calundu. Besides organizing healing rituals, African healers offered herbal remedies to their patients. In some cases, the mixing of African, Amerindian and European practices resulted in hybrid forms of healing, which appealed to a wide array of clients, including blacks as well as whites seeking remedies to their illness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues for a broader sociological conception of religion. Religion includes practices that engage with this world in rich and complex ways alongside experiences of transcendence. Religion encompasses a broad palette of aesthetic and emotional experiences that include, but are not confined to, solemnity and beauty. Religious moral ontologies can be both pluralist and dualist. The aesthetic turn in contemporary religion is described, noting associations with individualism, and pluralistic moral ontologies. The concept of pluralistic moral ontology is developed drawing on Nietzsche’s analysis of aesthetics, Carl Einstein’s examination of the relationship of aesthetics to myth and ritual, and a discussion of tragedy in classical Greece. Empirically, the role of aesthetics is manifest in a number of contemporary ethnographies of religion that emphasise the centrality of practice and performance to religion. The film trilogy The Lord of the Rings provides an example of the link between aesthetic experience of myth and pluralistic moral ontologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay argues that through narrative performance, Valliyammal, a female Hindu healer from South India, earns respect (matippu or mariyatai), creates and maintains her ritual authority in both her domestic shrine and in public temple spaces, and legitimates her unusual religious leadership role. (1) Valliyammal's life stories constitute one discursive strategy to establish her identity as a now-single woman whose 'call' to serve the Goddess demanded choosing the deity over her husband and thus entailed celibacy, which in turn has intensified her power (cakti) and facilitated her ritual knowledge. As a professional ritual healer, Valliyammal inhabits what has traditionally been a male role, and from this vantage point, she negotiates normative gender expectations, extends gender boundaries, and ultimately embodies something of an alternative gender ideology. Importantly, in addition to authorizing new models of selfhood, Valliyammal's narratives and ritual performances also produce the conditions for her economic independence and, thus, her sustenance. The Goddess possessed me for the first time when I was 22 years old. Now I am 55. From then on, no saliva touched me [a euphemism for sexual intercourse] and my power [cakti] (2) grew and became intense. Because of her, I have power and know how to do all the rituals. When I go to the temple, I get a lot of respect [matippu]. Eight male drummers work under me there. If I wasted my energies in sexual intercourse and on family matters then my power would go off completely. This is the difference between me and other 'ladies' (3)--they are all living with their husbands and I am living with the Goddess., These are the words of Valliyammal, a female Hindu ritual healer who lives in Chennai, capital of the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu and one of India's largest cities. [...]

The article discusses the role that Islamic etiquette known adab plays in shared sacred spaces to which Muslims and Christian pilgrims visit, including the adab in intercultural relations. An overview of the relations between Muslim and Christian rituals at sacred spaces in Turkey, including at the St. (Saint) Antoine church in Beyoğlu, Istanbul, Turkey, is provided.

When members of the early rabbinic group created the Jewish legal text known as the Mishnah in the late second or early third century, the concept of heresy was relatively common in the wider cultural discourse of the Roman world. Christian apologists, among others, frequently employed the Greek term hairesis (“heresy”/“heretic,” originally meaning “school of thought”/“adherent”) as part of their larger projects of drawing boundaries, defining identities, and making an argument for the authority of their own ideas and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Observation of traditional folk rites taking place in contemporary culture frequently shows that today's people are not able to break with tradition and, especially in Poland, with many rites related to the Church's liturgical year. Since the Middle Ages the feast of Corpus Christi has been celebrated in Poland with ceremonious processions in which religious solemnity mixes with folk customs (picking leafy birch twigs) and the city life (road closures, decorated streets and buildings, altars). We have recently witnessed an ever increasing number of new examples that show believers celebrating publicly in the city streets: All Saints' March with relics that is juxtaposed with Halloween, arrival of St. Martin on a horse, walking the Way of the Cross during Lent, Easter-time burning of the effigy of Judas in Skoczów and recently the Cortege of the Three Wise Men (commonly called the Cortege of the Three Kings). These processions are turning into noisy street events - as the believers are going out of the churches into the city streets, the way they participate in the religious 'mystery' is changing: it becomes a peculiar cultural event. Features of folk theatre are clearly visible in religious ceremonies (there are leading and supporting actors who are dressed up, royal crowns become mere common props, stages are erected for amateur and professional artistic groups). Many of the religious ceremonies are perceived only as a social gathering ("We all were having fun") or a "street show", which testifies to a tectonic crack between the traditional society and a modern one. Strong presence of this kind of ritual spectacle in the media and participation of teachers, students, preschoolers, scouts and a vast audience aside from priests and believers, and also politicians, devils, angels and medieval knights in the Cortege of the Three Kings, make the folkloristic analyse this phenomenon in the category of a fair or fete (festive, commemorative, educational), search for the limits of eccentric ideas that turn a ritual into a theatre, for trivialised signs of traditional folk rites and for folklorisation and hybridisation of contemporary culture, and thus the way of leaving the sphere of sacrum and entering the sphere of profanum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a descriptive qualitative study that explored the value and benefit of Serenity Spirituality Sessions programme for older nursing home residents. The research was carried out in six nursing homes in the Republic of Ireland. The facilitators of these sessions, who worked in the nursing homes, were interviewed about their experiences of delivering the programme and their views on the impact that the programme had on resident participants. Emergent themes revealed benefits of the intervention for clients, including inducing a calming effect, increased sense of belonging and benefits of ritual use. The programme yielded positive results, and appears suited to the predominantly Christian population, and as such is deemed a useful adjunct to holistic and spiritual care in these settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the sacred space of Sufi shrines in India as dynamic sites for multifarious dialogues and relationships. By looking at the various religious, spiritual, political, and socio-cultural acts for which the courtyards of Sufi shrines become venues, I argue for an approach to these sacred spaces as dually transformative: sites that transform those who visit them, and that are in turn changed, appropriated, and co-opted by those who inhabit them. In effect, these Sufi shrines become microcosms of the cities, villages, and nations in which they are situated. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

‘Cosmovision in New World Ritual Landscapes’ is a Special Section including articles that explore portions of North, Central and South America where ceremonial or conceptual landscapes took differing forms. Two pivotal scholars (Ashmore, Broda) who have previously written on the subject are included in this group. Building upon themes of religious deity and other symbolic markers for clan territorial divisions (Sabo, Hilliard, Walker), urban settlement and modelling (Landau) and ethnographic information on ritual practice or cultural perspectives on land and spatial boundaries (Vining), these authors implicitly consider the possibility that cosmovision is a cultural universal. One unique aspect of their approach is the way that they connect varied landscapes with settlement concentrations or city centres, showing how cosmovision is evident in both rural and central place making. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We would not expect insurgents to celebrate the very state that they combat at all costs. In northern Cote d'Ivoire, however, the rebel movement of the Forces Nouvelles, the 'New [...]

In this essay, I will describe the traditional social organisation of the Amis peoples of Taiwan which previous ethnographers have portrayed as consisting of a matrilineal clan-based system conjoined with a residential-based male age-set/grade system. Following David Schneider's critique of 'kinship' cross-culturally and the 'new kinship studies' which his work inspired, I will attempt a reinterpretation of overall Amis social organiZation as instead a total kinship-based system comprised of a paternal/fraternal system which integrates and encompasses the multiplicity of maternal-focused houses constitutive of village communities. Rather than being a system composed of kinship and non-kinship parts, I argue that Amis social organisation is comprehensively kinship-based. Moreover, I shall describe how through paternal/fraternal relations generated by rites of male initiation and rebirth this overall integration of diverse matrifocal units is achieved. In the first section, I will describe the structure of the paternal/fraternal initiatory system. In the following section, I will draw upon the major anthropological theories of initiation including rites of passage and the literature on sacrifice to describe numerous aspects of initiation activities, showing how the classificatory father-son and elder-younger-brother relations between and within the initiation sets are explicitly represented by the concepts and practices of the Amis. Keywords: the paternal/fraternal organisation, kinship, house, initiation, sacrifice, INTRODUCTION The Amis are one of the aboriginal Austronesian-speaking groups of Taiwan. There are fourteen officially recognized aboriginal groups on the island, making up less than 2% of the total [...]

Abstract: This article explores the Japanese notion of luck as a relational mode of action that encapsulates a complex understanding about self, society, and cosmos. Drawing on ethnographic data gathered [...]

Abstract: This article is based on data from pre-Soviet Siberia, mainly, the West Buryat and Tungus Evenk groups. As a product that cannot be produced, game is an ideal example [...]

Emprunter les rituels, introduire les elements d'une tradition religieuse dans une autre sont des pratiques usuelles et controversees dans le paysage religieux contemporain. Cet article enquete sur l'infiltration des rituels [...]

This article analyzes the changing ways law enforcement agencies, city government officials, and gentrifying resident constituencies have attempted to criminalize and surveil disposition-forming rituals and daily social practices of African American working class New Orleanians before and after Hurricane Katrina. The rituals and practices discussed include pedestrian parades known as Second Lines and Super Sunday. The article demonstrates that the criminalization and surveillance of these practices must be understood in light of the role played by socially structured space in the production of racialized class differences among New Orleanians. In the post-Katrina context, the city's mandatory evacuation enabled gentrifying resident constituencies and expert urban planners to imagine the city's reconstruction as something to be achieved through the creation of architectonic relationships conducive to cycles of capital investment. These visions of urban recovery have ignored the importance residents of affected neighborhoods place on the reinstatement of the city's pre-Katrina population, which is responsible for the production of Second Lines and Super Sunday. This article explores how the policing, surveillance, and criminalization of Second Lines and Super Sunday have historically operated as mechanisms for upholding hegemornic orders, and the intimate connections between planning, race, and gentrification in the US. Key Words: Disasters, urban planning, race, governmentality, New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina DOI: 10.1080/1070289X.2010.533522

Abstract The 'devadasi' system has been the object of several studies and is quite controversial. Some authors, particularly in the past associated the 'devadasi' with power and prestige, other, more [...]

This paper examines how, as in the past in their home community in Mexico, Mexican immigrants in the United States use a system of flexible kinship and ritual practices to adapt to new circumstances of living and working in communities with new neighbours, new challenges and new threats. The paper focuses particularly on how the increased presence of women who have not always been a large part of the Mexican migrant community in the United States and their 'kin work' allows migrants to maintain and extend their social networks. Through various family and ritual events, migrants integrate new friends and acquaintances with new resources into their social networks and thus facilitate their survival in their new home. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The practice of divination that is a ritual used as a sourced of social and political power and its elaborate forms that are important to state control and have influence that is widespread is discussed. It is seen that more elaborate divination procedures were associated with bureaucratic institutions as state power based on the divination remains from the Neolithic, Zhou and Shang periods.

Contemporary South Korean shaman rituals (kut) incorporate new consumer goods as agentive 'props' loci that provoke mime and commentary in dramatic interactions between shamans, clients, gods, and ancestors. In the 1990s, much of this object-centered performance concerned the moral ambiguities of consumption, an appreciation facilitated by an analytic focus on the prop itsetf. In this study, I argue that the play of props in ritual conveys otherwise elusive nuances regarding the play of things in everyday life and that, when new consumer goods assume the status of props, they enable commentary on the moral paradox of getting and having. [prop, consumption, commodity, South Korea, shaman, ritual, materiality]

This article reports on an explorative, qualitative-empirical research on the meaning of trust between church boards of Dutch protestant congregations and the interim ministers they temporarily employ in-between incumbent ministers. Trust, or the perception of trustworthiness, is analyzed as a social constructed, multi-dimensional phenomenon. Research shows the coherence of several theoretical variables (Risk, Accountability, Encapsulated interest, Autonomy, Reciprocity, Credentials, Performance, and Context) that constitute trust in this particular and specific context. A theological evaluation of the data analysis suggests the emergence of another variable, the 'givenness' of trust. In the particular context of the pastoral profession, trust is induced by how the trustee, i.e., the interim minister, in his performance embodies the social identity of the trustor, i.e., the church board, but there is also a dimension grounded in faith in the presence of God. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]