Download or read book Contested Rituals written by Robin Judd and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2011-05-02 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Contested Rituals, Robin Judd shows that circumcision and kosher butchering became focal points of political struggle among the German state, its municipal governments, Jews, and Gentiles. In 1843, some German-Jewish fathers refused to circumcise their sons, prompting their Jewish communities to reconsider their standards for membership. Nearly a century later, in 1933, another blood ritual, kosher butchering, served as a political and cultural touchstone when the Nazis built upon a decades-old controversy concerning the practice and prohibited it. In describing these events and related controversies that raged during the intervening years, Judd explores the nature and escalation of the ritual debates as they transcended the boundaries of the local Jewish community to include non-Jews who sought to protect, restrict, or prohibit these rites. Judd argues that the ritual debates grew out of broad shifts in German politics: the competition between local and regional authority following unification, the possibility of government intervention in private affairs, the place of religious difference in the modern age, and the relationship of the German state to its religious and ethnic minorities, including Catholics. Anti-Semitism was only one factor driving the debates and it often functioned in unexpected ways. Judd gives us a new understanding of the formation of German political systems, the importance of religious practices to Jewish political leadership, the interaction of Jews with the German government, and the reaction of Germans of all faiths to political change.
Download or read book Contentious Traditions written by Lata Mani and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-09-01 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contentious Traditions analyzes the debate on sati, or widow burning, in colonial India. Though the prohibition of widow burning in 1829 was heralded as a key step forward for women's emancipation in modern India, Lata Mani argues that the women who were burned were marginal to the debate and that the controversy was over definitions of Hindu tradition, the place of ritual in religious worship, the civilizing missions of colonialism and evangelism, and the proper role of the colonial state. Mani radically revises colonialist as well as nationalist historiography on the social reform of women's status in the colonial period and clarifies the complex and contradictory character of missionary writings on India. The history of widow burning is one of paradox. While the chief players in the debate argued over the religious basis of sati and the fine points of scriptural interpretation, the testimonials of women at the funeral pyres consistently addressed the material hardships and societal expectations attached to widowhood. And although historiography has traditionally emphasized the colonial horror of sati, a fascinated ambivalence toward the practice suffused official discussions. The debate normalized the violence of sati and supported the misconception that it was a voluntary act of wifely devotion. Mani brilliantly illustrates how situated feminism and discourse analysis compel a rewriting of history, thus destabilizing the ways we are accustomed to look at women and men, at "tradition," custom, and modernity.
Download or read book Contentious Rituals written by Jonathan S. Blake and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-25 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout the world, divisive monuments, ceremonies, and processions assert and reinforce claims to territory, legitimacy, and dominance. These contested symbols and rituals strengthen and lend meaning to communal boundaries; confer and renew identities; and inflame tensions between groups, polarizing communities and, at times, triggering violence. In Contentious Rituals, Jonathan S. Blake focuses on one such controversial tradition: Protestant parades in the streets of Northern Ireland. Marchers say they are celebrating their culture and commemorating their history, as they have done for two centuries. Catholics see the parades as carnivals of bigotry and strident assertions of power. The result is heightened inter-communal friction and occasional violence. Drawing on over 80 interviews, an original survey, and ethnographic observations, Blake investigates why participants choose to march in parades that are known to be a primary source of sectarian conflict today. His analysis reveals their reasons for acting, the meanings supplied to them, and how they make sense of the contention that surrounds them. Ultimately, he discovers, many paraders are not interested in the politics of their actions at all, but rather in the allure of the action itself: the satisfactions of joining with others to express a collective identity and carry on a cherished tradition. An insightful exploration of the characteristics and dynamics of nationalism in action, Contentious Rituals offers an innovative approach to the contested politics of culture in divided societies and a new explanation for an old source of conflict in Northern Ireland.
Download or read book China s Contested Capital written by Charles D. Musgrove and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charles Musgrove brings the city of Nanjing back into the discussion of China's modern development, focusing on how it was transformed from a factional capital with only regional influence into a symbol of nationhood - a city where newly forming ideals of citizenship were celebrated and contested on its streets and at its monuments.
Download or read book A Contested Borderland written by Andrei Cusco and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2018-02-01 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bessarabia?mostly occupied by modern-day republic of Moldova?was the only territory representing an object of rivalry and symbolic competition between the Russian Empire and a fully crystallized nation-state: the Kingdom of Romania. This book is an intellectual prehistory of the Bessarabian problem, focusing on the antagonism of the national and imperial visions of this contested periphery. Through a critical reassessment and revision of the traditional historical narratives, the study argues that Bessarabia was claimed not just by two opposing projects of ?symbolic inclusion,? but also by two alternative and theoretically antagonistic models of political legitimacy. By transcending the national lens of Bessarabian / Moldovan history and viewing it in the broader Eurasian comparative context, the book responds to the growing tendency in recent historiography to focus on the peripheries in order to better understand the functioning of national and imperial states in the modern era. ÿ
Download or read book When Rituals Go Wrong written by Ute Hüsken and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2007 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume investigates the implications of breaking ritual rules, of failed performances and of the extinction of ritual systems. The essays thus break new ground in the comparative analysis of rituals and introduce new perspectives to ritual studies.
Download or read book Contested Will written by James Shapiro and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-04-19 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro explains when and why so many people began to question whether Shakespeare wrote his plays.
Download or read book Folk Literati Contested Tradition and Heritage in Contemporary China written by Ziying You and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-11 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this important ethnography Ziying You explores the role of the "folk literati" in negotiating, defining, and maintaining local cultural heritage. Expanding on the idea of the elite literati—a widely studied pre-modern Chinese social group, influential in cultural production—the folk literati are defined as those who are skilled in classical Chinese, knowledgeable about local traditions, and capable of representing them in writing. The folk literati work to maintain cultural continuity, a concept that is expressed locally through the vernacular phrase: "incense is kept burning." You's research focuses on a few small villages in Hongtong County, Shanxi Province in contemporary China. Through a careful synthesis of oral interviews, participant observation, and textual analysis, You presents the important role the folk literati play in reproducing local traditions and continuing stigmatized beliefs in a community context. She demonstrates how eight folk literati have reconstructed, shifted, and negotiated local worship traditions around the ancient sage-Kings Yao and Shun as well as Ehuang and Nüying, Yao's two daughters and Shun's two wives. You highlights how these individuals' conflictive relationships have shaped and reflected different local beliefs, myths, legends, and history in the course of tradition preservation. She concludes her study by placing these local traditions in the broader context of Chinese cultural policy and UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage program, documenting how national and international discourses impact actual traditions, and the conversations about them, on the ground.
Download or read book CONCEIVING SPIRITS written by Jennifer Nourse and published by Smithsonian Books (DC). This book was released on 1999-10-17 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nourse describes how Lauje of Indonesia attribute to birth spirits competing meanings that hinge on an individual's gender, social class, and religion.
Download or read book Contested Bodies written by Sasha Turner and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2017-05-05 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is often thought that slaveholders only began to show an interest in female slaves' reproductive health after the British government banned the importation of Africans into its West Indian colonies in 1807. However, as Sasha Turner shows in this illuminating study, for almost thirty years before the slave trade ended, Jamaican slaveholders and doctors adjusted slave women's labor, discipline, and health care to increase birth rates and ensure that infants lived to become adult workers. Although slaves' interests in healthy pregnancies and babies aligned with those of their masters, enslaved mothers, healers, family, and community members distrusted their owners' medicine and benevolence. Turner contends that the social bonds and cultural practices created around reproductive health care and childbirth challenged the economic purposes slaveholders gave to birthing and raising children. Through powerful stories that place the reader on the ground in plantation-era Jamaica, Contested Bodies reveals enslaved women's contrasting ideas about maternity and raising children, which put them at odds not only with their owners but sometimes with abolitionists and enslaved men. Turner argues that, as the source of new labor, these women created rituals, customs, and relationships around pregnancy, childbirth, and childrearing that enabled them at times to dictate the nature and pace of their work as well as their value. Drawing on a wide range of sources—including plantation records, abolitionist treatises, legislative documents, slave narratives, runaway advertisements, proslavery literature, and planter correspondence—Contested Bodies yields a fresh account of how the end of the slave trade changed the bodily experiences of those still enslaved in Jamaica.
Download or read book Jumping the Broom written by Tyler D. Parry and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2020-10-02 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this definitive history of a unique tradition, Tyler D. Parry untangles the convoluted history of the "broomstick wedding." Popularly associated with African American culture, Parry traces the ritual's origins to marginalized groups in the British Isles and explores how it influenced the marriage traditions of different communities on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. His surprising findings shed new light on the complexities of cultural exchange between peoples of African and European descent from the 1700s up to the twenty-first century. Drawing from the historical records of enslaved people in the United States, British Romani, Louisiana Cajuns, and many others, Parry discloses how marginalized people found dignity in the face of oppression by innovating and reimagining marriage rituals. Such innovations have an enduring impact on the descendants of the original practitioners. Parry reveals how and why the simple act of "jumping the broom" captivates so many people who, on the surface, appear to have little in common with each other.
Download or read book Urban Religious Events written by Paul Bramadat and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-04-08 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How might we best understand the relationship between the vibrant religious landscapes we see in many cities and contemporary urban social processes? Through case studies drawn from around the world, contributors explore the ways in which these processes interact in cities. This book argues that religious events – including rituals, processions, and festivals – are not only choreographies of sacred traditions, but they are also creative disruptions that reveal how urban cultural hierarchies are experienced and contested. Exposing the power dynamics behind these events, this book shows how performative uses of urban space serve to destabilize dominant genealogies and lineages around urban identities just as they lay claims to cultural supremacy or heritage. Through exploring the affective disruptions and political controversies caused by religious events, the contributors engage theoretical discussions in urban studies, the sociology of religion and the ethnography of ritual. This book is a significant contribution to understanding emerging patterns in contemporary religion and also for theories related to heritagization, eventization, and urbanization.
Download or read book Contested Conversions to Islam written by Tijana Krstic and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2011-05-13 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the role of conversion to Islam in the emergence of the Ottoman Empire, its imperial ideology and Sunni identity, and its relationship with its Muslim and non-Muslim subjects, in the context of the early modern Mediterranean.
Download or read book Conversion Circumcision and Ritual Murder in Medieval Europe written by Paola Tartakoff and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2020-01-17 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A investigation into the thirteenth-century Norwich circumcision case and its meaning for Christians and Jews In 1230, Jews in the English city of Norwich were accused of having seized and circumcised a five-year-old Christian boy named Edward because they "wanted to make him a Jew." Contemporaneous accounts of the "Norwich circumcision case," as it came to be called, recast this episode as an attempted ritual murder. Contextualizing and analyzing accounts of this event and others, with special attention to the roles of children, Paola Tartakoff sheds new light on medieval Christian views of circumcision. She shows that Christian characterizations of Jews as sinister agents of Christian apostasy belonged to the same constellation of anti-Jewish libels as the notorious charge of ritual murder. Drawing on a wide variety of Jewish and Christian sources, Tartakoff investigates the elusive backstory of the Norwich circumcision case and exposes the thirteenth-century resurgence of Christian concerns about formal Christian conversion to Judaism. In the process, she elucidates little-known cases of movement out of Christianity and into Judaism, as well as Christian anxieties about the instability of religious identity. Conversion, Circumcision, and Ritual Murder in Medieval Europe recovers the complexity of medieval Jewish-Christian conversion and reveals the links between religious conversion and mounting Jewish-Christian tensions. At the same time, Tartakoff does not lose sight of the mystery surrounding the events that spurred the Norwich circumcision case, and she concludes the book by offering a solution of her own: Christians and Jews, she posits, understood these events in fundamentally irreconcilable ways, illustrating the chasm that separated Christians and Jews in a world in which some Christians and Jews knew each other intimately.
Download or read book Contesting Rituals written by Andrew Strathern and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book fills a current need in Islamic Studies for a perspective on the nuanced investigation of ritual practices rather than a concentration on politicized forms of ideology. The essays in this volume, all written by scholarly specialists with first-hand fieldwork experience, take up a number of questions central to Islamic religion and ritual, focusing on rituals as practices of making identities. Identities are seen as changing in response to historical forces rather than as unchanging and rigid, and the overall vision of Islam is seen as pluralistic rather than monolithic. Several of the essays deal with gender relations, showing that women may in practice gain some prominence in local contexts beyond what might be allowed by reformist "Islamicizing" authorities. This is particularly the case when the focus is on varieties of Sufism. The essays also recognize that elements of conflict and contestation are commonly present in ritual contexts because of struggles over power, hence the title "Contesting Rituals." Politics, gender relations, and conflict between central reformists and local ritual specialists are all involved in these contestations. Overall, the volume aims to show the multiplicity of Islam and to demonstrate how the themes of multiplicity and unity are played out continuously over time. The contributors to the volume are Kelly Pemberton (South Asia), Anna M. Gade (Indonesia), Susan J. Rasmussen (Africa), Alaine S. Hutson (Africa), Shampa Mazumdar and Sanjoy Mazumdar (USA), Sean R. Roberts (Uyghurstan), and Liyakat Takim (Iraq). The editors, Pamela Stewart and Andrew Strathern, provide an introductory overview. This book is part of the Ritual Studies Monograph Series, edited by Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathern, Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh. "[T]his volume is a useful addition to literature on Islam, ritual, and identity. It successfully investigates the plasticity of Muslim ritual on multiple axes, providing historical perspectives, explorations of spatial transformation, and experience-near ethnographic analyses." -- Journal of Anthropological Research, 2006 "[T]he contributions offer interesting insights into aspects of Muslim religious practice, their situatedness in wider social contexts, and change over time." -- The Journal of Social Anthropology "The reader comes away with an awareness of the complexities of being Muslim in today's world of globalization, mass migration, changing gender roles, and continuing ethno-nationalist struggles." -- The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland
Download or read book Performing Islam written by Azam Torab and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2007 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Performing Islam" focuses on a wide spectrum of ritual activities in Iran today as a key for elucidating social, cultural and political processes, but in particular the values and beliefs underpinning gender constructions in a rapidly changing complex society.
Download or read book The Victory Banner Over the Reichstag written by Jeremy Hicks and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2020-12-15 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In one of the most iconic images from World War II, a Russian soldier raises a red flag atop the ruins of the German Reichstag on April 30, 1945. Known as the Victory Banner, this piece of fabric has come to symbolize Russian triumph, glory, and patriotism. Facsimiles are used in public celebrations all over the country, and an exact replica is the centerpiece in the annual Victory Parade in Moscow’s Red Square. The Victory Banner Over the Reichstag examines how and why this symbol was created, the changing media of its expression, and the contested evolution of its message. From association with Stalinism and communism to its acquisition of Russian nationalist meaning, Jeremy Hicks demonstrates how this symbol was used to construct a collective Russian memory of the war. He traces how the Soviets, and then Vladimir Putin, have used this image and the banner itself to build a remarkably powerful mythology of Russian greatness.
