Download or read book Rituals of Ethnicity written by Sara Shneiderman and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2015-03-25 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first comprehensive ethnography of the Thangmi, a marginalized community who migrate between Himalayan border zones, Rituals of Ethnicity explores Thangmi cultural worlds and regional political histories to offer a new explanation for the persistence of enduring ethnic identities despite the realities of mobile, hybrid lives.
Download or read book Rituals of Ethnicity written by Sara Shneiderman and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2015-02-02 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rituals of Ethnicity is a transnational study of the relationships between mobility, ethnicity, and ritual action. Through an ethnography of the Thangmi, a marginalized community who migrate between Himalayan border zones of Nepal, India, and the Tibetan Autonomous Region of China, Shneiderman offers a new explanation for the persistence of enduring ethnic identities today despite the increasing realities of mobile, hybrid lives. She shows that ethnicization may be understood as a process of ritualization, which brings people together around the shared sacred object of identity. The first comprehensive ethnography of the Thangmi, Rituals of Ethnicity is framed by the Maoist-state civil conflict in Nepal and the movement for a separate state of Gorkhaland in India. The histories of individual nation-states in this geopolitical hotspot—as well as the cross-border flows of people and ideas between them—reveal the far-reaching and mutually entangled discourses of democracy, communism, development, and indigeneity that have transformed the region over the past half century. Attentive to the competing claims of diverse members of the Thangmi community, from shamans to political activists, Shneiderman shows how Thangmi ethnic identity is produced collaboratively by individuals through ritual actions embedded in local, national, and transnational contexts. She builds upon the specificity of Thangmi experiences to tell a larger story about the complexities of ethnic consciousness: the challenges of belonging and citizenship under conditions of mobility, the desire to both lay claim to and remain apart from the civil society of multiple states, and the paradox of self-identification as a group with cultural traditions in need of both preservation and development. Through deep engagement with a diverse, cross-border community that yearns to be understood as a distinctive, coherent whole, Rituals of Ethnicity presents an argument for the continued value of locally situated ethnography in a multisited world. Cover art: Lost Culture Can Not Be Reborn, painting by Mahendra Thami, Darjeeling, West Bengal, India.
Download or read book Roots Rituals written by Ton Dekker and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 838 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Celebrating the Family written by Elizabeth H. Pleck and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2000-07-04 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pleck examines changes in the way Americans celebrate holidays like Christmas or birthdays.
Download or read book Religion Secularism and Ethnicity in Contemporary Nepal written by David N. Gellner and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-01-01 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The socio-political landscape of Nepal has been rocked by dramatic and far-reaching changes in the past thirty years. Following a ten-year Maoist revolution and civil war, the country has transitioned from a monarchy to a republic. The former Hindu kingdom has declared its commitment to secularism, without coming to any agreement on what secularism means or should mean in the Nepalese context. What happens to religion under conditions of such rapid social and political change? How do the changes in public festivals reflect and/or create new group identities? Is the gap between the urban and the rural narrowing? How is the state dealing with Nepal’s multicultural and multi-religious society? How are Nepalis understanding, resisting, and adapting ideas of secularism? In order to answer these important questions, this volume brings together eleven case studies by an international team of anthropologists and ethno-Indologists of Nepal on such diverse topics as secularism, individualism, shamanism, animal sacrifice, the role of state functionaries in festivals, clashes and synergies between Maoism and Buddhism, and conversion to Christianity. In an Afterword, renowned political theorist Rajeev Bhargava presents a comparative analysis of Nepal’s experiences and asks whether the country is finding its own solution to the conundrum of secularism.
Download or read book Ritual and Ethnic Identity written by Jack N. Lightstone and published by Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press. This book was released on 1995-06 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this innovative and comprehensive collection of essays Jack Lightstone and Frederick Bird document and interpret ritual practice among contemporary Canadian Jews. They particularly focus on the character and meaning of the public performance of the Sabbath liturgy in six urban Canadian synagogues, ranging from Orthodox to Reform, and from large congregations to a small house synagogue-yeshiva (rabbinic academy). Their examination of synagogue ritual is complemented with accounts of the ritual life of contemporary Canadian Jews outside the synagogue — amongst their families, within their homes and beyond. In contrast with other studies of Jewish observance, Lightstone and Bird document not simply which rituals are practised and how often; rather they stress the meaning, including the social meaning, of these rituals and treat them as complex symbolic systems. Their multidisciplinary approach together with their openness to include a wide variety of phenomena in their study (for example, the organization of the physical setting of the Sabbath, dress codes and patterns of greeting and handshaking) place this work at the very forefront of current research. Ritual and Ethnic Identity will be of great value to historians and sociologists of religion, anthropologists and all those concerned with religion, ritual and Canadian Jewish and ethnic studies.
Download or read book Pluralism and Identity written by Platvoet and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-08-14 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The subject of this book is ritual behaviour, in particular of groups with a distinctive religious, ethnic or other identity which use rituals to pursue strategic ends ad intra and ad extra. Five essays offer theoretical perspectives on ritual in plural and pluralist societies, on similarity and demarcation, on the negative case of the Australian Aboriginals, on Brazilian religious pluralism, and on Ghanaian churches in the Netherlands. Three essays describe the ritualization of the encounter, or confrontation, between religions in India (between Buddhists and Hindus, and between Hindus and Muslims), and in Yemen between Muslims and Jews. Four essays study the responses to internal religious plurality, in early Israel, on Java, in Indonesia, and in Spain and North Africa. One essay explores responses to external religious plurality. In the epilogue, the social nature of pluralism and identity is highlighted.
Download or read book Las Varas written by Howard Tsai and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Archaeological data from Las Varas, Peru, that establish the importance of ritual in constructing ethnic boundaries"--
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 Las Varas written by Howard Tsai and published by University Alabama Press. This book was released on 2020-08-04 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Archaeological data from Las Varas, Peru, that establish the importance of ritual in constructing ethnic boundaries Recent popular discourse on nationalism and ethnicity assumes that humans by nature prefer “tribalism,” as if people cannot help but divide themselves along lines of social and ethnic difference. Research from anthropology, history, and archaeology, however, shows that individuals actively construct cultural and social ideologies to fabricate the stereotypes, myths, and beliefs that separate “us” from “them.” Archaeologist Howard Tsai and his team uncovered a thousand-year-old village in northern Peru where rituals were performed to recognize and reinforce ethnic identities. This site—Las Varas—is located near the coast of Peru in a valley leading into the Andes. Excavations revealed a western entrance to Las Varas for those arriving from the coast and an eastern entryway for those coming from the highlands. Rituals were performed at both of these entrances, indicating that the community was open to exchange and interaction, yet at the same time controlled the flow of people and goods through ceremonial protocols. Using these checkpoints and associated rituals, the villagers of Las Varas were able to maintain ethnic differences between themselves and visitors from foreign lands. Las Varas: Ritual and Ethnicity in the Ancient Andes reveals a rare case of finding ethnicity relying solely on archaeological remains. In this monograph, data from the excavation of Las Varas are analyzed within a theoretical framework based on current understandings of ethnicity. Tsai’s method, approach, and inference demonstrate the potential for archaeologists to discover how ethnic identities were constructed in the past, ultimately making us question the supposed naturalness of tribal divisions in human antiquity.
Download or read book Family Rituals written by Linda D. McCarroll and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book African Religions written by Jacob K. Olupona and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book connects traditional religions to the thriving religious activity in Africa today.
Download or read book Rituals of Ethnicity written by Sara Beth Shneiderman and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This ethnography examines the relationships between political discourse, ritual practice, cultural performance, and circular migration in producing ethnic identity for the Thangmi, a Himalayan community dispersed across border areas of Nepal, India, and the Tibetan Autonomous Region of China. With a population of approximately 40,000, the Thangmi speak a distinct Tibeto-Burman language, and maintain a religious system which draws upon aspects of shamanic, Hindu and Buddhist practice in a synthetic manner. This dissertation shows how Thangmi subjectivities are forged in a transnational dialectic between discursive statements of cultural absence and ritualized expressions of cultural presence, prompting a reconceptualization of how both ethnicity and ritual work within contexts of mobility. The Thangmi have been almost entirely absent from lay, political, and academic discourses on ethnicity in all three of the national contexts in which they live. There are no previous substantive ethnographic publications on the group. Yet many Thangmi view ethnography as a valuable asset within the politics of recognition, so beyond its theoretical imperatives, this dissertation is intended as a documentary resource for the community. As such, it demonstrates the continued value-and complicity-of ethnography in serving both academic and political agendas. This dissertation explores the history of Thangmi migration from Nepal to India and the TAR, and illustrates how contemporary crossborder movements bring members of the Thangmi community into contact with three different national policies for recognizing minorities and legislating difference. The dissertation describes Thangmi participation in the broader janajati, or "indigenous nationalities", movement in Nepal, as well as their campaign for government recognition as a "Scheduled Tribe" within India's reservations system. This work is based primarily on ethnographic research conducted in Nepal's Dolakha, Sindhupalchok and Kathmandu districts; the Indian states of West Bengal (Darjeeling District) and Sikkim; and China's Tibetan Autonomous Region (Nyalam County). It also draws upon textual and multi-media sources. The resulting analytical approach bridges depictions of ethnicity as a political construction dependent largely on discourse, and those of identity as a subjective production dependent largely on practice, to offer an empirically rich study of contemporary ethnic identity as lived in a cross-border environment.
Download or read book Ritual and Ethnic Identity written by Jack N. Lightstone and published by Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this innovative and comprehensive collection of essays Jack Lightstone and Frederick Bird document and interpret ritual practice among contemporary Canadian Jews. They particularly focus on the character and meaning of the public performance of the Sabbath liturgy in six urban Canadian synagogues, ranging from Orthodox to Reform, and from large congregations to a small house synagogue-yeshiva (rabbinic academy). Their examination of synagogue ritual is complemented with accounts of the ritual life of contemporary Canadian Jews outside the synagogue — amongst their families, within their homes and beyond. In contrast with other studies of Jewish observance, Lightstone and Bird document not simply which rituals are practised and how often; rather they stress the meaning, including the social meaning, of these rituals and treat them as complex symbolic systems. Their multidisciplinary approach together with their openness to include a wide variety of phenomena in their study (for example, the organization of the physical setting of the Sabbath, dress codes and patterns of greeting and handshaking) place this work at the very forefront of current research. Ritual and Ethnic Identity will be of great value to historians and sociologists of religion, anthropologists and all those concerned with religion, ritual and Canadian Jewish and ethnic studies.
Download or read book Rituals written by Alley Parish and published by Nova Science Publishers. This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rituals of various kinds are a feature of almost all known human societies, past or present. They include not only the various worship rites and sacraments of organised religions and cults, but also the rites of passage of certain societies, atonement and purification rites, oaths of allegiance, dedication ceremonies, coronations and presidential inaugurations, marriages and funerals, and others. In this book, the authors discuss the practices, ethnic and cultural aspects and role in emotional healing relating to rituals. Topics include communitarianism and the Obasinjom mask performance as ritual healing among the Bayang and Ejagham of Southwest Cameroon; plant-based rituals for the prevention and cure of the evil eye in a rural community of Western Spain; Shamanic healing and psychotherapy; pro-social functions of ritual involvement in early adolescents; the religious rituals of the Anastenarides in Greece; ritual of healing people in the Shamanic practice of the Nanai people inhabiting the lower Amur Region; and medico-religious plants and cultural rituals used by the Mauritian population against diabetes and related complications.
Download or read book Wedding Ceremonies written by Tiziana Baldizzone and published by Flammarion-Pere Castor. This book was released on 2001 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A pictorial look at the customs, rituals, ceremonies, and celebrations related to marriage in various cultures around the world.
Download or read book Ritual A Very Short Introduction written by Barry Stephenson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-28 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ritual is part of what it means to be human. Like sports, music, and drama, ritual defines and enriches culture, putting those who practice it in touch with sources of value and meaning larger than themselves. Ritual is unavoidable, yet it holds a place in modern life that is decidedly ambiguous. What is ritual? What does it do? Is it useful? What are the various kinds of ritual? Is ritual tradition bound and conservative or innovative and transformational? Alongside description of a number of specific rites, this Very Short Introduction explores ritual from both theoretical and historical perspectives. Barry Stephenson focuses on the places where ritual touches everyday life: in politics and power; moments of transformation in the life cycle; as performance and embodiment. He also discusses the boundaries of ritual, and how and why certain behaviors have been studied as ritual while others have not. Stephenson shows how ritual is an important vehicle for group and identity formation; how it generates and transmits beliefs and values; how it can be used to exploit and oppress; and how it has served as a touchstone for thinking about cultural origins and historical change. Encompassing the breadth and depth of modern ritual studies, Barry Stephenson's Very Short Introduction also develops a narrative of ritual's place in social and cultural life. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
