56 research outputs found
"Cleanliness is next to Godliness": Religious change, hygiene and the renewal of Heraka Villages in Assam
Full text link This article investigates the link between religious change and perceptions of and attitudes towards ‘hygiene’ and ‘order’ amongst adherents of Heraka, a religious reform movement among the Zeme Naga of Assam. It examines the problematic role of sacrifice, its relation-ship to the economy, and the consequent theological shift towards a monotheistic god, Tingwang, by focusing on the ritual of a Heraka village renewal. Not only does this ritual validate the abandonment of sacrifice, but also greatly diminishes disease-creating conditions—with blood equalling dirt—that traditional sacrifices had allegedly involved. Thus, while it can be said that ‘secular’ factors such as economic and health benefits explain the ‘conversion’ to Heraka, the article argues that theological beliefs, in particular Christian notions of ‘cleanliness is next to godliness’, also had an impact on the Heraka. </jats:p
Indigenous Religion(s):Local Grounds, Global Networks
Full text linkWhat counts as 'indigenous religion' in today´s world? Who claims this category? What are the processes through which local entities become recognisable as 'religious' and 'indigenous'? How is all of this connected to struggles for power, rights and sovereignty?This book sheds light on the contemporary lives of indigenous religion(s), through case studies from Sápmi, Nagaland, Talamanca, Hawai`i, and Gujarat, and through a shared focus on translations, performances, mediation and sovereignty. It builds on long term case-studies and on the collaborative comparison of a long-term project, including shared fieldwork. At the center of its concerns are translations between a globalising discourse (indigenous religion in the singular) and distinct local traditions (indigenous religions in the plural).With contributions from leading scholars in the field, this book is a must read for students and researchers in indigenous religions, including those in related fields such as religious studies and social anthropology
Who sings for the Hornbill?: the performance and politics of culture in Nagaland, Northeast India
Full text linkThis photo essay reflects on the annual Hornbill Festival celebrated bythe Nagas of Nagaland in Northeast India. It provides an ethnographicaccount of the various activities and the different actors involved in theFestival, and examines what makes this a compelling tourist destination.The state of Nagaland capitalises on the colourful image of the Festivalas an ‘exotic’ location, which plays on the warrior and tribal identity oftenassociated with the Nagas; ideas of ‘traditional’ culture; and the mountainousand pristine landscape. While the region has witnessed over fifty yearsof armed conflict between the Indian state and different Naga nationalistsdemanding independence, the Festival provides a creative public spacewhere all sections of society – urban/rural; students/politicians/administrators;Indian army/Naga nationalists – can freely mingle, a temporary lull from theotherwise pervasive militarised landscape
'As our ancestors once lived':Representation, Performance and Constructing a National Culture amongst the Nagas of India
Full text linkThis paper focuses on how a national culture emerges by examining the Nagas of India. To appreciate this process, the confluence of British colonialism, thepostcolonial situation, and contemporary performance of Naga identity (visible in the Hornbill Festival) must be analysed. I will argue that the colonial era representation of ‘primitivism’ of the Nagas continues into postcolonial narratives of ‘imperialist nostalgia’ disseminated primarily through travel, popular media and museum exhibitions. I will argue that the Nagas are not simply passive onlookers but active participants in this enterprise, through the strategic articulation of a distinct Naga national image. I will demonstrate that the Nagas are using these colonial era images of ‘primitivism’ for certain purposes, while also promoting a revitalisation of traditional culture. First, this process mimics the cumulative notions of primitivism through a reverse gaze. Second, revitalisation acts as a vital force in claiming historical agency predicated on the ‘performance of identity’ and cultural hybridity. Finally, both of these processes help illuminate how the Nagas position themselves within the larger international discourse of indigeneity whereby images, once represented as primitive, now legitimise a distinct national culture
“Lines that speak”:The Gaidinliu notebooks as Language, Prophecy and Textuality
Full text linkThis paper navigates my experience of returning copies of the “Gaidinliu notebooks” from the Pitt Rivers Museum (Oxford) to the Zeme Nagas of Assam, India. The notebooks were confiscated in 1932 by the British administrators and donated to the museum. They are from a religious movement, the Heraka, and their prophetess, Gaidinliu (1915-1993). Returning the notebooks highlighted a number of theoretical issues in approaching texts, particularly since these were written in a language that is “untranslatable”. I argue that their textuality requires one to examine the notebooks in relation to the millenarian unfolding of the kingdom (Zeme: heguangram), using the notion of textuality (Uzendoski 2012) grounded in dreams, prophecy, songs and visions. Secondly, to appreciate the value and purpose of the notebooks, one must pay attention to the sonority of sound that manifests the words of the notebooks in song. Finally, these issues point to significant ways in which we understand the relationships between history, language and experience. <br/
Bible, guns, and land:Sovereignty and nationalism amongst the Nagas of India
Full text linkThis paper will argue that to understand Naga sovereignty, one must take into account the intimate connection between Christianity and nationalism. This relationship is centred on the idea of ‘Nagaland for Christ’, a central slogan (also seen as a covenant) for all Naga nationalist groups. It suggests that God is the primary agent in sovereignty, and that the land is connected with the idea of Nagaland for Christ. I argue that national territory is not an object or a place that can be fixed in time, but rather an act of narration and imagination with the power to shape where it belongs. I will make the case that we need to rethink modular forms of sovereignty that are based on a strong national state. Instead it would be more useful to think about sovereign territories as the organisation of space, or territoriality (Sack 1986). Robert Sack argues that territoriality is ‘intimately related to how people use the land’, how they ‘organize themselves in space and how they give meaning to place’ (Sack 1986: 2). If history has shown us that ascertaining the precise territorial lines of national units are always a challenge, it is more helpful to try and understand how people give meaning to place regardless of boundaries
‘Along Kingdom’s Highway’:The proliferation of Christianity, education, and print amongst the Nagas in Northeast India
Full text linkThe aim of this paper is to examine the story of the American Baptists and how their mission activities in the Naga Hills District (1871-1955) have impacted upon present day politics in the Indian state of Nagaland. Baptists make up nearly 95% of the current Naga population in Nagaland. The paper will investigate the relationship between the Baptist mission’s philosophy on education, Christian conversion and the subsequent rise of a sense of ‘national community’ amongst the Nagas. Although the primary motivation for the American missionaries was to convert, the British administrators also thought that introducing Christianity would prevent influence on these tribes from Hindu and Muslim groups. Thus began Christianity’s part in a developing framework for resistance in this region, raising significant questions with regard to Christianity’s persistence as a form of political articulation in contemporary Nagaland. This political articulation, I suggest, is related to a greater sense of agency brought about by Christianity, and Missionary activities in the fields of education and print. The American Baptist Foreign Mission Society (ABFMS) were at the forefront of these changes
Touch in contemporary Tantra: transgression, healing, and ecstasy in women's constructions of selfhood
Full text linkThis thesis argues that women in contemporary Tantra engage with tactile practices in an ongoing effort to create an autonomous, empowered, and healthy sense of self. Focusing specifically on the sense of touch and how it is used in contemporary Tantra, I explore how and why touch techniques are used by participants – namely in inducing transformation, healing, and ecstatic experiences. By conducting interviews and fieldwork with Tantra teachers across Great Britain over the course of two years, this PhD shows how certain discourses around transgression, gender roles, and sexuality have become prominent within this context, and how touch is used to negotiate these themes. To date, Tantra in the West has rarely been studied ethnographically and as such, this thesis provides a much-needed contribution to knowledge on contemporary Tantric practices. Similarly, the sense of touch has received little academic attention; this thesis aims to expand understandings of how individuals engage with tactility within a social context that prioritises the visual.
In the first part of the thesis – Chapters 2 and 3 – I focus primarily on the emergence of Tantra in the West and how perceptions of this have been consistently associated with orientalism and the holistic milieu. In Chapter 3, I also explore how certain notions of Tantra, so widespread in the West, are experienced on the ground both by the researcher (myself) and the informants. In this chapter I develop the idea of embodied ethnography more fully. I demonstrate the importance of touch as a research method, which has yet to be fully elaborated in the wider field of anthropology and Tantra studies. Using this approach, and particularly focusing on the tactile, this thesis explores the experiences of women engaging with these practices, while simultaneously developing new ethnographic approaches to include the body and senses of the researcher as instruments of knowledge.
These two chapters set the scene in terms of the conceptual and methodological work, while in the next few chapters I explore the thematic resonance of Tantra and how its practices are fleshed out in everyday encounters of women in their social contexts. In Chapter 4, I focus on touch techniques used in Tantra groups and workshops to show how women use these practices as somatic modes of attention (Csordas, 1993). This enables women to reinterpret bodily experiences and social norms, thus legitimising certain feelings or behaviours and contributing to their projects of selfhood. In Chapter 5, I move on to focus on understandings of trauma and healing in contemporary Tantra. I explore the ideal of 'wellbeing', how trauma is understood, and how healing is a gradual and continual process, facilitated by the concept of sexual energy, that allows individuals to reconstruct a sense of self. Finally, in Chapter 6, I look at ecstasy in contemporary Tantra - how it is experienced, spoken about, and understood - as an experience that works to affirm these women's new sense of selfhood and alters their everyday experiences
Narrative spirituality and the infrapolitical self in the Dark Goddess intertext
Full text linkIn the last three decades a discourse on the ‘Dark Goddess’ has arisen in the context of the
Anglo-American ‘spiritual milieu’, and more specifically in the Goddess Spirituality and
contemporary Pagan movements. Between 1992 and 2017, thirteen printed non-fiction texts
were published with the term ‘Dark Goddess’ in their title. This corpus depicts the Dark
Goddess as an instigator of ‘spiritual’ destruction and renewal, and relates her to specific
characteristics and experiences of women which have been repressed by patriarchal society.
Conversations about this ‘Dark Goddess’ have simultaneously arisen across social media
platforms. A principal site is the YouTube video channel which provides an accessible forum
for individuals to represent their beliefs and experiences. Between 2011 and 2017 fourteen
individuals uploaded videos with ‘Dark Goddess’ in their title. Many more have uploaded
videos on ‘The Morrigan’, a specific dark goddess of Irish origin, of which I have chosen five
for supplementary analysis. Many video creators explicitly reference each other, or published
Dark Goddess texts. Others reference the wider discourse through recurring themes and
taxonomies. This dual combination of printed texts and self-published online content
constitutes the Dark Goddess ‘intertext’. The term ‘intertext’ is derived from the
poststructuralist concept of ‘intertextuality’ which refers to how ‘[a]ny text is a new tissue of
past citations’ as described by Roland Barthes (1986, 39).
This thesis delineates the content of the Dark Goddess intertext and examines how the
devotee reciprocally contributes to this discursive field through a methodology of narrative
and thematic analysis of the corpus. The videos were transcribed, coded and analysed
alongside the print text, noting non-verbal visual and aural elements as part of analysis.
Placed within a Religious Studies approach to the spiritual milieu and Goddess Spirituality,
this analysis offers insight into a sector within the spiritual milieu which focuses on women’s
experience.
The primary findings consist in a new theory of the role of ‘narrative spirituality’ within the
spiritual milieu. By critically engaging Paul Heelas’ model of ‘Self-spirituality’, narrative
spirituality theorises engagement with the Dark Goddessto create an ‘integrated self’ through
negotiating the relationship between the ‘dark self’ and the ‘monstrous other’. This process of narrative spirituality is infrapolitical—a term coined by James Scott (1990) to describe a
low-profile form of resistance which culturally and structurally underpins more visible
political action. Through the narration of the integrated self, the women of the Dark Goddess
intertext reimagine their self-identities in resistance to what they perceive as patriarchally-enforced ideals and in Scott’s words, ‘carve out’ space, both publicly and personally, ‘for the
autonomous cultural expression of dissent’ (1990, 166).
To develop this argument, the core chapters examine the relationship of the self to the Dark
Goddess, the conception of the Dark Goddess as a monstrous other, the affective use of
narrative in engagement with the Dark Goddess, and the extent to which the resulting
intertext can be considered ‘counter-cultural’. I argue that the Dark Goddess intertext models
an integrated self that is narrated within its discursive environment of the intertext rather
than the discovered ‘Self-spirituality’ in dominant models of the spiritual milieu which are
static and disconnected. The thesis concludes that the ‘monstrous’ component of the Dark
Goddess is crucial to a holistic understanding of ‘narrative spirituality’, a model which
therefore rejects critiques of the ‘individualisation’ of the ‘spiritual milieu’.
Instead the model
argues for implicitly subversive or counter-cultural content which connects transformational
self-narratives to societal issues. In this way the Dark Goddess intertext can be understood as
a gendered ‘infrapolitics’ (Scott)
The Power of Persuasion:Hindutva, Christianity, and the discourse of religion and culture in Northeast India
Full text linkThe paper will examine the intersection between Sangh Parivar activities, Christianity, and indigenous religions in relation to the state of Nagaland. I will argue that the discourse of ‘religion and culture’ is used strategically by Sangh Parivar activists to assimilate disparate tribal groups and to envision a Hindu nation. In particular, I will show how Sangh activists attempt to encapsulate Christianity within the larger territorial and civilisational space of Hindutva (Hinduness). In this process, the idea of Hindutva is visualised as a nationalist concept, not a theocratic or religious one (Cohen 2002: 26). I will argue that the boundaries between Hindutva as cultural nationalism and its religious underpinnings are usefully maintained in the context of Nagaland because they allow Sangh activists to reconstitute the limits of Christianity and incorporate it into Hindu civilisation on their own terms
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