1,720,993 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
'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/
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)
Once upon a place: the construction of specialness by visitors to Iona
Full text linkThis is an ethnographic study of visitors to the island of Iona on the west coast of
Scotland, popularly reputed to be a ‘special’ place. Using qualitative data obtained
through interviews and participant observation, it explores the situated category of
the ‘special’ as visitors apply it to Iona: analysing its form, its key elements, the
process of its construction, and its application across a range of interactions and
settings on the island. The thesis argues that the ascription of ‘specialness’ to Iona
is a visitor narrative of belonging, a form of visitor ‘work’, and a way for Iona’s
transient subjects to participate in the ongoing, everyday life on the island. The
thesis marks its origins in the idea of tourists as producers (chapter 1), the academic
field of religion and tourism (chapter 2) and the field site of Iona (chapter 3). It
then ‘turns’, arguing that the theoretical frameworks used in religion and tourism
cannot be readily applied to the case of visitors on Iona, and advocating a shift to
the vocabulary of the ‘special’, borrowed from visitors and theorised in light of the
work by Ann Taves (chapter 4). In its second half, it provides a systematic study of
specialness on Iona through an analysis of various ‘moving parts’: its form (the story;
chapter 5), its contents (safety; connectedness and a sense of being ‘out-of-time’;
chapter 6), its construction (the processes of gazing and possessing; chapter 7), its
functions (enabling visitors to make ‘homes’ and mark their ‘place’ on the island;
chapter 8), and its implications for wider studies of religion and tourism (chapter
9). In offering a malleable conceptualisation of specialness with broad explanatory
value, in considering visitors to be agents and producers of their own experience,
and in providing an in-depth ethnography of narratives about a significant and
contemporary visitor destination, this thesis aims to expand the scope of the
‘Religion and Tourism’ nexus in which it began
Life and landscape of dreams personhood, reversibility and resistance among the Nagas in Northeast India
Full text linkAncestral knowledge exerts itself in the daily lives of the Nagas in Northeast India,
whether through passed down clan genealogical knowledge, or through dreams and
waketime omens. The Angamis, one of the Naga tribes, articulate a close relationship
between the ancestral spirits they meet in their dreams, and ruopfü, one’s always-perceiving
soul or life-being, complicating the boundary that would separate
dreaming and waking states. In mediating these two states, the Angami ruopfü
therefore has a powerful ability to inhabit these two spaces simultaneously, thus
allowing for their reversibility. These processes of inhabiting the ‘real’ in waking and
dreaming, occur in the midst of significant political turmoil, and this thesis examines
the ways in which dreams index terrains of clan and state power in relation to a
broader cosmic struggle. Moreover, as a guiding principle of personhood, dreaming,
and reversibility elucidate the ways in which Angamis explore, understand, and
generate alternative futures.
I begin the discussion in the domain of the kitchen hearth. Within this gendered
space characterised by a continuous rhythm of quotidian practices and attentiveness
to dreams and omens, a significant political counter-narrative to the enduring pattern
of clan patriarchy emerges. This tense symbiosis is characterised by a relationship of
nurturance, but at the same time resistance to patriarchal meddling in domestic
affairs. I then describe how this tension mirrors a power dynamic perceived by many
in their dreams in which the clan collectively confronts morally ambivalent spiritual
forces that inhabit spaces outside of delimited clan domains. This recalls earlier times
when public life centred on the propitiation of powerful spirits in order to preserve
harvests, and protect clan settlements in times of war. With the advent of
Christianity, public discourse is transformed not solely via the iconoclastic demands
of the American missionaries, but through a spatiotemporal reorientation of public
life towards regularised church membership, and the development of missional
institutions. Traditional public rituals, and ritual objects gradually faded, but informal
inspirational practices such as divinational healing and dreaming, rooted as they were
in the domestic sphere, remained integral to community life. In contemporary
Nagaland, Christian charismatic groups have reconsidered the efficacy of traditional
practices, and the inspirational potential of dreams, and opened spaces for supervised
spirit mediation. These practices, however, have the potential to disrupt the church,
and the community, and community elders are alert to their potential dangers, often
seeking to defuse spirit mediated charisma as it emerges. The elder generation
frequently cites the role of divination in spurring upheaval, and within living memory
a young Naga prophetess, inspired by powerful dreams, succeeded in mounting a
tribal uprising against British rule in the region. The power of visions and dreams to
inspire political movements has not been lost on more recent Naga political groups,
and in the final chapter I draw parallels between the nature of charisma to inspire
political agency, and the function of the oneiric in normative patriliny, especially in
public events, and ultimately in the construction of nationalist ideology. Finally,
though the material and social circumstances separating public and domestic spheres
in Angami life-worlds continually produce divergent political imaginaries,
reversibility reveals how these formations emerge, how they coexist and
continuously shape daily life, and how they produce the potentialities for unified
political resistance
Everything is fiction: an experimental study in the application of ethnographic criticism to modern atheist identity
Full text linkThis Thesis is an experiment. Within its pages a number of stories will be told, the foci of which will
apply a particular methodology—what I call ‘Ethnographic Criticism’—to the examination of a
specific concept: modern Atheist identity. First, it will introduce Ethnographic Criticism as a new and
significant style of literary analysis aimed at reading fictional texts in order to generate anthropological
insights about how particular identities are formed. Second, it will use this new means of criticism to
discuss and evaluate how Atheist identity might be perceived as being constructed within a dialectic
between seemingly exclusive forms of Theism and Atheism.
Ethnographic Criticism exists at the nexus between fiction and ethnography, and its genesis derives
from three foundational pillars: ethnographic construction, Ethical Criticism, and discourse analysis.
In the three Chapters of Part One, each of these pillars will be established, both exegetically and
critically. This examination will play a key role in explicating how the ‘made-up’ qualities of fiction
might be converted into the ‘made-from’ qualities of ethnography. Additionally, these Chapters will
reveal the roots of Ethnographic Criticism through an analysis of discourses dealing with the ‘literary
turn’ in the theory of anthropology, how Ethical Criticism associates fictional character development
with identity construction, and the anthropological benefits of discourse analysis.
As a case study, I will apply Ethnographic Criticism to an analysis of Atheist identity construction.
Due to the combination of a relative absence of existing ethnographic sources on the subject, an
ambiguous academic discourse on the definition of the term, and a paucity of cultural units or ‘tribes’
of Atheists in which to observe, my use of Ethnographic Criticism will attempt to fill a methodological
lacuna concerning the study of Atheist identity. Thus, in Part Two, I will focus on two fictional texts
by the contemporary English novelist Ian McEwan: Black Dogs (1992) and Enduring Love (1997). In
this analysis, not only will McEwan’s fictional characters be treated as if they are ‘real,’ historical
individuals, they will be evaluated through an anthropological lens in order to isolate within their
interactional validations a means to understand how Atheists define themselves via dialectical
communication. In this way, and in both explicating and reflecting upon this approach, my
experimental analysis will identify a number of dynamic, yet no less precarious, outcomes that might
surface from reading fictional texts as if they were authoritatively equal to ethnographic ones
Christology and cosmology: weaving incarnation into the indigenous lifeworlds of Rongmei Baptists in Manipur, India
No full textFocusing on Rongmei Baptists, this thesis argues that the implications of Christology
go beyond humanity to nonhumans and the land, and by extension, the rest of creation.
The cosmological views that Christians hold of the world around them are linked to
their perception of Christ and his incarnation. The thesis demonstrates the
interrelations between Christology and cosmology through digital ethnographic
methods and theological analysis of lived theology among Rongmei Baptists in upland
Manipur, India. The interdisciplinary analyses illuminate how the interweaving of Jisu
Krista (the Rongmei name for Jesus Christ) into Rongmei life generates wide-ranging
cosmological reconfigurations of their ways of life. These reconfigurations comprise
continuities and discontinuities brought about by Christianity, grounded in how
Christians negotiate between indigenous traditions and land on the one hand, and
Christian notions of “divine ways of life” and heaven on the other. The dynamics of
socio-cultural change/continuity in Christianity are rooted in the theology of the
incarnation, that recognises Christ as indigenising into a particular culture while
simultaneously transcending it. Christian lifeworlds emerge from the encounter of Jisu
Krista and the particularities of traditional indigenous life, through the negotiations
between Christianity and indigenous life. According to this then, the shape of Christian
cosmological lifeworlds is largely determined by how Christology is perceived—what
are the limits of the effects of the incarnation of Jesus Christ? If their Christology is
anthropocentric, as observed among Rongmei Baptists, their cosmological lifeworlds
can be dualistic and disrupt the relationship with the land. However, it is argued that
such a disruptive ethos contradicts both indigenous sensibilities (marked by relations
and intimacy with the land) and the theology of the Divine incarnation into the fabric of
creatureliness. Seeking a fuller articulation of Christology from the framework of
indigenous lifeworlds, the thesis then presents a constructive theological argument. If
the incarnation of Christ is envisioned as reaching to all creation, implying that Christ
identifies with and transforms the land, this would be reflected in Christian
cosmological lifeworlds that prioritise interconnectedness, reconciliation, and healing
of relations. The land in Christ, according to their reconfigured relations with humans
and with God, is affirmed as participating in the life(worlds) of the Creator God.
Through its qualitative and theological study of indigenous lived theology, the thesis
contributes towards the enrichment of wider theological discourse by offering critical
interventions on Christological methodology, by providing a case study of an
indigenous encounter with Christology, and by putting forward a constructive theology
of the incarnation. The interconnected and relational sensibilities of Rongmei
communities appeal for the study of Christology-in-relation—as opposed to
Christology-in-isolation—that recognises the complex networks that make up the
theological perceptions of Christ. Additionally, Rongmei Christian lifeworlds provide
unique opportunities for the analysis of the interrelation between Christology and
cosmology, because of its relatively short history with traceable religious change, its
process of indigenisation spearheaded by indigenous actors, and the persistence of
the place of the land in Christian lifeworlds. Finally, going beyond description of
indigenous Christology in context, the thesis critically develops a constructive
Christology that provides a theological and incarnational understanding of creation,
both for the context of Rongmei Christianity and beyond
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