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Open access

Migrant Souls

Reincarnation, Religious Authority and the Transformations of Druze Identity in Minas Gerais, Brazil

Paulo G. Pinto

Abstract

This article analyses the reconfiguration of religious identity in the Druze community in Minas Gerais, south-eastern Brazil, which was formed by the arrival of immigrants from Lebanon in the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. The immigrants created ethnic and religious institutions destined to maintain Druze identity and its Islamic character. However, the transmission of religious knowledge to the generations born in Brazil was fragmentary and imperfect. Nevertheless, Druze identity was maintained by many and completely recreated in the religious context of Catholicism and Spiritism, while the connection to Islam faded away. The analysis focuses on how religious authorities and the belief in reincarnation were the main elements that allowed continuity in religious identity together with the transformation of tradition.

Cover Anthropology of the Middle East

In  Anthropology of the Middle East

Published (Print):
01 Jun 2024
Article Type:
Research Article
Pages:
125–140 (16 total)
Open access

Mobility rules

An anthropological introduction

Ignacio Fradejas-García and Noel B. Salazar

Abstract

In this introductory article, we critically analyze which rules govern human mobility and how mobility regulations and codes are resisted, transgressed, broken, and remade. To play by the rules of mobility means to follow habits and laws governed by social norms and institutional control. Our point of departure is that social and institutional mobility rules both abound and are intertwined and that they are routinely disputed by individuals, groups, and institutions. Drawing on ethnographic examples and the literature on legal anthropology, mobilities, and transnational migration, the article disentangles the specific mechanisms, principles, and symbolic power of mobility rules—written and non-written, legal and non-legal, formal and informal, codified and non-codified, explicit and implicit. In short, we address how people are navigating rules of mobility that operate in contradictory, ambiguous, and hidden ways.

Cover Focaal

In  Focaal

Published (Print):
01 Jun 2024
Article Type:
Research Article
Pages:
1–14 (14 total)
Open access

Mother Cultures

Skyr Microbes, Dairy Maids and Super Women

Valdimar Tr. Hafstein, Jón Þór Pétursson, and Viggó Þór Marteinsson

Abstract

This article explores long-standing symbiotic relations between women and microbes in Iceland while analysing the transformation of this relationship in the making of the dairy product skyr during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In the past, differences in microbial cultures and production methods meant that the taste and texture of skyr varied greatly. Standardisation and technological innovations have steadily impoverished its microbial diversity over the past 120 years. Starting from a historical account of skyr making, we zoom in on skyr in the twenty-first century, a period in which skyr has had an international breakthrough, captured in branding efforts and advertising campaigns produced in this decade for various types of skyr from producers in Iceland, Europe and the United States.

Cover Ethnologia Europaea

In  Ethnologia Europaea

Published (Print):
01 Jun 2024
Article Type:
Research Article
Pages:
1–21 (21 total)
Open access

A mutable space

Identity in the ruins of a polyethnic town camp, Outback Australia

Alana Brekelmans

Abstract

As that which troubles simplistic binaries, ruins provide an entry point for scholars to conceptualize time, space, and identity as multiple, fragmented, and mutable. This article contributes to these studies by interrogating Australian settler-colonial time-space narratives (chronotopes) of White dominance through engagement with counter-narratives of mutable materialities and identities. Through ethnography of a commemorative event in a rural Australian town, I show how peoples of mixed Aboriginal and Asian descent negotiated racialized ruins to reassert narrative agency. I argue narratives of identity—when re-remembered through spatial understandings of multiple community membership, re-lived through embodied experiences, and re-collected through affective engagement with ruins—create a mutable space to disrupt settler-colonial chronotopes, revealing narratives of hybrid, polyethnic, and polyracial belongings in Australia.

Cover Focaal

In  Focaal

Published (Print):
01 Jun 2024
Article Type:
Research Article
Pages:
97–110 (14 total)
Restricted access

My Barbie Monologue

A Reflection

Sofia Temelini

For my final assignment in a university course called “Arts Education: Pedagogical Theory and Practical Applications in the Teaching of Developmental Drama, Dramatic Forms, Improvisation and Theatre Art”1 I had to do a four-minute monologue performance. I chose to perform Gloria's (America Ferrera) monologue from Barbie (2023)2 because it constitutes a message about how women and girls in society are stressed by thinking about, and aiming for, perfection as well as by finding ways to please everyone in their work, school, and home environment. The monologue articulates the struggles that women experience in feeling constantly that they must please everyone. However, it also points out that we cannot make everyone happy all the time. As girls and women, we must stop thinking constantly about every detail of every task that society tells us to do and every role we are told to perform. We must stop thinking all the time about how we are meant to be. As women, we must not compete; we must be there for each other.

Cover Girlhood Studies

In  Girlhood Studies

Published (Print):
01 Jun 2024
Article Type:
Other
Pages:
147–151 (5 total)
Open access

Not-Russians on TV

Class, Comedy, and the Peculiarities of East European Otherness on 2 Broke Girls

Erica L. Fraser

Abstract

This article discusses portrayals of a Ukrainian and a Polish character on the US sitcom 2 Broke Girls (2011–2017). The pilot episode reveals that the showrunners used stereotypes of Russian characters to establish different national origins for Oleg and Sophie. The show perpetuates offensive stereotypes of Slavic and postsocialist characters to elide differences from Russians but with notable distinctions—stemming from Oleg and Sophie's economic backgrounds in the struggling postsocialist economies of the 1990s. American television has produced many comedic characters from the European margins (Greek, Czech, Ukrainian, Polish, Latvian, or from invented but East European-coded lands) who were understood as chaotic but loveable. Crucially, however, they were not Russian. From the late Cold War through the 2010s, Russianness onscreen seems to consistently signal dishonesty, danger, or hopelessness for Western audiences. This suggests that while stereotypes persist, in comedy, at least, showrunners use East Europeans to support, not threaten, American characters, further othering Russianness.

Cover Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques

In  Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques

Published (Print):
01 Jun 2024
Article Type:
Research Article
Pages:
77–92 (16 total)
Open access

Philosophy Education and the Reconstruction of Subjectivity and Modernity in Africa

Fasil Merawi

Abstract

The article explores the role that can be played by philosophy education in terms of addressing the crisis of subjectivity and modernity in Africa. Philosophy education in Africa can play the function of liberating Africans from alien modalities of existence and ways of being, and in return embarking on a new journey of self-invention. Without succumbing to a reactive epistemic nationalism that identifies the totality of European philosophy with the ideologies of colonialism, there is a need to develop a form of philosophy education that is cognisant of the troubled path within which the African mode of individual existence and modernity are constituted within. This contributes to the development of a vision of an African future that is founded on collective histories and struggles.

Cover Theoria

In  Theoria

Published (Print):
01 Jun 2024
Article Type:
Other
Pages:
108–128 (21 total)
Open access

Play and Playgrounds of a Traditional Urban Festivity

The Case of the Palio di Siena in Italy

Tobias Boos

Abstract

This article contributes to the development of the concept of “playgrounds”, which has previously been given only sporadic analytical value as a fundamental component of concepts of play. Ethnographic material on the Italian celebration and competition the Palio di Siena is analysed, providing a spatial analysis to support the emotional reading of play. According to this article, the emerging playground of this festivity includes not only local and global public places but also intimate ones. The article investigates how intimacy and publicness are intertwined in specific festive places, and what role global contexts play today in spatial processes of community-building at festivities. Furthermore, festivities are shaped by both participants and outsiders, such as tourists and even “spoilsports”.

Cover Ethnologia Europaea

In  Ethnologia Europaea

Published (Print):
01 Jun 2024
Article Type:
Research Article
Pages:
67–87 (21 total)
Open access

The Power of Musical Aesthetics

Ritual and Emotion in Contemporary Moroccan Sufism

Bruno Ferraz Bartel

Abstract

This article explores the role of music in eliciting emotional states among the Hamdouchiya Sufi order in Morocco. It highlights the aesthetic aspects of Sufi rituals as relational activities that impact sensory perceptions and mystical experiences. Music serves as a medium through which emotions are expressed, self-imagination takes form, and challenges to the study of rituals are presented. Aesthetics plays a pivotal role in Sufi practice and belief, involving the body as a vessel for spiritual transformation and interaction with music as reflections of the divine. The article also discusses the concept of aesthetics within a cultural context, emphasising its influence on socialisation and morality. Sufism provides an opportunity to contemplate the limits of the mind, self and emotions, thereby unveiling the ritualistic shaping of one's spiritual existence.

Cover Anthropology of the Middle East

In  Anthropology of the Middle East

Published (Print):
01 Jun 2024
Article Type:
Research Article
Pages:
8–24 (17 total)
Restricted access

Powers of (Body) Horror

Titane and the Queer Posthuman Abject

Jiwoo Choi

Abstract

French film director and screenwriter Julia Ducournau's sophomore body horror film, Titane (2021), like its predecessors of the same genre, examines the malleability and fragility of human corporeality. The film can be categorized under the New French Extremity, a genre coined by art critic James Quandt, who disapprovingly expressed his concerns with the rampant depictions of blood and violence in film; however, this article contends that Ducournau's film offer much more than mere shock factor and spectacle of taboo objects. Featuring a protagonist who is a manifestation of Donna Haraway's radical cyborg, Titane can be situated alongside recent debates in posthuman concerns, but more importantly, in its intersection and close connection to feminist and queer discourse. Although many have utilized Julia Kristeva's abject/-ion to examine the horror film genre through a feminist lens, this article seeks to expand on such existing literature by pointing to its emancipatory powers and its potential for a more inclusive, posthuman queer mode of being and kinship beyond the symbolic order.

Cover Screen Bodies

In  Screen Bodies

Published (Print):
01 Jun 2024
Article Type:
Research Article
Pages:
42–53 (12 total)