In the 1990s, a growing number of scholars began to analyze themes of contestation and conflict in relation to contemporary experiences of pilgrimage. Victor Turner's theory of communitas —a sort of social antistructure characterized by the
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Rebuilding, Remembrance, and Commerce
Perspectives on the Economic Revitalization of Lower Manhattan
Kate DeConinck
Liminality and Missing Persons
Encountering the Missing in Postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina
Laura Huttunen
of the missing allows for moments of communitas —the specific form of relationality discussed by Turner. Does it allow ways of relating across differences in Bosnian society? Katherine Verdery (1999) suggests that especially in times of great
In Conflict and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2016
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 201–218 (18 total)
Instructive Ritual
The Arab Student Union and the Communitas of the Palestinian Israeli Educated
Lauren Erdreich
In spite of state efforts to limit public nationalist ritual of the Palestinian Israeli community, one ritual system, as this article details, is kept intact by the Arab Student Union (ASU). Based on an ethnographic study of the Hebrew University ASU, I show how this ritual system is instructive in a specific, educated Palestinian Israeli identity. Instruction revolves around the root paradigms of a specifically Israeli Palestinian-ness and of the national responsibility of the educated. The instructive ritual system arouses communitas of the educated Palestinian community through instruction carried out in the context of sacralized space and time and by means of the use of ritual art and events, the recruitment of ritual commentators, and the intermeshing of ethos and world-view. This ritual system can be understood as an indigenous Palestinian Israeli pedagogy for liberation.
In Social Analysis
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2006
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 127–145 (19 total)
Enjoying an Emerging Alternative World
Ritual in Its Own Ludic Right
André Droogers
Ritual can be rehabilitated in its own right by emphasizing what it has in common with play: the ludic evocation of a simultaneous shadow reality. What is more, ritual can be understood as an enjoyable form of playing with realities. More than a solemn occasion, useful because of its social and cultural functions, ritual is a festive enactment of a counterreality. Connectionist ideas on the parallel processing of schemas and repertoires lend themselves for mapping the properties of ritual in its own ludic right. The human mind allows for a rapid comparison by the parallel—and not serial or sequential— processing of alternative schemas for thought, action, and emotion. An ethnographic illustration is taken from a boys’ initiation ritual among the Wagenia (Congo).
In Social Analysis
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2004
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 138–154 (17 total)
Introduction
Contested Narratives of Storied Places—the Holy Lands
Jackie Feldman
The articles in this special section on pilgrimage and the Holy Lands provide a wide range of perspectives on the practice, representation, and production of sacred space as expressions of knowledge and power. The experience of space of the pilgrim and the politically committed tourist is characterized by distance, impermanence, desire, contestation, and the entwinement of the material and the spiritual. The wealth of historical Christian and Western narratives/images of the Holy Land, the short duration of pilgrimage, the encounter with otherness, the entextualization of sites, and the semiotic nature of tourism all open a gap between the perceptions of pilgrims and those of 'natives'. Although the intertwining of symbolic condensation, legitimation, and power makes these Holy Land sites extremely volatile, many pilgrimages sidestep confrontation with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as inimical to the spirit of pilgrimage. A comparative view of the practices of contemporary Holy Land pilgrims demonstrates how communitas and conflict, openness and isolation are constantly being negotiated.
In Religion and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2014
- Article Type:
- Introduction
- Pages:
- 106–127 (22 total)
The Accidental Pilgrims
Olive Pickers in Palestine
Anne Meneley
This article focuses on the way in which olive-picking volunteers in Palestine become transformed into 'accidental pilgrims', and unconventional ones at that, by virtue of their participation in the olive harvest. Undergoing the difficulties of mobility that constrain the Palestinians and witnessing holy sites through the eyes and narratives of Palestinian guides, they are exposed to an alternative knowledge and affect regarding the Holy Land, unlike the experience offered by more conventional religious pilgrimage. Several vignettes reflect the diverse backgrounds of olive-picking pilgrims, who come from many different religions, class positions, and nationalities. Drawn together in a communitas of sorts through their shared commitment to learning about Palestine, they try to do what they can to further the Palestinian cause on their return home. Instead of a 'moral geography', they perceive a profoundly 'immoral geography' of occupation and oppression, which has a powerful transformative effect.
In Religion and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2014
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 186–199 (14 total)
Reviews
Urmila Nair, Naomi Haynes, Rebekka King, Joseph Webster, Amanda J. Lucia, Amit Desai, Jackie Feldman, Iza Kavedžija, Michael W. Scott, Jon Bialecki, Andreas Bandak, Nathaniel Roberts, Alan Barnard, Tom Boylston, Dimitri Tsintjilonis, Brian Baumann, Stuart McLean, and Hayder Al-Mohammad
ARNOLD, Daniel, Brains, Buddhas, and Believing: The Problem of Intentionality in Classical Buddhist and Cognitive-Scientific Philosophy of Mind, 328 pp., bibliography, index. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012. Hardback, £34.50. ISBN 9780231145466.
ATTANASI, Katherine, and Amos YONG, eds. Pentecostalism and Prosperity: The Socio- Economics of the Global Charismatic Movement, 278 pp. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2012. Hardback, $95. ISBN 100230338283.
BOWMAN, Marion, and Ülo VALK, eds., Vernacular Religion in Everyday Life: Expressions of Belief, 320 pp., bibliography. Sheffield: Equinox, 2012. Hardback, £70.00, $115.00. ISBN 9781908049506.
BRUCE, Steve, Politics and Religion in the United Kingdom, 304 pp., preface, notes, index. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012. Paperback, £19.59. ISBN 9780415643672.
COPEMAN, Jacob, and Aya IKEGAME, eds., The Guru in South Asia: New Interdisciplinary Perspectives, 260 pp., index. Oxford: Routledge, 2012. Hardback, $155. ISBN 9780415510196.
FEDELE, Anna, and Ruy LLERA BLANES, eds., Encounters of Body and Soul in Contemporary Religious Practices: Anthropological Reflections, 252 pp., illustrations, bibliography, index. Oxford and New York: Berghahn, 2011. Hardback, £50, $85. ISBN 9780857452078.
FEDELE, Anna, Looking for Mary Magdalene: Alternative Pilgrimage and Ritual Creativity at Catholic Shrines in France, 336 pp., notes, references, maps, index. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Paperback, $35.00. ISBN: 978-0199898428.
FISKER-NIELSEN, Anne Mette, Religion and Politics in Contemporary Japan: Soka Gakkai Youth and Komeito, 264 pp., appendix, notes, bibliography, index. London and New York: Routledge, 2012. Hardback £78.42. ISBN 9780415694247.
HOLBRAAD, Martin, Truth in Motion: The Recursive Anthropology of Cuban Divination, 344 pp., preface, illustrations, appendices, references, index. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2012. Hardback, $78, £54.50. ISBN 9780226349206. Paperback, $26, £18. ISBN 9780226349213.
KEHOE, Alice Beck, Militant Christianity: An Anthropological History, 208 pp., notes, references, references by chapter, index. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Paperback, £17.15. ISBN 1137282444.
MITTERMAIER, Amira, Dreams That Matter: Egyptian Landscapes of the Imagination, 308 pp., illustrations, notes, glossary, bibliography, index. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011. Paperback, $26.95, £18.95. ISBN 9780520258518.
QUACK, Johannes, Disenchanting India: Organized Rationalism and Criticism of Religion in India, xvii + 362 pp., references, appendices, index. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. ISBN 9780199812608.
RENFREW, Colin, and Iain MORLEY, eds., Becoming Human: Innovation in Prehistoric and Spiritual Culture, xviii + 282 pp., 50 halftones, 24 color plates. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Hardback, £53, paperback £20.99. ISBN 9780521876544 (hardback), 9780521734660 (paperback).
SCHIELKE, Samuli, and Liza DEBEVEC, eds., Ordinary Lives, Grand Schemes: An Anthropology of Everyday Religion, 176 pp., bibliography, index. Oxford and New York: Berghahn, 2012. Hardcover, £35.67. ISBN 9780857455062.
STEWART, Charles, Dreaming and Historical Consciousness in Island Greece, xviii + 259 pp., maps, illustrations, bibliography. London and Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012. Hardback, £48.95. ISBN 9780983532224.
SWANCUTT, Katherine, Fortune and the Cursed: The Sliding Scale of Time in Mongolian Divination, 244 pp., glossary, references, index. Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books, 2012. Hardcover, £43.70. ISBN 9780857454829.
TAYLOR, Mark C., Refiguring the Spiritual: Beuys, Barney, Turrell, Goldsworthy, 244 pp., notes, index, 55 halftones. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012. Hardback, $27.50, £19. ISBN 9780231157667.
TURNER, Edith, Communitas: The Anthropology of Collective Joy, xiv + 272 pp., notes, references, index. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Hardcover, $95. ISBN 9780230339088.
In Religion and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2013
- Article Type:
- Book Review
- Pages:
- 204–236 (33 total)
Finding Durkheim's Grave
Sienna R. Craig
, the stuff of communitas : delicate and bone-white with marbled veins; a planter box, even now alive with leaves and bonsai vines; a garden in which the soul might wander, there against the firmament of names. And then seashells and coins
Labor System Experimentation in Egalitarian Intentional Communities
Mari Hanssen Korsbrekke
extrapolated and mediated by the communards, and sometimes forms of solidarity take the shape of communitas—moments of anti-structure and ‘flow’, as portrayed by Victor Turner (1982) in his theory of liminality. Turner (1969: 307) argued that the desire for
The Magic of Bureaucracy
Repatriation as Ceremony
Laura Peers
—and constructing social identity for the deceased, after a long period of identity as objects—they also involve museum staff as witnesses and participants, creating a sense of communitas . The formal handover ceremony is co-choreographed by claimants and museum