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- Convenors:
-
Erik de Maaker
(Leiden University)
Vibha Joshi (University of Oxford)
Send message to Convenors
- Format:
- Workshops
- Location:
- 232
- Sessions:
- Friday 29 August, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Ljubljana
Short Abstract:
By what processes and discourses are religious beliefs and practices classified as belonging to a particular religion, even if they also draw heavily on other religious inspirations? How does such labeling relate to and influence people's beliefs and religious practices?
Long Abstract:
Contemporary anthropological studies of religion consider syncretism a universal phenomenon, and regard all religions as syncretic (Steward and Shaw, 1994). However, if 'neighbouring' religious traditions share common ground, how does religious diversity emerge? And how is it sustained and reinforced? Radical approaches to the study of religion, such as Asad (1993, 2003), indicate that conceptualizing religions as diverse and distinct cannot be separated from objectifying discourses involving agents or groups claiming religious authority. So, how are religious ideologies defined and objectified and by what agents? And perhaps more importantly, in what manner are people who engage in religious practices influenced by the ideologies voiced or formulated by people who (claim to) represent religious authority?
In the proposed panel we intend to develop these issues in relation to processes of proselytizing and conversion, as these tend to trigger the (re)formulation of religious ideologies. In our perception, such processes are not limited to the activities of e.g. 'Western' missionaries in the former colonialised world. It also encompasses sub-national efforts, such as when Christian Nagas attempt to convert Naga animists. Moreover, proselytizing and conversion are not limited to so-called world religions, but can involve the reformulation of animist religious traditions as well.
We invite theoretically grounded papers that are strongly rooted in ethnographic research. In particular, we would like contributors to proceed from the varying and changing significances attributed to religious material objects, as well as ritual performances in which such objects play a role.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 29 August, 2008, -Paper short abstract:
How political may be transfered into religious practice? The paper will discuss the ongoing reconstruction of Sakalava divine kingship in Western Madagascar into a social setting on the analogy of the catholic church.
Paper long abstract:
The case provides the opportunity to discuss religious syncretism within a context of power dominated by European forces and concepts. The chain of Sakalava kingdoms, a heterogene political formation in Western Madagascar dating from 17th century, became restructured and relabelled during 20th century as religion. A main step of the transformation was to replace the authority of the living king by that of the king's ancestors. This dynamic was associated with further and ongoing changes on all levels of symbolic, ritual - including spirit possession as major aspect - and material representation.
Grounded on intensive fieldwork, the paper will offer insight into the process of founding a "church of Sakalava", as the structure is termed nowadays by actors in deliberate analogy with aspects of catholic practice. The religious discourse and invention observed, it is argued, has to be seen within a hierarchical structured interrelation between two different social systems and its ideologies.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the question of religious diversity and syncretism in the case of village communities in Spiti and Upper Kinnaur in the Western Himalayas and adjacent areas of Western Tibet. This will be done by specifically looking at the conceptualizations and functions of spirit possession/trance-mediums.
Paper long abstract:
The religious beliefs and practices of the village communities on the Indo-Tibetan/Chinese border areas in the Western Himalayas and in Western Tibet were often described by scholars as being a syncretic mixture of Tibetan Buddhism, Bon religion and various 'local' religious traditions. Based upon extensive field research this paper attempts to examine religious diversity by looking particularly at the phenomenon of vital spirit possession/trance-mediums in the area.
What is the function of spirit possession/trance-mediums, which seems to represent an important common trait all over the area, in the ongoing processes and discourses determining the conceptualizations of religious beliefs and practices of various social groups in the area? What is their relationship towards representatives of Tibetan Buddhism and other agents claiming religious authority, for example as expressed in the case of public ritual performances?
Paper short abstract:
This paper describes the beliefs and ritual performances of pilgrims influenced by the feminist spirituality movement visiting Marian shrines in France. These pilgrims develop their own syncretic strategies in order to benefit from the “healing energy” stored in what they consider as “power places appropriated by the Church”.
Paper long abstract:
This paper analyses the ritual practices of pilgrims, who do not consider themselves as practicing Christians, visiting French shrines housing dark Madonna statues. Referring to observations of three organized pilgrimages, I will focus on these individuals' use of the statues identified as "Black Madonnas" and analyse the way they visit and perform syncretic rituals at Catholic shrines, while fiercely criticizing the Catholic religion.
"Black Madonnas" represent, for these pilgrims, "the dark side of the Feminine" and serve as a useful counterbalance to the "White and Immaculate" Virgin Mary they know from their childhood in Christian, mostly Catholic, families. The paper shows how the pilgrims' religious beliefs also form a political philosophy, explaining and denouncing the exploitation of the planet, as well as psychological and physical violence against women.
Paper short abstract:
Religious proliferation and conversion are central to the formation of contemporary Naga political and social identities. Concentrating on the interaction between indigenous Angami religious tradition and Christian beliefs, the paper analyses the resulting religious syncretism, and the particular forms of its expression in artifacts, and ritual and other performances.
Paper long abstract:
Christianity was introduced to the Naga peoples of northeastern India by the American Baptist mission in the 19th century. From the outset the Baptists saw the indigenous animistic religion as diametrically opposed to Christianity. But they could not foresee the later introduction of different Christian sects nor could they envisage the way in which different Naga groups sought political separateness through use of religious distinctiveness. The paper focuses on the increasing religious syncretism which resulted from this process and the particular forms of its expression.
I concentrate on the interaction between indigenous Angami religious tradition and Christian beliefs. Applying the conference theme of diversity and mutuality, the paper explores how these cross-cutting kinds of religious transformation find expression in artifacts, and ritual and other performances among the Angami. Keeping with the current anthropological view that material culture has agency and is not merely passive, I describe how some items of material and performative culture, for example celebration of the annual festival of Sekrenyi, have retained outward form, yet denote religious change. I also analyse the reverse process by which earlier discarded material and ritual forms are being reclaimed in the cause of religious revival as well as for the assertion of ethnic identity.
Moreover, material culture is used in projecting the 'warrior' past, the symbolism of which is also included in the commemorative artifacts designed for Christian Centenary celebrations. Thus, far from consistently being in conflict with Christianity, as the earlier Baptists had professed, animism supports it in many respects.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the correlations between religious syncretism and the practices of re-negotiated local identities through the case study of a Sugpiaq village in Alaska. Furthermore, it will investigate the connections between religious conversion and the dynamics of secular life, with particular attention to the thought processes that facilitate religious and cultural synthesis.
Paper long abstract:
In this paper I am proposing to examine a case study from a Native Alaskan Russian Orthodox village. Through the framework of religious syncretism, I will present how Sugpiat Russian Orthodoxy affected, and at the same time was influenced by, non-religious spheres of society. I am using the notion of conceptual analogy, which I define as a set of corresponding ideas originating from two different patterns of thought, in this case Sugpiaq and Russian Orthodox, which facilitates the integration and re-interpretation of foreign religious ideas into the local cultural environment. By doing so, it results in the creation of a new religious concept that on the one hand became one of the most expressive elements of Sugpiaq identity, and on the other, influences other spheres of the local social milieu that are considered to be secular in nature. Therefore, the success of Orthodoxy in the single-denominational community of Nanwalek is due to the combination of several factors that are all connected by and created on the basis of a conceptual analogy between religion and the traditional local concept of social life.
Paper short abstract:
In the Kitui district Kenya, ritual cults offering at natural shrines are labelled only in contrast with Christianity: Andu Manthi, Worldly People. I describe the diffuse and sometimes obscure(d) material culture of Andu Manthi and how ‘modern’ elites seek to use this for retraditionalisation or proselytisation.
Paper long abstract:
'Andu Manthi' is a label cultists in the Kitui district derive from their status as the 'other' of the modern monoliths. It is the inverse of Christianity since Andu Manthi means "worldly people", but the people under this label are also called "the culture", or "the tradition" as opposed to modernity and development. In my presentation I will discuss the role of materiality and immateriality in the Andu Manthi of natural shrines (Mathembo) to discuss the ambiguity of the Andu Manthi status and its role in retraditionalisation and proselytesing. Local elites increasingly seek to appropriate Andu Manti practices, either in a positive quest for or indigenous or traditional ecological knowledge to retraditionalise society, or as benchmark for proselytesing, as satanic 'other' used by Christian congregations in the district. Interestingly, most outsiders know little about ritual practices and ritual places, and use the labels Andu Manthi, 'the tradition' or 'the culture', indiscriminately and speculatively. Few people know where Mathembo shrines are, what they look like and what goes on there. The lack of visible cultural markers, the intermittent character of rituals, and the regional differences has frustrated knowledge on the shrines and ritual practices, but is also made outsiders propose the presence of biodiversity, witchcraft and an elusive red mercury. I show that the speculation on the natural shrines and the practitioners provides the Andu Manthi with the power of obscurity, which seems constitutive of the distinction by other religious and societal groups.
Paper short abstract:
This paper describes the reformulation of animist religions in an African contest. In southern Bénin and Togo, a vodu cult, called “gorovodu” or “tron” developed, since the ’20s - ’30s of the last century, different strategies in order to negotiate a position facing Islam and Christian religions. The “gorovodu” embodies different “ancestral” cults from northern and savana regions, and different practices and material objects reformulated in the vodu language.
Paper long abstract:
This paper traces the movements of the gorovodu - the vodu of cola nut - which, since the colonial period, has become more and more popular among vodu believers. The ritual objects, ritual dresses and part of practices have been derived from Islam world and transformed into the vodu languages. During possession the spirits arriving from the "north" enter the adepts and transform them into Muslim believers; in other contexts, the "chefs" of the cult are trying to introduce a Sunday office that, in a mimetic way, evokes the Christian Mass.
A rhetoric of order and clearness helps the "chefs" of the cult to insert themselves in the complex contemporary religious fields, trying to find a place closer to the universal religions. The ambiguity and complexity of this vodu order are expressed in the desire to elaborate a public image that, at the same time, emphasizes its foreign origins, its alterity, and insert the cult in the field of the "traditional" religion.
Both categories of syncretism and "traditional religion" are not suitable to describe the cult dynamics and the strategies that the actors have been developing to find a political position in the actual religious field. Instead it is more useful to analyze their capacity to reformulate and to incorporate universal religions elements in order to cope with their hegemonic spread.
Paper short abstract:
The paper analyses practices and discourses by which Polish Lutherans create their religious identity being under pressure of Roman Catholicism dominating Polish public sphere on one hand and the influence of evangelical movements on the other.
Paper long abstract:
Polish Lutheran minority is very small in number, but in Cieszyn Silesia it constitutes a significant cultural factor (autochthonous people are mostly Lutheran). There are also parishes in bigger cities in other parts of Poland. I have been carrying research in Silesia for many years and recently also among Lutheran diaspora in Krakow.
In my paper I tackle several problems like the role of religious adherence in the local level politics, the conceptualization of Lutheran Polishness, the influence of Catholicism (mixed marriages, conversions), important role of pietistic spirituality, the authority of clergy in formulating orthodoxy.
Paper short abstract:
The focus on the body as both agent and instrument of religiosity and belief in Macedonia will be discussed with particular reference to death and mourning rituals, and the everyday practice of purification and the avoidance of contamination of the body (and soul) and the malevolence of others (black magic).
Paper long abstract:
Macedonian religiosity and ritual practices encompass elements of a syncretism of various beliefs and ritual practices including (Slavic) Christian Orthodoxy, animism and 'magija' (black magic) and in the process readily encompass the new or emergent constructs of modernity, selfhood and individuality. The saliency of everyday ritual practices and the importance of religion and belief for individuals are manifest in various ways but are particularly prevalent in discourses of the body and the relationship between body and soul. This paper is concerned with exploring the ontology of the body and the continuum between body and soul, and, body and self in Macedonian cosmology, Orthodox belief and everyday practice. The focus on the body as both agent and instrument of religiosity and belief will be discussed with particular reference to death and mourning rituals, and the rituals associated with purification and the avoidance of contamination and the malevolence of others.