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- Convenors:
-
Dalia Senvaitytė
(Vytautas Magnus University)
Rasa Račiūnaitė-Paužuolienė (Vytautas Magnus University)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Stream:
- TEMPORALITIES
- Location:
- Room K-205
- Sessions:
- Thursday 16 June, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
The panel welcomes innovative papers addressing the following themes: rethinking the methodological and theoretical approaches of ritual year and the life cycle rituals, their change, and the reasons for this transformation.
Long Abstract:
The contemporary, "overheated world" of rapid change (according to T. Eriksen) has a great impact on the multidimensional social change of our society, as well as on the ritual year and the life-cycle rituals. The changing process of rituals leads to new kinds of paradoxes and complexities that it is necessary to examine. Transformations of rituals could be determined by "competing perspectives, ideologies, and persuasions concerning the relationship of the individual to the group, the past to the present, tradition to change, purity to mixing" (Eriksen, Schober 2016).
The panel invites the discussion on the following or related topics addressed to the different issues as a change of lifestyle (for example, change of technologies, digitalization, current pandemic situation, etc.), the impact of political propaganda and legitimization, media, religious shift, business and commerce, science and education, impact by specific social and cultural institutions, groups, organizations, or individuals.
Accordingly, all festivities and their rituals could be analyzed by the processes of:
• remembering (e.g., historical memory, heritage making);
• re-creating;
• renovating, re-inventing, re-constructing (including historical re-construction);
• re-telling;
• regulating;
• re-searching (e.g., research of used data, evaluation of previous studies, etc.);
• re-education.
The North European region has similarities as well as particular variations in the processes that could be analyzed specifically and in a comparative approach.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 16 June, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
On the basis of field research, the paper presents how various factors typical of late modernity change the traditional thinking about sacred time and shape the way of temporal organization of rituals in Polish Native Faith (Rodzimowierstwo), which is one of the branches of contemporary paganism.
Paper long abstract:
Rodzimowierstwo (Native Faith) is one of the trends of contemporary Polish paganism, which refers to the pre-Christian religion of the Slavs. Due to the limited number of historical sources concerning Slavic culture from the pagan period, the followers of Rodzimowierstwo must (re)construct their beliefs and rituals using ethnographic materials from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Based on my field research that I have been conducting since 2018, I would like to discuss some paradoxes that are typical of such (re)constructions and to present how they are conditioned by competing ideologies of premodern and (post)modern times. Analysing the way of temporal organization of ritual year in Rodzimowierstwo I will argue that various factors typical of late modernity (economic, social, political) significantly change the traditional way of thinking about sacred time and are of greater importance than the rules of folk rituals present in ethnographic sources. Such a situation, in turn, is one of the factors limiting the development of Rodzimowierstwo and putting its followers in a problematic position. They have to make difficult choices and reconcile the contradictions between the realities of life in (post)modern society and the principles of thinking and acting characteristic of folk cultures and the religion of pre-Christian Slavs.
Paper short abstract:
In my presentation, I examine the meaning of the civis-ceremony, where newcomers of the student nation of the University of Turku become full members of the community. Why do the people consider this ritual important?
Paper long abstract:
In my doctoral dissertation, I study young adults’ belonging to a community using regional student nations of the University of Turku as my case study. This paper is based on my second article, where I examine socialization in a student community.
Three of the student nations call their members beaani, civis, or senior depending on how long they have been members. From the beginning of the 2010s, beaanis have collected entries in beaanipass, and after completing enough tasks, they have been promoted into civis.
Most of my 23 interviewees thought that the ceremony, where beaanis become civis, is very important. In my presentation, I describe briefly the ceremony and study the meaning of the ceremony for the community. Does the creation of the civis-ceremony bind the younger members to the community? Interviewees also mentioned that traditions are one of the main reasons to be part of these communities. Is this tradition worth holding on to?
Paper short abstract:
Our paper examines how social media and virtual world building tools have been used innovatively and independently by children and young people, during the global pandemic, to adapt cultural practices, creating ‘new’ traditions and inclusive celebratory forms, meaningful to them.
Paper long abstract:
The COVID-19 pandemic, with its accompanying curtailments on social mixing, has also affected life-cycle and seasonal celebrations; typically a time for community, family and friends. Narratives of loss around children’s pandemic experience(s) acknowledge the impact of restrictions on cultural and family celebrations, reflected in popular reports of children’s and parents anxieties over the more child-centred aspects of these festivities: that playful festive and folkloric performances risk being disrupted.
These discourses can overlook how some children have responded to these circumstances, employing digital technologies and computer games to create online social celebrations and commemorations in virtual spaces. Drawing on auto-ethnographic data alongside contributions to the Play Observatory project’s survey of children’s play during COVID-19, we explore how children and young people have innovatively adapted cultural practices.
By analysing child-devised events, including digital Christmas gift-giving, and a birthday party played out on Minecraft, we examine how some children have explored and exploited the affordances of games and social media platforms to connect with friends, family and community. We consider how they have adapted customs and created ‘new’ traditions meaningful to them, and how these spaces offer children freedom from offline restrictions while functioning as extensions of their everyday worlds.
We question whether the pandemic has provided an opportunity to discover what aspects of contemporary celebrations resonate with children when they have free reign to create their own celebratory forms: what is omitted, included and added, and whether these ‘new’ traditions might inform post-pandemic cultural celebrations.
Paper short abstract:
The Folia dos Reis is a catholic celebration that during 500 years in Brazil kept reinventing and changing. The work is about that celebration inside one slun in Rio e Janeiro, how after years kepts some characteristics and some reinvented.
Paper long abstract:
Those groups of Folia dos Reis lives in a very poor areas where has civil wars and high criminality, the choice for music and art can help a lot for young to not be exposed in the criminality, Those people are keeping their devotion to the holy spirit and keeping the culture alive. But the music got influenced by samba schools, the clothes and the musical instruments kept changing.