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- Convenors:
-
Rabia Harmansah
(University of Cologne)
Robert Logan Sparks (University of New Mexico)
- Stream:
- Religion
- Location:
- A229
- Sessions:
- Monday 22 June, -, Tuesday 23 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Zagreb
Short Abstract:
Ideal futures are built upon ideal pasts in the religious arena. Utopian and nostalgic longing for an edenic past will be taken as a lense for developing an understanding of the performance and emplacement of present ritual.
Long Abstract:
In combining the two terms 'utopian' and 'past', which are in a paradoxical relationship due to their inherent forward-looking and backward-looking perspectives, we are grounded in the idea that the future and our dreams about it are constructed over our nostalgic imaginations of the past. This panel specifically looks at the field of ritualistic, performative and material expressions of religions, where one can easily find references to nostalgic pasts and their associated utopian visions. In one case, we look at how historical places of syncretism and hybridity have become legitimate devices in the nostalgic and romantic remembrance of a shared past. In another case the role of classical and ancestral knowledge systems as legitimation for healing practices is taken up.
We additionally open the floor to all perspectives on the place of ritual and religion in a utopian view of the past via ritual, material and performative culture. Of particular interest are panels that address these issues via a well situated example from a particular geography and period of time, for comparative purposes.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Monday 22 June, 2015, -Paper short abstract:
With a focus on the tradition of storytelling, this paper looks at how devotees of Krishna in Mayapur, West Bengal experience the space between an ideal past and a prophesied future.
Paper long abstract:
This paper looks at how devotees of Krishna in Mayapur, West Bengal experience the space between an ideal past and a prophesied future. Through an affective and imaginative engagement with Vaishnav cultural history, devotees learn to relocate themselves in a particular temporal flow, within which both the past and future become constitutive horizons of the ethical imagination. I focus on how the tradition of katha (storytelling) facilitates a convergence of temporalities, within which devotees are encouraged to routinely participate in the past. Such engagement with an enchanted past, I argue, in turn informs devotees' imaginings of and aspirations for the ongoing development of an 'Ideal Vedic City'.
Paper short abstract:
Traditional healers in modern Turkey represent a particular encounter between the supernatural and the ideals of Kemalism, merging the mystical with a project for an ideal future.
Paper long abstract:
Classically, anthropologists have taken an interest in what is often termed 'traditional healing' particularly in Africa, where the discipline formed much of its early ideas and epistemologies. However, forms of what can be called traditional healing can certainly be found in secular and modernized environments where there is access to contemporary health care, such as the US and Europe. A woman by the name of Zöhre Ana, from Turkey's minority Alevi community, represents a particular case of a practice and community closely related to the genre of traditional healing, but situated in a Kemalist modernity that is highly utopian in outlook. The approach to this case is via a look at both the pasts and futures of a politically active secularist Alevi healer via the significant saintly and state-sacralised figures from both Alevi and Kemalist tradition that make up her cosmology and oracular context. The figures that Zöhre Ana claims to channel are well known and venerated figures from Alevism, but also include a number of secular 'saints,' all of which indicate a worldview in which the secular is sacred, one that paints its canvas with the brush of an ideal Alevi and republican past; The teachings and nefes (inspired songs) of Zöhre Ana also project a future into the political arena including explicit support of the main secularist Kemalist party in Turkey. This case will give us an opportunity to explore and expand our notions and definitions of 'traditional' healing, utopian ideals and multiple modernities.
Paper short abstract:
This paper discusses how the historical places of syncretism and hybridity have become legitimate devices in the nostalgic and romantic remembrance of a shared past in Cyprus.
Paper long abstract:
Cyprus presents a complex landscape of sacredness with its historical places of syncretism and hybridity. In search of miraculous healing, Christians and Muslims share the blessings of holy places and practices. However, after the division of the island in 1974, many Greek Orthodox sites that remained in the North and Muslim sites that remained in the South have become subjects of controversy and conflict regarding their preservation, restoration and conversion. More specifically, the multivocality of some holy sites provokes discussion over the identity and politics of these places. Yet, in some cases, these powerful symbolic sites have become legitimate devices in the nostalgic and romantic remembrance of a shared past. This paper discusses how some Greek Cypriots refer to the syncretic practices of Muslim and Orthodox Christians as an evidence of the peaceful coexistence and cooperation between the two communities. However, what is shared is usually imagined as Greek and Orthodox Christian; it does not necessarily connote to the acknowledgment of the existence of another cultural community in the island. This paper depends on an ethnographic study conducted in Cyprus between 2010-2012.
Paper short abstract:
In this paper I argue that pipe smoking among the Xhosa people of South Africa stayed a religious practice despite urbanisation and antismoking campaigns the heritage of pipe smoking is kept strong among that Xhosa non-smokers, as they keep decorated pipes as an identity marker.
Paper long abstract:
In a number of cultures of the contemporary world, growing, smoking and using tobacco in other ways is still a significant part of spiritual practices and identity markers. The Xhosa people of South Africa envision smoke as a communication with the ancestors and a plea for protection from bad spirits, as well as human solidarity since the ancestors can no longer smoke.
In this paper I argue that smoking among the Xhosa people remained a religious practice even in cases when it is moved out of traditional rituals to the private sphere and everyday religion. Even under the pressure of antismoking campaigns the heritage of pipe smoking is kept strong among that Xhosa non-smokers, as they keep decorated pipes as a cultural marker.
I aim to show how traditional Xhosa pipe smoking as a well established custom acts as a right of passage for men and women and suggest different gendered types of smoking, however, both are transparent and encouraged by society. Moreover, the Xhosa heritage of smoking is still strongly practised among the village Xhosa people on a daily basis, where smoking is not a matter of addiction but a continual communication with the ancestors for protection. I suggest that Xhosa tobacco pipe smoking can be analysed as a religious practice and be a point of interest for the Material Religion due to the treatment of the pipe as a portable alter as well as the encoded messages in beadwork decorations of pipes and the symbolism of their shapes.