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- Convenors:
-
Tobias Boos
(Free University Bolzano-Bozen)
Jan-Peter Hartung (University of Goettingen)
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- Formats:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Religion
- Sessions:
- Monday 21 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Helsinki
Short Abstract:
We invite transdisciplinary reflections on role and scope of religiosities in the cohabitation of borderland communities especially of the Alps, Pyrenees, Hindu Kush and East-Anatolian/West-Iranian Highlands and on issues relating to domination. Conceptual pivot will be "borderscape".
Long Abstract:
Territories between larger political entities (empires, states, ...) are prominent stages where forms of conflict between global and local normativities play out, often in a violent fashion. Demarcation of spaces of imperial governance, usually cutting through territories claimed by local communities, come alongside asymmetrical claims of political and cultural representation, in the modern era represented in increasingly strict administrative control mechanisms. High altitude mountains, having often served as natural frontiers, constitute liminal spaces in which these mechanisms are not easily applied, leading to imperial stereotypes of resilient mountain peoples. On a lower order, similar conflict lines run between socio-economic and political elites and subalterns within and between borderland communities, creating thus a thicket of conflictual constellation that is captured in the "borderscape" concept.
We invite papers that focus on the role and scope of religiosities especially in the Tyrolese Alps, the Basque Pyrenees, the Pashtun Hindu Kush and the Kurdish East-Anatolian/West-Iranian Highlands in negotiating conflicting normative claims both inside the communities as well as with the imperial other. We content that religiosities can take the form of distinct, yet contested, cultural heritages and provide thus narratological tools to justify resistance and domination. Hermeneutical core shall thereby be local epistemic forms (as expressed in stories, poetry, ...), against privileging interpretative models of the academia of the "Global North". Moreover, as such investigation necessitates a historical perspective, we call emphatically on historians and literary scholars, to complement Social Science perspectives on the contemporary.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Monday 21 June, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
This presentation will evaluate the perception of Dersim as a living non-human entity, defending itself as a pantheon full of mountains, rivers and lakes. The orally transmitted religious knowledge of the region will be compared to the contemporary understanding of environmental struggles in Dersim.
Paper long abstract:
Dersim is currently the forbidden name of the sacred land of Kurdish Alevis of Turkey, a heavily and continuously oppressed enclosed ethno-religious community throughout centuries. The region is demarcated and characterised by a high Alpin mountain range, deep valleys, jungles, rivers as well as a huge dam lake, which physically separates it from the outside world, in eastern Anatolia. Not only the geographical features shape the land as a fortress, but also Kurdish Alevis’ peculiar religious belief revives it as an animated image with full of non-human entities, who are still actively protecting the jiar-u diyar (the sacred land) and guiding humans.
Kurdish Alevis are followers of Raa Haqi (The Path of the Truth) religion. The unique features of Raa Haqi separate the community from contemporary Turkey both as sociologically and spatially. Due to the continuous suppression of the Turkish state, the modern Kurdish Alevi identity submerged at the crossroad of highly traumatised and just as much politicised identity movements: Kurdishness and Alevism. Dersim has turned out a unique symbol of such politic manifests, by reflecting evidence of “purity” as an unbreakable mountainous fortress, and “legitimacy” of collective consciousness as a history of resistance against atrocities.
This presentation will evaluate the perception of Dersim as a living non-human entity, defending itself as a pantheon full of mountains, rivers and lakes. The orally transmitted religious knowledge of the region will be compared to the contemporary understanding of environmental struggles in Dersim.
Paper short abstract:
This paper offers a longue duree history of Hindu Kush mountain forests. It considers changing patterns of timber use among local communities, national authorities and imperial powers within and across pre-modern and modern borders.
Paper long abstract:
This paper offers a longue duree history of Hindu Kush mountain forests. It considers changing patterns of timber use among local communities, national authorities and imperial powers within and across pre-modern and modern borders. The presentation begins with brief surveys of a.) wood use in ancient, classical and pre-modern historiography of the Hindu Kush region, focusing on war and imperial architecture, and b.) forests and timber in the ethnography of Hindu Kush mountain cultures, highlighting culinary, musical and agricultural technologies and vernacular architecture. The early modern period is addressed through the memoires of the Mughal Empire’s founder, Babur, who spent the years 1504-20 in the Hindu Kush where his attuned sense of this mountain environment includes extensive commentary on trees and their products. A comparative discussion of Afghan national and British colonial engagement of Hindu Kush forests during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is organized around contrasting approaches to the institutionalization of forest knowledge and commoditization of forest products. The contemporary post-1978 period focuses on the multiple deleterious impacts of global war on the Hindu Kush forest ecosystems. The paper concludes with attention state policies concerning the impact of climate change on local communities in the Hindu Kush in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Paper short abstract:
In this paper, I will analyse certain episodes of territorial, political, cultural and religious changes in the Basque lands during the 1789-1814 period. This specific example aims to recall similar situations in other “alpine” spaces and chronologies.
Paper long abstract:
During the Early Modern Age, the Basque Pyrenees were a stable border between the Spanish and French empires. However, as was the case elsewhere in Europe, the transition from the 18th to the 19th century was rather fertile in political and cultural changes.
Spanish Basque lands were occupied by French armies in 1794-1795 and in 1807-1813. This prompted the Spanish Crown to reshape the border and Napoleonic France to occupy the Eastern part of Spain, among other responses to the new territorial challenge. In parallel, various projects aimed at integrating the Basque lands into the French orbit were devised, showing new political imaginaries. In 1795, the creation of a Basque “sister republic” was considered, followed in 1808 by plans to found a Trans-Pyrenean buffer state.
Alongside boundary changes, this period witnessed clashes between religiosities and identities. For instance, the civic rituals of French revolutionary soldiers clashed with the traditional Catholicism of the Basque people on both sides of the border, while the alteration of the Basque identity introduced by the polity project of the state of “New Phoenicia” — according to which Basques descended from the ancient Phoenicians — transgressed the anti-Semitism that prevailed among Basque people of that time.
Paper short abstract:
Through ethnographic inputs, this paper discusses how artifacts and religious festival performances contribute to produce, express and transform the South Tyrolean borderscapes, promoting a reflection on the role of religion and religiosities in the recent history of this region.
Paper long abstract:
As an Alpine borderscape region, the South Tyrol has been since long time a zone of transit and cultural interchange. It has also been affected by bloody wars, violent nationalisms and ethnic conflicts. Embedded in this Alpine border-landscape, several artifacts, practices and performances refer to local religion and religiosities. Landscape indeed could be conceived of as an ecological, sociocultural and political environment, one that unfolds its own temporalities and cyclicality.
Within the ritual year cycle, in many villages people perform religious ceremonies and festive activities to celebrate their Patron Saints. These performances often enact and stage kinesthetic symbols, which link to sociopolitical aspects of the South Tyrolean borderscapes. The iconographic and sensorial landscapes people produce through the celebrations, for instance, often refers to the history of Tyrol, a region that belonged to the Austria-Hungarian Empire until the end of the First World War, when it was divided by the new political border between Austria and Italy.
Through ethnographic inputs, this paper aims to discuss how the many artifacts and forms of religiosities embedded in the landscape as well as the religious festival performances contribute to produce, express and transform the South Tyrolean borderscapes, promoting a reflection on the role of official religion, subaltern religiosities and local religious institutions in the recent history of this region. Bringing together ethnographic cues and insights from historical literature, the paper will raise questions about the historical role of local religion and religiosities in producing and transforming borderscapes.
Paper short abstract:
This paper identifies and discusses religious impulses in the formation of South Tyrolean borderscapes by tracing the meaning of these impulses for the institutional, discursive and symbolic formation of meshes between social boundaries and political borders.
Paper long abstract:
The current South Tyrolean border between Italy and Austria is since more than 100 years a source of dispute between people living in this region and beyond. Even though the violent clashes have ended today, this political border is still constantly negotiated in both everyday situations and ceremonies as well as political commentaries. The political border in many ways is transformed into language borders (German, Italian and Landin), landscape borders as well as social and cultural borders between imagined communities which often coincide with the language boundaries. As the Finnish geographer Anssi Paasi points out, the construction of such multidimensional borderscapes which evolve around (former) political borders and that can extend over large areas, involves processes of institutionalisation, the formation of border discourses and the formation of symbolic representations of the border. Based on these theoretical considerations, this article identify and discuss religious impulses in the formation of South Tyrolean borderscapes by tracing the meaning of these impulses for institutional, discursive and symbolic formation of meshes between social boundaries and political borders. Empirical examples to identify and discuss religious impulses will be ceremonies in which religious elements are prominently embedded such as that of the South Tyrolean Schützen (marksmen) and the reflection on their historical and geographical formation.