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- Convenors:
-
Audun Kjus
(Norsk Folkemuseum (The Norwegian Museum of Cultural History))
Ida Tolgensbakk (Norsk Folkemuseum)
Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch (Society of Swedish Literature in Finland)
Jakob Löfgren (Lund University)
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- Formats:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Performativity
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 22 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Helsinki
Short Abstract:
How are the inner spaces of play and ritual created, regulated and challenged? How do we, as researchers, go about to investigate such boundary-work? The panel particularly welcomes studies of rule breaking, development of new forms, and exploits from the fuzzy middle ground between play and ritual.
Long Abstract:
How do children make room - physically and mentally - for a game of tags on a busy city sidewalk? How does the Hindu guru create a holy ground out of a rented office space? Are there differences between ritualistic play and playful ritual? In short: how is play and ritual regulated and how do we, as researchers, go about to investigate such boundary-work?
Johan Huizinga (1938) suggested that the acts of both play and ritual depend on establishing certain boundaries, creating manageable inner spaces, within which various kinds of micro-worlds can be furnished. Don Handelman (1980) interpreted this in terms of Gregory Bateson's theory of meta-communicatively framed behaviour and he suggested that the frames of play signal the suggestion "let us pretend" while the frames of ritual signal the suggestion "let us believe". Since phenomena such as play and ritual are constructs that make order and the logics of how they are put together are crucial to what their designs enable them to accomplish (Handelman 1990), empirical studies of the boundary-work involved in establishing, maintaining and rearranging both playgrounds and ritual grounds are called for.
The panel is particularly interested in papers that explore cases of rule breaking, the development of new forms, and exploits from the fuzzy middle ground between play and ritual.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 22 June, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
Folia dos Reis is an old rite, still being recreated, what are those changes, how its performed and included in the local society of a traditional Favela in Rio de Janeiro. Coming from different areas the rite is being performed influencing the society and being influenced by them.
Paper long abstract:
A traditional celebration from Europe arrives in Brazil 400 years ago and still today survives in different cities and communities and also arrives in favelas(slum) adding elements from different realities. The rules of 3 Kings are clear but when it interacts with the local community the rite and the place reality mixes together.
The rite got elements from the natives, African and European and perform an old catholic celebration, and was performed in different parts of Brazil and reinvented in the poverty areas, where you have violence, lower life conditions, keeping the influences of the original one, getting new elements from the contemporary society.
What are those changes, what is the new identity, how its still getting elements, and recreating in a different field. The rites have challenges of modernity, religious intolerance, and how it makes an act of cultural resistance, how it influences the local society, and vice versa. To be performed in some places of that community the participants of the rite need to ask permission from different local powers: drug dealers, militia, sometimes the police or the state.
What are the borders between the community and the performers, how and when that border is braked and the community and the performers play together and interact, creating a moment that those two worlds become only one.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the concepts of play and ritual in the context of Black Lives Matter and Defund the Police protests in Madison, Wisconsin, in the summer of 2020.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores the concepts of play and ritual in the context of Black Lives Matter and Defund the Police protests in Madison, Wisconsin, in the summer of 2020. Dr. Steiner uses reflexive autoethnographic methods and documentation through interviews and photography to explore her own experiences and the actions she witnessed while participating in a massive protest on the Capitol Square on May 30, 2020. She discusses how music, movement, and material culture came together to create a feeling of communitas among protesters as they enacted the rituals of revolutionary transformation on that day and in the days and weeks that followed in Downtown Madison. Dr. Steiner explores how protesters drew physical and metaphorical lines between themselves, police, and capitalist society as they engaged in a serious but playful struggle for life and transformation. As she sheds light on the power and significance of what happened in Madison and other cities across the United States during the summer of 2020, Dr. Steiner asks whether the serious play enacted in these movements and actions represents a completed ritual. If so, how have we been transformed? And if not (or not yet), what do we still need to do to complete the ritual or continue the play?
Paper short abstract:
The aim of this paper is to discuss the prevailing myth of race and of the national dilemma of discrimination and systemic racism in the U.S. by focusing on the myth-ritual component of the national public debate, examining the vocabulary of public protest and public actions in the public domain.
Paper long abstract:
The purpose of this discussion is to examine the traditional folkloric nature of the forms of public display of anger and displeasure. Traumatized societies and disaffected youths are important aspects of this story because the reliance on traditional folk forms of expression which can lead to a general acceptance in the society. Demonstrators and organizers rely heavily on traditional folkloric genres of play and ritual in order to create a successful event, in this case, a demonstration that focuses on a specific item. In the contemporary case of memorial or monumental art in the public domain, primarily in the form of statues and the popular protest against the specific piece, the statue reveals and illustrates that the public performance of the popular protest against a past injustice takes a traditional form of expression. Using ritual and play as the organizing principle of the successful nature of the demonstrations, I will illustrate this principle as it has been employed in the United States during the early months of the year, 2020. Finally, I want to use the specific examples of Christopher Columbus memorabilia and of a demonstration protest in Madison, Wisconsin, during which a statue of a Norwegian American Civil War officer’s statue was taken down and decapitated during the wider public demonstration of ritual-play against racism in the United States.
Paper short abstract:
How are boundaries between religion and cultural heritage traversed? The presentation explores historical pilgrimage destinations in Norway as arenas for emerging intersections between heritagisation and sacralisation, expressed through performances in the middle ground between ritual and play.
Paper long abstract:
This presentation explore how borders between religious and secular spheres are challenged and crossed, with the re-enactment of the translation of St Sunniva from the island of Selja to the city of Bergen, Norway as the case. I will argue that this event can be studied as an arena for boundary work/intersections between a ritual and a playful performance of cultural heritage. In 1170, the translation of St Sunniva made her the patron saint of Bergen. The usage of the legend of St Sunniva as a narrative frame for the event in 2020 can be seen as a “re-storying” of Bergen as a pilgrimage destination. I will argue that the creation of “absent presences” (Harrison 2013, Bowman & Sepp 2019) in a procession with a symbolic, empty reliquary enable the playful middle ground between religious ritual and historical re-enactment. The event involved a variety of participants, from politicians, members of religious congregations, historical re-enactors, museums and agents of local commerce. The procession through the streets of Bergen was literarily taking as well as making place – challenging the spheres of religion and public space in the process – through performative engagements with history and legend. It can thus be viewed as a performance creating an inclusive space allowing for intersections between religious practice and shared cultural heritage. At the same time, the event accentuated contestations about the boundaries of these spheres. The presentation will further address possibilities and challenges for researchers participating in/observing such events through ethnographic fieldwork.