Paper short abstract:

How do devotees transform digital spaces into spaces of religious practice? This presentation aims to understand the formation of an on-line devotional community his authority and the modalities to interact with the supernatural entity, with a focus on the cult of Sousa Martins.

Paper long abstract:

How do devotees transform digital spaces into spaces of religious practice? How in these spaces, through the sharing of religious experiences and their "materialities", is the on-line community structured?

This presentation focus specifically on the cult of Sousa Martins, a great Portuguese doctor of the 19th century, considered a supernatural entity by some groups in Portugal. This intervention is based on an ethnography conducted in Portugal (2022) as well as on a net-ethnography on Facebook groups dedicated to the devotion to Sousa Martins.

Starting from a reflection on the production, use and sharing of digital writings, and votive images, this study of online devotion to Sousa Martins aims to understand the formation of—an online community, a digital authority, and the transmission of the modalities to interact with the supernatural entity.

Thanks also to the interviews conducted with the members of this Facebook group dedicated to the devotion of the Portuguese doctor, we will explain the religious practices and the modalities of devotional interaction with Sousa Martins in the digital. This analysis will be completed by an observation about the existing circulations between the online and offline spaces of devotion.

This study allows, therefore, to identify the modalities of online interaction with the supernatural entity and of the formats of sharing between individuals in a religious and informal online community. For this purpose, I propose an analysis that shows the aesthetic codes, the offline/online relationship, and the contemporary modalities of rituals; in a cult evolved outside institutions.

Paper short abstract:

Focused on ethnographic research among Portuguese Hindu communities, I address the intensification of the use of digital technologies, following Covid19 Pandemic. How do these channels contribute to heritage-making processes through the transmission of forms of knowledge and cultural legacies?

Paper long abstract:

In the wake of the covid 19 pandemic, Hindu communities in Greater Lisbon have developed strategies to keep in close contact, intensifying their activities through digital platforms. These channels were essential to maintain networks of solidarity but also of transmission of knowledge, and of cultural and religious references, which are a relevant part of the heritage of these groups with origins in India.

This paper aims to explore what changes have persisted since the pandemic crisis, as social media and digital platforms remain active in the transmission of live rituals, devotional chants, food workshops, dance performances, and yoga classes. These contents convey cultural legacies and forms of knowledge which comprise the migrant heritage (Innocenti 2014) of these "communities of practice", circulating through digital technologies.

From ethnographic research among a group of Portuguese Hindu-Gujaratis and their diverse and complex heritage, this paper focuses on the process of digital transmission of cultural and religious migrant heritage as something that links individuals and their communities to an origin - more or less distant - but also that includes them in the processes of intersection with the surrounding society.

From a methodological perspective, I also intend to reflect on the need to adapt to new forms of collecting and sharing data, of maintaining contacts and on innovative ways of doing ethnography, increasingly directed towards the digital field.

Paper short abstract:

This paper investigates memory practices, uses of the past, and understandings of heritage and kinship among amateur genealogists. The point of departure is a fieldwork about family history research (hobby genealogy) in present-day Denmark – a society where digitalization is ubiquitous.

Paper long abstract:

In my paper, I explore the intergenerational relations, the co-presences, and the virtual as well as physical places generated by contemporary genealogy practices. I argue that history and cultural heritage products are at once consumed, cared for, and created in highly personal ways, through a broad array of networks and media. “The digital” is examined as a condition for experiencing ancestral belonging, preserving the past, leaving a legacy, and writing (one’s own) history.

Amateur genealogy is a popular hobby in modern-day Denmark. A large proportion of people engaging in these activities are senior citizens. Concurrently, technological developments continue to offer new possibilities for researching one’s ancestors, with big-data, machine learning, and DNA-sequencing as buzzwords. Thus, digital competencies play a crucial role in accessing and utilizing archival records as well as in one’s ability to participate in social communities centered around genealogy. For, as I will show, practices of genealogy are not limited to solitarily researching one’s familial background. They include both virtual and face-to-face interactions, e.g., partaking in crowd transcription projects, social media, general education, and fieldtrips. Furthermore, practices of genealogy intertwine personal memories, family stories, and “collective memory” across generations.

Weighty uncertainties are found in lacking knowledge due to ruptures in family relations and bereavements. Threats of loss concern identity forming memories and family stories as well as kinship narratives intended for future generations. Lastly, the many possibilities of, and insecurities about, digital spaces for heritage, kinship, and cultural belonging have to be navigated by present-day hobby genealogists.

Paper short abstract:

Digital practices are frequently seen as extensions of the concerns and objectives of communities of practice. This paper, though, reveals how the digital creates the conditions for a (dis)assemblage of cultural repertoires and resources, obscuring social tensions that emerge on a quotidian level.

Paper long abstract:

This paper argues that digital collectives are often extensions of communities of practice gathered around shared knowledge and interests and engaged in common practices and commitments. However, the digital also allows a (dis)assemblage of cultural elements and repertoires within a community of practice. This, we will argue, may obscure social tensions that emerge on a quotidian level and, at the same time, caters to different audiences, local and global.

This argument is based on an ethnography of proximity and virtual communities within a Bangladeshi diasporic public sphere in a multicultural historical and touristified neighborhood in Lisbon. It looks into several digital communities of practice fostered by local collectives and cultural and political brokers examining how the amplification of certain features of cultural heritage - from language/Bengali and religion/Islam to emplacement/Citizenship and multiculturalism/culture – emerge as a resource to evade heritage ‘dissonance’ . However, because the digital always engages with the non-digital (Miller 2018), the paper also brings to light the re-assemblage of a heritage collective in the entanglement of performances and discourses, solidarities and tensions, embodied practices and emplaced affections that ‘do’ heritage on the ground (Smith 2021), thus appointing to how the group re-articulates the ‘social’ beyond imagination.

Overall, this paper provides some preliminary insights into the interweaves of digital and non-digital heritage communities of practice and the ways culture’s expediency (Yudice 2003) meets global and local future-making (Harrison et al 2020) while, at the same time, obscuring tensions and conflicts inherent to the ‘social’.

Paper short abstract:

This paper approaches Ladino's revitalisation as a multilanguage process allowing their speech communities to re-imagine Sephardi as a unified diaspora. How are its similarities to another Judeo language, Haketiya, being asserted through coalition-building across cultural and linguistic differences?

Paper long abstract:

Inscribed in UNESCO's list of endangered languages, Ladino ("judéo-espagnol") has its linguistic base on the regional medieval Iberian romance languages, punctuated by Hebrew words, to which were added elements of the languages spoken in the Jewish diasporic communities, after their expulsion from the Iberian Peninsula in the late XV century. In some regional contexts, as in Salonica, Greece, Ladino was intuitively used as an "organic Esperanto", allowing Sephardi Jews to communicate and build cultural bridges with their neighbours (Naar 2019). With the rise of nationalism in Europe, the decimation of thousands of Greek Sephardim Jews in the Holocaust, the migration in mass to Israel and the adoption of modern Hebrew as the national language, Ladino declined.

Against the backdrop of this historical context, during the past decade, Ladino is undergoing a process of revitalisation led by Jewish cultural associations. Although Sephardim no longer use Ladino as a 'vernacular language' - a primary means of communication -, its digital afterlife is now part of a broader 'post-vernacular' (Shandler 2006) milieu whose initiatives aim to disseminate the language through a process of linguistic 'infusions' (Benor 2018) and to reconnect networks of Jewish individuals and communities. Based on my participation in Ladino e-learning classes and following e-Sefarad.com digital channel talks, this paper approaches Ladino's ongoing heritagisation by addressing two concurrent processes: (i) the way through which Ladino's communities of speech are re-imagining Sefardic culture as a unified diaspora identity and (ii) how this process entails practices of 'ladinisation' of another minority Judeo-language, Haketiya.

Paper short abstract:

Indigenous communities of North America have experienced great losses of traditional star knowledge due to ongoing colonization. Case studies utilizing remote sensing and autoethnography facilitate the creation of a digital cultural astronomy archive as a shared system of knowledge.

Paper long abstract:

Indigenous communities of North America have experienced great losses of traditional star knowledge due to the impacts of ongoing colonization. The preservation of Indigenous star knowledge is plagued by uncertainty due to a lack of educational resources pertaining to Indigenous cultural astronomy. There is an ever-present need within Indigenous communities to innovate, adapt, and expand educational tools and methods. I have conducted case studies utilizing remote sensing data collection, digital modeling, and autoethnography. Examples include a digital model and demonstration of Mayan star presession knowledge tracking the movement of the North star at El Castillo in Chichen Ittza of Mexico and a celestial orientation site assessment of the Escalante pueblo in Colorado of the United States. Fieldwork at the House of the Thirteen Heavens at Cañada de la Virgen in Mexico and collaboration with Dr. Rossana Quiroz-Ennis exemplifies culturally informed ground-based photo surveys for archeoastronomy data collection. These case studies facilitate the creation of a digital cultural astronomy archive to build a shared system of knowledge and stabilize heritage documentation for contemporary Indigenous communities. Further utilizing the comparative astronomy presentation model introduced by Nancy Maryboy and David Begay in 2010 provides a framework for the correlation of Indigenous star knowledge and Western astronomy. Additional tools such as Indigenous knowledge tags provided by the Local Contexts project created by Jane Anderson and Kim Christen in 2010 would allow for a collaborative and culturally sensitive approach to compiling archival data to be shared with the broader public.