Folk Narratives, Rituals and Performances PDF Download

Author: Caiman̲ Jān̲
Publisher:
ISBN: 9788124608524
Category : Folklore
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Author: Anna-Leena Siikala
Publisher: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura
ISBN: 9522228125
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Why are Khanty shamans still active? What are the folklore collectives of Komi? Why are the rituals of Udmurts performed at cultural festivals? In their insightful ethnographic study Anna-Leena Siikala and Oleg Ulyashev attempt to answer such questions by analysing the recreation of religious traditions, myths, and songs in public and private performances. Their work is based on long term fieldwork undertaken during the 1990s and 2000s in three different places, the Northern Ob region in North West Siberia and in the Komi and Udmurt Republics. It sheds light on how different traditions are favoured and transformed in multicultural Russia today. Siikala and Ulyashev examine rituals, songs, and festivals that emphasize specificity and create feelings of belonging between members of families, kin groups, villages, ethnic groups, and nations, and interpret them from a perspective of area, state, and cultural policies. A closer look at post-Soviet Khanty, Komi and Udmurts shows that opportunities to perform ethnic culture vary significantly among Russian minorities with different histories and administrative organisation. Within this variation the dialogue between local and administrative needs is decisive.

Author: Axel Michaels
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000059197
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 455

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Challenging the idea that rituals are static and emotions irrational, the volume explores the manifold qualities of emotions in ritual practices. Focusing explicitly on the relationship between emotions and rituals, it poses two central questions. First, how and to what extent do emotions shape rituals? Second, in what way are emotions ritualized in and beyond rituals? Strong emotions are generally considered to be more spontaneous and uncontrolled, whereas ritual behaviour is regarded as planned, formalized and stereotyped, and hence less emotional. However, as the volume demonstrates, rituals often reveal strong emotions among participants, are motivated by feelings, or are intended to generate them. The essays discuss the motivation for rituals; the healing function of emotions; the creation of new emotions through new media; the aspect of mimesis in the generation of feelings; individual, collective, and non-human emotions; the importance of trance and possession; staged emotions and emotions on stage; emotions in the context of martyrdom; emotions in Indian and Western dance traditions; emotions of love, sorrow, fear, aggression, and devotion. Furthermore, aesthetic and sensory dimensions, as well as emic concepts, of emotions in rituals are underscored as relevant in understanding social practice.

Author: Catharina Raudvere
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030489191
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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This books explores varying conceptions of the Nightmare hag, mara, in Scandinavian folk belief. What began as observations of some startling narratives preserved in folklore archives where sex, violence and curses are recurring themes gradually led to questions as to how rural people envisaged good and evil, illness and health, and cause and effect. At closer reading, narratives about the mara character involve existential themes, as well as comments on gender and social hierarchy. This monograph analyses how this female creature was conceived of in oral literature and everyday ritual practice in pre-industrial Scandinavia, and what role she played in a larger pattern of belief in witchcraft and magic.

Author: Matthew Martin
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004439021
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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In previous studies of South Asian Tantric ritual, scholars tend to focus on one region or context. For the first time, Tantra, Ritual Performance and Politics in Nepal and Kerala: Embodying the Goddess-clan offers a comparative approach to Tantric mediumship as observed in two locales: Navadurgā rituals in Bhaktapur, Nepal, and Teyyāṭṭam in North Kerala. In this book, Matthew Martin advances a new theory of ritual, which spotlights the way dancer-mediums embody medieval goddess-clans and ancestor deities, through offerings of food and sacrifice, that synchronize their denizens with the land in spiralling web-like ritual networks. Uniquely interdisciplinary in style, this study synthesizes cultural history, ethnography, and theory to explore the continuities – historical, societal, and political – that characterize these ritual traditions across the subcontinent.

Author: Carol Laderman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134953631
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Medical systems need to be understood from within, as experienced by healers, patients, and others whose minds and hearts have both become involved in this important human undertaking. Exploring how the performance of healing transforms illness to health, initiate to ritual specialist, the authors show that performance does not merely refer to, but actually does something in the world. These essays on the performance of healing in societies ranging from rainforest horticulturalists to dwellers in the American megalopolis will touch readers' senses as well as their intellects.

Author: Razia Sultanova
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857719467
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Women have traditionally played a vital part in Islam throughout Central Asia - the vast area from the Caspian Sea to Siberia. With this ground-breaking and original study, Razia Sultanova examines the experiences of Muslim women in the region and the ways in which religion has shaped their daily lives and continues to do so today. 'From Shamanism to Sufism' explores the fundamental interplay between religious belief and the cultural heritage of music and dance and is the first book to focus particularly on the role of women. Based on evidence derived from over fifteen years of field work, 'From Shamanism to Sufism' shows how women kept alive traditional Islamic religious culture in Central Asia, especially through Shamanism and Sufism, even under Soviet rule when all religion was banned. Nowhere was the role of women more important than in the Ferghana Valley in Uzbekistan, the cradle of female Islamic culture and a centre for women's poetry and music. This area is home to the 'Otin-Oy', a sisterhood of religiously educated women and members of Sufi orders, who take a leading part in rituals, marking the pivotal moments in the Islamic calendar and maintaining religious practices through music and ritual dances. Sultanova shows how the practice of Islam in Uzbekistan has evolved over time: long underground, there was a religious resurgence at independence in 1991, boosting national Uzbek identity and nationalism - 500 new mosques were built - only to be followed by a return to persecution by a repressive state under the banner of the 'war against terror'. Now events have come full circle, and once again covert worship by women remains crucial to the survival of traditional Muslim culture. Ritual and music are at the heart of Central Asian and Islamic culture, not only at weddings and funerals but in all aspects of everyday life. Through her in-depth analysis of these facets of cultural life within Central Asian society, 'From Shamanism to Sufism' offers important insights into the lives of the societies in the region. The role of women has often been neglected in studies of religious culture and this book fills an enormous gap, restoring women to their rightful historical and cultural context. It will be essential reading for anyone with a serious interest in the History or Religion of Central Asia or in Global Islam.

Author: Lieke Wijnia
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110558289
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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In The Netherlands, the arts have gained a sacralized status, while religion is increasingly viewed through the lens of heritage. The dynamic resonance of sacred forms this results in, is exemplary for the postsecular. Exploring this resonance, this book offers a strong counterweight to the popular trope of the arts having replaced religion in secularized societies. Instead it approaches artistic performance, religion, and its heritage as mutually engaging sacred forms. Lieke Wijnia thoroughly connects theoretical perspectives on the sacred with ethnographic research at the annual festival Musica Sacra Maastricht. She explores the continued relevance of a broad conceptual approach to the sacred, as well as the practical side to negotiating the sacred at the festival. The resulting analyses shed new light on topics like musical performance as generator of the sacred, how art and heritage impact the continuity of religion in secularized societies, and the fragility of artistic performance in the contemporary fragmented framework of the sacred. This book offers an innovative and interdisciplinary interpretation of the continuing significant role of art and religion in postsecular societies.

Author: Frank J. Korom
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429753810
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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The Indian Subcontinent has been at the centre of folklore inquiry since the 19th century, yet, while much attention was paid to India by early scholars, folkloristic interest in the region waned over time until it virtually disappeared from the research agendas of scholars working in the discipline of folklore and folklife. This fortunately changed in the 1980s when a newly energized group of younger scholars, who were interested in a variety of new approaches that went beyond the textual interface, returned to folklore as an untapped resource in South Asian Studies. This comprehensive volume further reinvigorates the field by providing fresh studies and new models both for studying the “lore” and the “life” of everyday people in the region, as well as their engagement with the world at large. By bringing Muslims, material culture, diasporic horizons, global interventions and politics to bear on South Asian folklore studies, the authors hope to stimulate more dialogue across theoretical and geographical borders to infuse the study of the Indian Subcontinent’s cultural traditions with a new sense of relevance that will be of interest not only to areal specialists but also to folklorists and anthropologists in general. This book was originally published as a special issue of South Asian History and Culture.

Author: Jacob K. Olupona
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 025301896X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 390

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This landmark volume compiled by Jacob K. Olupona and Rowland O. Abiodun brings readers into the diverse world of Ifá—its discourse, ways of thinking, and artistic expression as manifested throughout the Afro-Atlantic. Firmly rooting Ifá within African religious traditions, the essays consider Ifá and Ifá divination from the perspectives of philosophy, performance studies, and cultural studies. They also examine the sacred context, verbal art, and the interpretation of Ifá texts and philosophy. With essays from the most respected scholars in the field, the book makes a substantial contribution toward understanding Ifá and its role in contemporary Yoruba and diaspora cultures.