Folklore Commons^™

Ritual Among The Scilohtac: Global Catholicism, The Nacirema, And Interfaith Studies, Anita Houck

Journal of Global Catholicism

More than six decades after its publication, Horace Miner’s 1956 article “Body Ritual among the Nacirema” remains a reliable pedagogical tool, remarkably successful in helping students see their own ethnocentric biases. Catholics & Cultures has potential to do similar work. The site lacks some of what makes Miner’s text so effective, in particular its capacity to bring about a sudden shift in perception. The site also shares some of the article’s limitations, particularly in focusing on ritual to the relative exclusion of other aspects of religion. That said, the site can help students gain the religious literacy and develop the …

Focus On The Busy Intersections Of Culture And Cultural Change, Laura Elder

Journal of Global Catholicism

The dynamics of religious resurgence reveal the important ways that religious ritual and performance are meaning making spaces which are not self-contained or cut off from the rest of culture, but rather are a key locus of cultural change. A renewed emphasis on the busy intersections of meaning making – as rituals are connected, disconnected, and reconnected to other domains of social life – would improve the utility of the Catholics & Cultures website for understanding global cultural change. And a renewed emphasis on cultural change would also provide a better means for exploring reflexively by seeking to understand both …

A Widened Angle Of View: Teaching Theology And Racial Embodiment, Mara Brecht

Journal of Global Catholicism

Today’s undergraduate students are digital natives, shaped by constant access to information and countless experiences of encountering the world through the convenience of a screen. The ostensible comfort students have with difference gives way to a paradox, and one that’s made especially apparent in the theology classroom: Students are comfortable with seeing difference and particularity at a distance, but not adept at locating difference and particularity “at home.” I contend that Catholics & Cultures can help students from the dominant culture—namely, white students who comprise the vast majority of Catholic college students—destabilize their notion of the Catholic tradition as tightly …

Radna: The Holy Shrine Of The Multinational Banat Region (Romania), Erika Vass

Journal of Global Catholicism

Radna is the sacral heart of the Banat region in Romania. The shrine has united the Catholics for centuries in veneration of Virgin Mary regardless of their nationality and native language. Roman Catholic Bulgarians, Croatians (called Krashovani), Hungarians, Germans, Roma, Romanians, and Slovakians venerate the Blessed Virgin Mary together, but believers of the Orthodox and Greek Catholic Church also visit the sacred venue. Until the borders changed after the First World War, a great number of pilgrims had visited Radna every year from the region of the Great Hungarian Plain. The pilgrimage may be considered a rite of passage connecting …

Minor Letnica: (Re)Locating The Tradition Of Shared Worship In North Macedonia, Ksenia Trofimova

Journal of Global Catholicism

This paper addresses trajectories of historical and devotional continuity of the annual pilgrimage to a Marian shrine. It analyzes the ways in which traditional worship of the Catholic Church in Letnica (Kosovo)—a major regional sanctuary of the former Yugoslavia—is relocated and replicated in a small chapel of St. Joseph in Skopje (North Macedonia). Both sites have been for a long period of time institutionally connected and shared by followers of different religious traditions (Catholic and Orthodox devotees, and especially by Muslims). Drawing upon fieldwork carried out in Macedonia and Serbia between 2014-2019, I focus on the processes of social construction …

“Give Me Some Beautiful Holy Images That Are Colorful, Play Music, And Flash!” The Roma Pilgrimage To Csatka, Hungary, István Povedák

Journal of Global Catholicism

This study introduces the Csatka pilgrimage, which is one of the most significant festive events for Roma in Central and Eastern Europe. Csatka, a small and secluded village, became one of the most important pilgrimage sites for Roma since the mid-20th century. Tens of thousands of Roma, entire families from Hungary and the surrounding countries arrive to the feast on Nativity Day at the beginning of September. For them, however, the rite is not only about religious actions, but also about their powerful role in strengthening Roma ethnic identity. Through the analysis of the rite, we can gain a good …

Breaching Boundaries: Homogenizing The Dichotomy Between The Sacred And Profane In Csíksomlyó, Zsofia Lovei

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article examines how a Marian shrine in Csíksomlyó, Transylvania acts as a Foucauldian heterotopia for Magyar speaking individuals, residing in the Carpathian Basin, and beyond in the diaspora most especially during the annual Pentecost pilgrimage. Following introductory remarks on the site and my stance, I turn to methodology, and Hungarian scholarship on the topic. Afterwards, I provide a “thick description” of fieldwork I conducted on-site in May of 2015. I then turn to various theoretical ties, which I support with emic analysis. Lastly, I turn to ideas of heterotopias, and provide a brief formal analysis. My main incentive is …

Overview And Acknowledgments, Marc Roscoe Loustau

Journal of Global Catholicism

No abstract provided.

Wai Puna: An Indigenous Model Of Māori Water Safety And Health In Aotearoa, New Zealand, Chanel Phillips Ph.D.

International Journal of Aquatic Research and Education

Māori (the indigenous peoples of Aotearoa, New Zealand) are intimately connected to wai (i.e., water) yet are overrepresented in New Zealand’s drowning statistics each year. On average Māori account for 20-24% of all preventable and non-preventable drowning fatalities, despite comprising only 15 percent of New Zealand’s population. Drowning remains a significant issue posing a threat to whānau (i.e., families) through premature death being imminent and whakapapa (i.e., genealogy) being interrupted. There is limited research that has examined Māori and indigenous understandings of water safety within the literature and limited studies that have investigated the issue of Māori drowning from a …

The Interwoven Existences Of Official Catholicism And Magical Practice In The Lived Religiosity Of A Transylvanian Hungarian Village, Cecília Sándor

Journal of Global Catholicism

During the last five years I have been doing field research in a Transylvanian Hungarian village, Sânsimion (Hu: Csíkszentsimon). I present my research on this religiously homogenous, Catholic community’s worldview. Based on interviews conducted with members of the village’s various age groups, I map religious and magical knowledge passed down through the generations, using the theoretical frame of collective memory and religious transmission. Second, I highlight two different but coexisting “constructions of reality” in this rural community. By “constructions of reality,” I mean interpretations of reality expressed in narrative discourses and local magical practices that are closely and inextricably interwoven …

Introduction: Consumer Contexts And Divine Presences In Hungarian Catholicism, Marc Roscoe Loustau

Journal of Global Catholicism

Introduction to Hungarian Catholicism: Living Faith Across Diverse Social and Intellectual Contexts, highlighting both the specific contributions of the articles to the study of Hungarian Catholicism and situating them within the broad sweep of Hungarian and Catholic Studies.

Overview And Acknowledgements, Mathew Schmalz

Journal of Global Catholicism

Overview of Hungarian Catholicism: Living Faith Across Diverse Social and Intellectual Context, highlighting the articles' contribution to the study of Global Catholicism.

2020 Iggad Conference Program, Charles Joyner Institute For Gullah And African Diaspora Studies

IGGAD Conference Programs

Program of the 2020 IGGAD Conference: Without Borders: Tracing the Cultural, Archival, and Political African Diaspora.

Grandes Interrogações Sobre O Futuro Dos Povos Indígenas Isolados, Conselho Indigenista Missionário

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

O presente artigo, de autoria coletiva da equipe do Conselho Indigenista Missionário (Cimi), pretende traçar um quadro geral da situação de vulnerabilidade dos povos indígenas em isolamento e contato inicial no Brasil, tendo como referência temporal o ano de 2016. É preocupante o avanço da exploração dos recursos naturais em territórios ocupados por esses povos, principalmente com a mineração e a exploração de madeira, seja dentro de terras indígenas destinadas aos povos em isolamento, em terras indígenas partilhadas por outros povos, ou em territórios onde a proteção ou o reconhecimento pelo Estado não se faz presente.

This article, written collectively …

Territorialidad De Los Grupos Familiares De Pueblos Indígenas En Aislamiento (Pia) En La Región Del Yasuní, Amazonía Ecuatoriana, Roberto Esteban Narváez Collaguazo

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

El artículo presenta información etnográfica y una interpretación etnológica sobre los Tagaeiri y Taromenane como parte de los grupos familiares en aislamiento que habitan en el Yasuní, su forma de vida tradicional y su territorio, en un contexto de actores externos que inciden en la generación de violencia y de amenaza a su supervivencia. Sobre los pueblos en aislamiento en Ecuador existe información referenciada en datos indirectos que han dado indicios de presencia a partir de registros de rastros e imágenes satelitales y algunos datos directos, como avistamientos, encuentros en la selva, fotografías aéreas y, el principal, encuentros que generaron …

Good Reasons Or Bad Conscience? Or Why Some Indian Peoples Of Amazonia Are Ambivalent About Eating Meat, Stephen P. Hugh-Jones

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Originally written for a conference on meat attended by farmers, anthropologists, people involved in cultural affairs, and other members of the public, and seeking to avoid emphasis on cultural difference, this paper explores common ground between Euro-American and Amerindian ambivalence about meat consumption. Meat-eating raises two shared concerns: an intuitive recognition of the resemblances between humans and animals and an uncomfortable awareness that human life often depends on the death and destruction of other living beings. I suggest that, behind some obvious cultural differences, Amazonian shamanic and ritual procedures aimed at the de-subjectification of meat share points in common with …

The "Uncontacted" As Third Infamy, George Mentore

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

This paper principally addresses the "problem" of anthropological thinking, that is, on how and why it remains with us and not with the peoples who do not subscribe to our contested regimes of truth. From my research on the topic, it appears we have not achieved any substantial moral progress on the question of exposure to indigenous otherness since the first European "contact." This failure is primarily due to our hardheaded rationalist refusal to accept our inability to access the felt reality of the Other directly. Or, better still, of the failure of our language to obtain the shared reality …

Christianity + Schooling On Nature Versus Culture In Amazonia, Aparecida M. N. Vilaça

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Based on the analysis of Evangelical Biblical translations, as well as on the school writing of Wari' (Southwestern Amazonia) students, produced in indigenous secondary school classrooms and at the intercultural university, this article aims to show how, in both church and school, a nature separate from humans is invented with which they should relate in a utilitarian and also contemplative way. Simultaneously nature’s opposite is invented–a culture that excludes animals and subjects them.

Rexistência Nas Fronteiras Do Capitalismo/Colonialismo: A Ecologia Política Do Isolamento E Da Soberania, Felipe Milanez

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Ofereço a perspectiva da ecologia política para rever e atualizar a política de “isolamento” e “não-contato” com base nos conceitos de soberania e necropolítica, sugerindo uma nova proposta de prática política para situações de conflitos em territórios ocupados por povos indígenas que resistem à conquista pela guerra e distanciamento. Da perspectiva do estudo dos conflitos ambientais, a ecologia política questiona a noção de isolamento ao inseri-la como parte do sistema mundo capitalista/colonial. Diante do quadro crescente de fascistização social e violência do Estado, cuja pressão sobre os territórios tornou-se ainda mais intenso, é a morte e a vida destes coletivos …

Tubes And Androgyny: Comment On "Thinking Through Tubes", Françoise Barbira Freedman

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

In this comment on Stephen Hugh-Jones’s "Thinking Through Tubes" Françoise Barbira Freedman offers a feminist meditation on the semiotics of androgyny in Northwest Amazonian shamanism, ritual life and mythology. By focusing on processes of detotalization and retotalization that move beings from an androgynous state to a single-sex identity and back again, Barbira Freedman reveals a dynamic "one sex, two genders model of androgyny" that could not be further from a concept of androgyny as blurred gender. These movements in and out of a one sex state are largely the preserve of men so that androgynous features of the cosmos are …

A Story Of Two Videos Plus Coda: Perspectives On "Contact" In Western Amazonia, Giancarlo Rolando

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

In 2014, the Xinane people of Brazilian Amazonia made international news after two videos showing scenes of their “first contact” were uploaded to the internet. This paper explores the ways in which different audiences reacted to news about this “first contact.” Local Peruvian and Brazilian settlers, the international public, and the Mastanawa, a people culturally proximate to the Xinane, had different readings of this event and expressed opposing views concerning what actions should have been taken following the events depicted in the videos. These differences in opinion are telling of the different ways in which each group thinks of “isolated …

Resoluciones Del Debate Especial Sobre Los Derechos Y La Protección De Los Pueblos Indígenas En Aislamiento, Participantes En El Panel De Debate Especial

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

This contribution represents the consensus arrived at in a dialog between researchers, academics, activists, public officials, and indigenous representatives on the topic of voluntarily isolated peoples that took place over several days at the SALSA meeting in Lima in July 2017. The group’s consensus conclusions with respect to recommended state policy and civil society actions are presented.

Una Víctima Del Encuentro Emergente Entre Mundos, Minna Opas, Yulissa Trigoso Zorrilla

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

En febrero de 2018, Víctor Zorrilla, un hombre Yine de mayor edad que vive en el sudeste de Perú, fue asesinado por los mashco piro mientras estaba cazando. Zorrilla se había encontrado con los mashco piro, los que consideraba como parientes, nomolene, varias veces durante décadas, pero eso no le impidió llegar a ser víctima de un emergente encuentro entre mundos. A través de un relato personal de sus encuentros con los mashco piro en la década de 1980, este artículo plantea y examina varias cuestiones focales relacionadas con el aislamiento voluntario. ¿Cómo se puede adquirir conocimiento sobre los …

Molas: Dress, Identity, Culture By Diana Marks, University Of New Mexico Press, 2016. 288 Pp., Notes, References, Index., Mònica Martínez Mauri

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

No abstract provided.

Singularity On The Margins: Autobiographical Writings Among The Shuar Of Ecuadorian Amazonia, Grégory Deshoulliere, Natalia Buitron

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Inspired by Stephen Hugh-Jones’s suggestion of a fit between Tukanoan writing genres and their sociocultural systems, in this article we explore Shuar autobiographical writings in light of Chicham (Jivaroan) individualism. By exploring first-person—nonpatrimonial—texts that have received much less attention in the regional literature, the article contributes to theorizing a different way of transmitting tradition:one focused on individual praxis rather than on collective patrimony. Through the analysis of three autobiographical texts, we show how their authors appropriate writing to construct singularity, or distinct “paths of individuation”: the personal story of resistance of a school teacher, the exemplary life course of a …

La Política Pública De No Contacto De Los Pueblos Indígenas En Aislamiento Y Contacto Inicial, Carlos Antonio Martin Soria Dall'orso

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Esta articulo revisa la evolución de la legislación amazónica para la protección de los Pueblos Indígenas en Aislamiento y Contacto Inicial (en adelante PIACI) a través de una mirada al derecho comparado amazónico. Luego se propone cual es la situación territorial de los PIACI en varios países amazónicos, para entender que estos pueblos habitan paisajes complejos de derechos otorgados a ellos pero, a veces también al Estado y a terceros. A continuación se reflexiona sobre la propuesta de reconocer Corredores de Protección PIACI como una propuesta que permite integrar varias áreas de protección PIACI que son colindantes para así a …

A Brief Comment On Hugh-Jones's "The Origin Of Night And The Dance Of Time", Geraldo Andrello

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

In this comment on Hugh-Jones’s article "The Origin of Night," Geraldo Andrello argues that the politics of myth narrations and ritual performances are enacted through the regulation of temporality and explains why it is that all-important status distinctions are brought into existence through the retelling of permutations of the Origin of Night myth.

Maloca-Escola: Transformations Of The Tukanoan House, Melissa S. Oliveira

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

This paper aims to demonstrate how, by combining the foundation of an indigenous school with the construction of a longhouse (maloca), the Tukano indigenous association of the Hausirõ and Ñahuri Porã clans, Middle Tiquié river, produces social relations proper to Tukanoan House societies as described by Hugh-Jones (1991, 1993). Through "indigenous research" and the celebrations that mark the school calendar, internal subdivisions of clan, hierarchy, age and gender are marked in space, while, at the same time, this new space allows for interdependence and articulation with other indigenous groups and outsiders (especially NGO professionals, scientists and politicians). In …

The Origin Of Night And The Dance Of Time: Ritual And Material Culture In Northwest Amazonia, Stephen P. Hugh-Jones

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Based on a survey of published material complemented by original fieldwork, this paper shows that Northwest Amazonian Arawakan, Tukanoan and Makuan stories of the Origin of Night form parts of a single, more inclusive myth about the sequential creation of earth, trees, house-frames, roofing leaves, night, song and dance. Here a box of feather ornaments plays a central role as the container of both roofing leaves and night with leaves as feathers, the ornaments of the house-as-person. When placed on the house-frame as thatch, these ornament-leaves shut out the light causing "night." The feather box, a container of bright yellow …

Yine Manxinerune Hosha Hajene E A Territorialidade Na Terra Indígena Mamoadate, Brasil: O Poder Das Memórias, Lucas Artur Brasil Manchineri, Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen, Maria Luiza Ochoa

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Este artigo discute a territorialidade dos Yine Manxinerune Hosha Hajene (os Mashco Piro), um grupo em isolamento voluntário, estabelecida na Terra Indígena Mamoadate, estado do Acre/Brasil, a partir da governança dos Manxineru. As práticas de diferentes atores, como governo, organizações não-governamentais, corporações e comunidades indígenas são considerados em conjunto para situar e discutir a mobilização dos Manxineru na criação de um novo espaço para os Yine Manxinerune Hosha Hajene. Propomos que as escolhas políticas dos Manxineru, em relação à presença dos Yine Manxinerune Hosha Hajene, são baseadas fundamentalmente na sua memória do contato com não-indígenas.

This article discusses the …