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In this political ethnography of the "marginalized" population of Netzahuacoyotl Izcalli, the fourth largest city in Mexico, Carlos V�lez-Iba�ez shows that although marginalized groups seldom emerge the clear winners of political struggles, they gain a sense of autonomy and social power that can never be erased.
Indonesia's policy since independence has been to foster the national language. In some regions, local languages are still political rallying points, but their significance has diminished, and the rapid spread of Indonesian as the national language of political and religious authority has been described as the 'miracle of the developing world'. Among the Weyewa, on the island of Sumba, this shift has displaced a once vibrant tradition of ritual poetic speech, which until recently was an important source of authority, tradition, and identity. But it has also given rise to new and hybrid forms of poetic expression. This first study to analyse language change in relation to political marginality argues that political coercion or cognitive process of 'style reduction' may partially explain what has happened, but equally important in language shift is the role of linguistic ideologies.
The first comprehensive ethnography of the Thangmi, a marginalized community who migrate between Himalayan border zones, Rituals of Ethnicity explores Thangmi cultural worlds and regional political histories to offer a new explanation for the persistence of enduring ethnic identities despite the realities of mobile, hybrid lives.
This volume explores the theme of marginality in the literature and history of the Neronian and Flavian periods. As a concept of modern criticism, the term marginality has been applied to the connection between the uprooted experience of immigrant communities and the subsequent diasporas these groups formed in their new homes. The concept also covers individuals or groups who were barred from access to resources and equal opportunities based on their deviation from a "normal" or dominant culture or ideology. From a literary vantage point, we are interested in the voices of "marginal," or underappreciated authors and critical voices. The distinction between marginalia and "the" text is often nebulous, with marginal comments making their way into the paradosis and being regarded, in modern criticism, as important sources of information in their own right. The analysis of relevant passages from various authors including Lucan, Petronius, Persius, Philo of Alexandria, Pliny the Elder, Silius Italicus, and Statius, as well as the Moretum of the Appendix Vergiliana is vital for our understanding of the treatment of marginalized people in various literary genres in relation to each one’s different purposes.
Hindu Ritual at the Margins explores Hindu forms of ritual activity in a variety of "marginal" contexts. The contributors collectively examine ritual practices in diaspora; across gender, ethnic, social, and political groups; in film, text, and art; in settings where ritual itself or direct discussion of ritual is absent; in contexts that create new opportunities for traditionally marginalized participants or challenge the received tradition; and via theoretical perspectives that have been undervalued in the academy. In the first of three sections, contributors explore the ways in which Hindu ritual performed in Indian contexts intersects with historical, contextual, and social change. They examine the changing significance and understanding of particular deities, the identity and agency of ritual actors, and the instrumentality of ritual in new media. Essays in the second section examine ritual practices outside of India, focusing on evolving ritual claims to authority in mixed cultures (such as Malaysia), the reshaping of gender dynamics of ritual at an American temple, and the democratic reshaping of ritual forms in Canadian Hindu communities. The final section considers the implications for ritual studies of the efficacy of bodily acts divorced from intention, contemporary spiritual practice as opposed to religious-bound ritual, and the notion of dharma. Based on a conference on Hindu ritual held in 2006 at the University of Pittsburgh, Hindu Ritual at the Margins seeks to elucidate the ways ritual actors come to shape ritual practices or conceptions pertaining to ritual and how studying ritual in marginal contexts—at points of dynamic tension—requires scholars to reshape their understanding of ritual activity.
Ritual and narrative are pivotal means of human meaning-making and of ordering experience, but the close interrelationship between them has not as yet been given the attention it deserves. How can models and categories from narrative theory benefit the study of ritual, and what can we gain from concepts of ritual studies in analysing narrative? This book brings together a wide range of disciplinary perspectives including literary studies, archaeology, biblical and religious studies, and political science. It presents theoretical explorations as well as in-depth case studies of ritual and narrative in different media and historical contexts.
The death of the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci in China in 1610 was the occasion for demonstrations of European rituals appropriate for a Catholic priest and also of Chinese rituals appropriate to the country hosting the Jesuit community. Rather than burying Ricci immediately in a plain coffin near the church, according to their European practice, the Jesuits followed Chinese custom and kept Ricci's body for nearly a year in an air-tight Chinese-style coffin and asked the emperor for burial ground outside the city walls. Moreover, at Ricci's funeral itself, on their own initiative the Chinese performed their funerary rituals, thus starting a long and complex cultural dialogue in which they took the lead during the next century. The Interweaving of Rituals explores the role of ritual - specifically rites related to death and funerals - in cross-cultural exchange, demonstrating a gradual interweaving of Chinese and European ritual practices at all levels of interaction in seventeenth-century China. This includes the interplay of traditional and new rituals by a Christian community of commoners, the grafting of Christian funerals onto established Chinese practices, and the sponsorship of funeral processions for Jesuit officials by the emperor. Through careful observation of the details of funerary practice, Nicolas Standaert illustrates the mechanics of two-way cultural interaction. His thoughtful analysis of the ritual exchange between two very different cultural traditions is especially relevant in today's world of global ethnic and religious tension. His insights will be of interest to a broad range of scholars, from historians to anthropologists to theologians.
This book follows a reader’s logic of association through a series of overlapping constructs in biblical prescription of things prized and lofty—holy hair, unblemished beasts, sacred edibles, wholesome wombs, pristine precincts, esteemed ethnicities and, as unlikely as it seems, dismembered members. Thoroughly intersectional in disposition, Bernon Lee uncovers not just the precariousness of the contrived dichotomies through the identity-building sacred texts, but also the complexities and contentions of a would-be decolonizing hermeneutic bristling with its own tensions and temptations. This volume is an intertextual odyssey through law and ritual from impassioned positions fraught with ambivalence, reticence, and anxiety.
In this definitive history of a unique tradition, Tyler D. Parry untangles the convoluted history of the "broomstick wedding." Popularly associated with African American culture, Parry traces the ritual's origins to marginalized groups in the British Isles and explores how it influenced the marriage traditions of different communities on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. His surprising findings shed new light on the complexities of cultural exchange between peoples of African and European descent from the 1700s up to the twenty-first century. Drawing from the historical records of enslaved people in the United States, British Romani, Louisiana Cajuns, and many others, Parry discloses how marginalized people found dignity in the face of oppression by innovating and reimagining marriage rituals. Such innovations have an enduring impact on the descendants of the original practitioners. Parry reveals how and why the simple act of "jumping the broom" captivates so many people who, on the surface, appear to have little in common with each other.