Baptizing into Kin

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 272-296
Author(s):  
Ketevan Gurchiani
Keyword(s):  
Religious Practices ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork

Abstract Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a multi-ethnic village in Georgia, this paper shows how everyday peace is continuously reaffirmed in the tradition of inviting Muslim godparents to baptize Christian children. The Muslim godparents perform the roles of the chosen Christians while at the same time remaining Muslim. Hybrid local lay-religious practices around the ritual of christening are analyzed within a larger cultural semiotics that allows reciprocity of perspectives and, specifically in this context, enables the recruitment of non-Christians into the role of godparent. Religion serves as a ground for asserting peace.

The Shugden-Controversy in Contemporary Mongolia

Inner Asia ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 330-349
Author(s):  
Mungunchimeg Batmunkh
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
The Political ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Current State ◽  
State Of Research

Abstract Since the political upheavals in Mongolia in 1989, the traditional Tibetan-Mongolian protective deity Dorj-Shugden has been rediscovered. Today the Buddhist monasteries Delgeriin khiid, Amarbayasgalant Monastery and Tögsbayasgalant töv venerate him. This paper analyses the role of this deity with particular emphasis on Gungaachoilinig datsan in Gandandegchilin and the Amarbayasgalant Monastery in Mongolia, based on ethnographic fieldwork and semi-structured interviews with monks from six monasteries and visitors of Amarbayasgalant conducted in 2016, 2019 and 2020. The paper also outlines the current state of research, including recent Mongolian literature. Finally, it presents findings about him sourced from social media. By exploring pro- and anti-Shugden religious practices, this article sheds some light on the Shugden controversy in contemporary Mongolian Buddhism.

Experience of Ethnographic Fieldwork in an English Benedictine Monastery

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-235 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Irvine
Keyword(s):  
Social World ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Fieldwork Experience ◽  
The Social ◽  
Peripheral Participation

What is the role of imitation in ethnographic fieldwork, and what are its limits? This article explores what it means to participate in a particular fieldsite; a Catholic English Benedictine monastery. A discussion of the importance of hospitality in the life of the monastery shows how the guest becomes a point of contact between the community and the wider society within which that community exists. The peripheral participation of the ethnographer as monastic guest is not about becoming incorporated, but about creating a space within which knowledge can be communicated. By focusing on the process of re-learning in the monastery – in particular, relearning how to experience silence and work – I discuss some of the ways in which the fieldwork experience helped me to reassess the social world to which I would return.

Syncretisms

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippa Adrych ◽  
Robert Bracey ◽  
Dominic Dalglish ◽  
Stefanie Lenk ◽  
Rachel Wood
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
Main Theme ◽  
Ancient Religion

The Conclusion to this volume returns to the three main questions posed in the Introduction, examining how a shared name, alongside material culture, can affect our understanding of ancient religious practices. The first section explores the benefits of a collaborative and comparative endeavour, drawing out examples from the earlier chapters and showing how they informed our perceptions of what a name can mean. The second and third parts ask more theoretical questions about how we can use our case studies to explore broader problems of interpreting ancient religious practices, and the role of objects within them. Finally, we return to the main theme of the volume: the name Mithra, and the ideas, expectations, and traditions that have been attached to it in antiquity and in modern scholarship. We suggest a new way of approaching the phenomenon of the shared name, and what that can entail for those interested in ancient religion.

THE RHETORIC OF RELIGIOUS CONFLICT IN ARNOBIUS’ADVERSVS NATIONES

2019 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 402-416
Author(s):  
Konstantine Panegyres
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Religious Conflict ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Historical Source ◽  
Local Religion ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Writer

In this paper I discuss the ways in which the early Christian writer Arnobius of Sicca used rhetoric to shape religious identity inAduersus nationes. I raise questions about the reliability of his rhetorical work as a historical source for understanding conflict between Christians and pagans. The paper is intended as an addition to the growing literature in the following current areas of study: (i) the role of local religion and identity in the Roman Empire; (ii) the presence of pagan elements in Christian religious practices; (iii) the question of how to approach rhetorical works as historical evidence.

scholarly journals What matters? The role of values in transformations toward sustainability: a case study of coffee production in Burundi

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Milda Nordbø Rosenberg
Keyword(s):  
Vital Role ◽  
Ecological Systems ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Discursive Practices ◽  
Coffee Production ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Dynamic Relations ◽  
Participatory Observation

AbstractThis paper examines the role of values in transformations toward sustainability. Values, generally defined as what people deem to matter, are increasingly gaining interest in and outside of academia. For example, sustainability aligns with specific values such as dignity, equality, safety, and harmony for people and nature. However, current approaches to values are mind-matter dualistic, and therefore failing to honor the inherently dynamic relations of socio-ecological systems. Drawing on new materialism, I explore values as part of the relations that make this world and propose to consider values as material-discursive practices. Ethnographic fieldwork was done in 2017 with coffee producers in Burundi who aimed to transform production by caring for the coffee and people that grow it. Based on interviews and participatory observation, I present how values were integral to transforming the relational aspects of coffee production. In this study, values of togetherness, care, dignity, and faith were dominant and were found to reconfigure the socio-ecological system of coffee production. I argue that values are inseparable from, and hence co-productive of, the material world that we experience and play a vital role in sustainability transformations.

scholarly journals Desiring the Secular: Capital, Cohesion, and the Fantasy of Secularization

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 410
Author(s):  
Ian A. Morrison
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
Proper Place ◽  
The Public ◽  
Religious Difference ◽  
Religious Subject ◽  
Global North ◽  
The Public Sphere

Towards the end of the twentieth century, religion re-emerged as a topic of pressing concern in a number of the most self-consciously secularized states of the global north. From disputes over the wearing of headscarves in schools to debates over accommodations for religious practices in the public sphere, religion, particularly the ‘foreign’ religiosity of migrants and other minority religious subjects, appeared on the scene as a phenomenon whose proper place and role in society required both urgent and careful deliberation. This article argues that in order to account for the affective potency produced by the immanence of the figure of the ‘foreign’ religious subject, it is necessary to understand secularization as fantasy. It is within the fantasy of secularization that the secular emerges as an object of desire—as something that, if attained, appears as a solution to the problem of ‘foreign’ religiosity—and figures of inassimilable religiosity assume the role of scapegoats for the failure to resolve these concerns. In this sense, within this fantasy scene, the secular promises to provide ‘us’ with something that we are lacking. However, this promise has been undermined by the apparent persistence of religious difference. As such, as a result of their continued religiosity, ‘they’ appear to be taking something from ‘us’.

The American Ghetto, Gangster, and Respect on the Streets of Copenhagen: Media(tion)s between Structure and Street Culture

2021 ◽  
pp. 089124162110569
Author(s):  
Hakan Kalkan
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Cultural Factors ◽  
Media Representations ◽  
Structural Factors ◽  
Perceived Similarity ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Street Culture ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Relationship

“Street culture” is often considered a response to structural factors. However, the relationship between culture and structure has rarely been empirically analyzed. This article analyzes the role of three media representations of American street culture and gangsters—two films and the music of a rap artist—in the street culture of a disadvantaged part of Copenhagen. Based on years of ethnographic fieldwork, this article demonstrates that these media representations are highly valuable to and influential among young men because of their perceived similarity between their intersectional structural positions and those represented in the media. Thus, the article illuminates the interaction between structural and cultural factors in street culture. It further offers a local explanation of the scarcely studied phenomenon of the influence of mass media on street culture, and a novel, media-based, local explanation of global similarities in different street cultures.

scholarly journals ‘Do We Look like Boy Racers?’ The Role of the Folk Devil in Contemporary Moral Panics

2009 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Lumsden
Keyword(s):  
Moral Panic ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Moral Panics ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Young Drivers ◽  
The Media ◽  
Collective Process ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Societal Reaction

This article addresses the failure of studies concerning moral panics to take into account the reaction of those individuals who are the subject of social anxiety. It responds to the suggestion by McRobbie and Thornton (1995) that studies of moral panic need to account for the role played by the ‘folk devils’ themselves, for a moral panic is a collective process (Young, 2007). The paper presents findings from ethnographic fieldwork with the ‘boy racer’ culture in Aberdeen, qualitative interviews with members of outside groups, and content analysis of media articles. The societal reaction to the ‘boy racer’ subculture in Aberdeen is evidence of a contemporary moral panic. The media's representation of the subculture contributed to the stigmatization of young drivers and the labelling of the subculture's activities as deviant and antisocial. The drivers were aware of their negative portrayal in the media; however their attempts to change the myth of the ‘boy racer’ were unsuccessful. Although subcultural media can provide an outlet of self-expression for youths, these forms of media can also become caught-up in the moral panic. Ironically the youths’ own niche and micro media reified the (ir)rationality for the moral panic.

Desert Religion

2018 ◽  
pp. 139-166
Author(s):  
Clinton Bailey
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Psychological Support ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
Religious Behavior ◽  
Religious Instruction ◽  
Almost All

Although almost all Bedouin have followed Islam since early in its history, those who remained nomadic in the deserts of the Middle East found the religion barely accessible to them as an ongoing spiritual and psychological support, owing to their distance from Islamic religious instruction and institutions. For such support, they relied instead on primordial, often animistic, practices that had not changed much from the religious behavior of their pre-Islamic ancestors, and which could still be witnessed among pre-modern Bedouin down to the late 20th century. This chapter identifies the similarities between these ancient pre-Islamic religious practices and those of the biblical Israelites, focusing specifically on their common attitudes toward sacrifice, the sacredness of blood, the role of ethics, and respect for taboos, oaths, and vows.

Putting Faith into Action

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Braunstein
Keyword(s):  
Religious Liberty ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
Religious Values ◽  
Active Citizenship ◽  
Proper Role ◽  
Public Role ◽  
Religious Others ◽  
Democratic Societies

Chapter 4 demonstrates that Interfaith and the Patriots developed different ways of enacting active citizenship in the course of their work together, and specifically their efforts to put their faith in action. Although both groups asserted that there was a public role for religion in diverse and pluralistic democratic societies, they differed in their understandings of how this should work in practice. Interfaith’s efforts to put their faith in action were driven primarily by concerns about religious inclusion, while the Patriots were driven primarily by concerns about religious liberty. Participants in the groups thus emphasized subtly different religious values, developed different ways of engaging with religious others, and engaged in different kinds of religious (and civil religious) practices. The chapter concludes by tracing the groups’ choices about how to put their faith in action to differences in their democratic imaginaries—their ways of understanding how democracy works and the proper role of active citizens in it.

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