The Somatics of Syncretism: Tying Body and Soul in Haitian Religion

2010 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 379-403 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terry Rey ◽  
Karen Richman
Keyword(s):  
African Diaspora ◽  
Atlantic World ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
African Religion ◽  
Body And Soul ◽  
Religious Syncretism ◽  
National Boundaries ◽  
And Performance

The convergence of African religion and Christianity in the Atlantic world has inspired some of the most significant and most analyzed examples of syncretism in the study of religion. Scholarly discussions of these phenomena, however, tend to portray religions like Vodou in Haiti and Candomblé in Brazil as mergers of various Euro-Christian and ‘‘traditional’’ African elements that chiefly result from processes of cognitive ideation, thereby blurring the integrative somatic dimensions of religious syncretism. Modes of embodying knowledge, power, and morality are thus largely absent from the discussion of religious syncretism in Haitian Vodou and Catholicism, as well as other contact-cultural religions, whose congregational and performance spaces now span national boundaries. Drawing upon the historiography of Kongolese and Haitian religion, and on our multi-site ethnographic research among religious communities in Haiti, to think about religious syncretism in the African diaspora, this paper focuses on two key metaphors of mimetic knowledge and embodiment, mare and pwen (tying and point), arguing that they are both fundamental processes in Haitian religious syncretism and essential tropes for understanding Haitian Vodou and Catholicism, processes that are of predominantly Central African, and especially Kongolese, origin.

Hostility to Hospitality: Authors’ Response

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-152
Author(s):  
Michael J. Balboni
Keyword(s):  
Pastoral Care ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Spiritual Care ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Holistic Care ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Medical Institutions ◽  
Body And Soul ◽  
Constructive Criticism

AbstractThis article offers a brief response to constructive criticism of the book featured in this edition of Spiritual Care. Hostility to Hospitality argues that the role of spirituality within the care of sick patients, despite clear empirical evidence demonstrating its importance, remains deeply contested because of bias against religious communities. Deeply flawed conceptualizations of the nature of religion and the secular camouflage how a society's commitment to immanence functions like a spirituality. A secular framework weakens how spiritual communities can positively influence medical institutions or socialize professional guilds in caring for the whole patient. The diminishment of communities that champion compassion as a chief end, pave a way for hostile economic, technological, and bureaucratic forces to suppress our ability to fully care for patients in body and soul. Rather than being neutral as purported, the secular structures of medicine manipulate and use pastoral care for its own immanent ends. Hostility to Hospitality argues that unless pluralism is embraced, allowing for a diversity of religious communities to influence the structures of medicine, compassionate and holistic care will increasingly become unlikely as impersonal social forces increase.

Risking Everything: Political Theatre for Mass Audiences in Rural Germany

1999 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-122
Author(s):  
Alison M. Phipps
Keyword(s):  
Job Creation ◽  
Language Education ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Political Theatre ◽  
Intercultural Studies ◽  
Annual Basis ◽  
South West ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Performance Research

In the south-west German village of Hayingen, the playwright-director Martin Schleker presents large open-air productions of politically sensitive yet entertaining plays to mass audiences on an annual basis. This article explores the element of risk in Schleker's work: his use of purely amateur performers; his job-creation schemes for young people; and his left-wing and often anti-Catholic stance on issues such as racism and nuclear arms before often deeply conservative, culturally Catholic audiences. Schleker's work is situated in the wider context of the state-funded, civic theatres in Germany, and of the tradition of open-air ‘Naturtheater’ which is particularly strong in the Swabian region. Some assumptions surrounding such binary divides as amateur-professional and high art-entertainment are also explored. Data for this article was collected in the Hayingen ‘Naturtheater’ during a period of ethnographic research supported by the Leverhulme Trust. Having completed her doctorate at Sheffield University, Alison Phipps has been working as a lecturer in the Department of German – and in particular in the Centre for Intercultural Germanistics – at Glasgow University since October 1995. She has published in the areas of her research interests, which include contemporary German theatre and performance research, Ethnographic approaches to language education, and popular German culture and intercultural studies.

scholarly journals Towards Religious Understanding: An Assessment of the Ambivalence Roles of Religious Leaders in Christian-Muslim Relations in Nigeria

2021 ◽  
pp. 9-20
Author(s):  
Rapheal Joseph Ojo
Keyword(s):  
Religious Communities ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
General Belief ◽  
Religious Conflicts ◽  
The Government ◽  
High Level ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Religious Understanding ◽  
Shaky Ground

The world today is becoming more violent than ever before. Sometimes, the violence can be political, ethnic, economic and or religious. In most cases, distinguishing the main cause of such violence from other causes might be difficult. The factors could be a combination of two issues viz: ethnoreligious conflicts or politico-religious conflicts. The religious experience in Nigeria today, as a multi-religious society so far has proven contrary to the general belief and the widespread expectation of people about religion as an institution that promotes social integration. Christian-Muslim relations in Nigeria today (though being the dominant religions in Nigeria) is standing on shaky ground. The relationship is highly characterized by mutual suspicion, mistrust and distrust. In understanding this characterized reality in their interactions, this work interrogated the ambivalence roles played by religious leaders in Nigeria. And in doing this, the ethnographic research method was adopted. As part of its findings, it was discovered that there is a high level of intolerance among Christians and Muslims in Nigeria occasioned by unguarded utterances and abuse of freedom of speech by many uncensored religious leaders. Thus, setting the stage for avoidable and constant religious confrontations among the adherents of the two religious communities in Nigeria. The study recommends that peaceful co-existence can be possible if the government is responsible and responsive enough to address the basic needs of her masses which would reduce largely the manipulation of religion by clerics for personal gain. Furthermore, the place of meaningful dialogue should be embraced by religious leaders across different religious divides. Keywords: Christian-Muslim Relations, Dialogue, Peaceful Co-existence, Religious leaders, Religious Understanding

Faith in Ethnographic Process

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 182-189
Author(s):  
Kathleen E. Jenkins
Keyword(s):  
Research Question ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Analytic Method ◽  
Scientific Methods ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Practical Theological

This article addresses methodological points related to ethnography that are not found as commonly in social scientific methods sections: the anxiety related to the development of ethnographic research question(s), decisions regarding sampling, and the extensive process of coding and analysis. I argue that embracing serendipity in ethnographic research and developing trust in an analytic method is a valuable stance for addressing sociological and practical theological questions in the study of dynamic religious communities.

Raising the ghosts of justice: Staging time and the memory of Empire inThe Trial of Governor Eyre

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 245-259
Author(s):  
Jason Allen-Paisant
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
African Diaspora ◽  
Cultural Adaptation ◽  
Problem Space ◽  
Site Specific ◽  
Experience Of Time ◽  
Specific Performance ◽  
Colonial Violence ◽  
And Performance ◽  
A Site

I examine the staging of time, justice and performance in The Trial of Governor Eyre, investigating what this site-specific performance reveals about the experience of time in the context of colonial violence. In doing so, I show that the work’s discourse on temporality reflects a vital sense of performativity within an Afro-diasporic context. The work’s use of temporality, besides reflecting a cultural adaptation, allows for a remoulding of forms, coupling law and theatre in confronting Eyre’s mass executions of 1865. This remoulding of forms (law as theatre, theatre as law) provides a potential for postcolonial witnessing not available when either performance protocol is used on its own. Using Blazevic’s and Cale Feldman’s concept of ‘misperformance’, I argue that this play-trial arises out of a Benjaminian sense of historicity, providing an experience of inchoate justice that finds fulfilment in the present. The Trial of Governor Eyre points, more broadly, to a new ‘problem-space’ in African diaspora political theory, where resistance against colonial structures of oppression is increasingly mounted on the ground of justice itself and through which the legal apparatuses of colonialism become a site of critical memory. Through the play’s deployment of ritual and its plastic moulding of time, 1865 is enlisted as a key historical conjuncture for thinking through the cultural disenchantment of race, but also of the formalist, creative resources that can be mobilised for reimagining humanness in the contemporary moment.

Making a “Bangladeshi diaspora”: Migration, group formation and emplacement between Portugal and Bangladesh

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-24
Author(s):  
José Mapril
Keyword(s):  
Group Formation ◽  
Essential Element ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Public Spheres ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Emplacement Processes ◽  
National Boundaries

In 1996, Appadurai argued that imagination is an essential element in the creation of cross-border political forms.Electronic media, for example, establishes links across national boundaries, linking those who move and those who stay.In his argument, these diasporic public spheres were examples of post-national political worlds and revealed the erosion of the nation-state in the face of globalisation and modernity. In this paper, I draw inspiration on this concept of diasporicpublic sphere but to show how these imaginaries are intimately tied to forms of group making and emplacement in several contexts. This argument is based on an ethnographic research about the creation of a transnational federation ofBangladeshi associations – the All European Bangladeshi Association (AEBA) – in the past decade, its main objectivesand activities. Through the analysis of an AEBA event that took place in Lisbon, I want to show the productive dialecticbetween diasporic imaginaries, group formation and emplacement processes between Portugal and Bangladesh.

Habeas Ficta

2018 ◽  
pp. 166-184
Author(s):  
Tavia Nyong'o
Keyword(s):  
Feminist Theory ◽  
African Diaspora ◽  
Black Feminist Theory ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
And Performance

This chapter engages recent developments in black feminist theory, in particular those that emphasize the pornotroping of the flesh, in order to outline a new theory of fictive ethnicity. Noting how black ethnicity has emerged as an issue in film and performance, the chapter suggests that a fabulation of ethnicity (as well as race) is critical to an understanding of angular socialities in the contemporary African diaspora.

Imagining Religious Communities

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer B. Saunders
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Personal Narratives ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Social Imaginaries ◽  
Crucial Component ◽  
Religious Narrative ◽  
Narrative Performances

Based on ethnographic research with a transnational Hindu family and its social networks, this book examines the ways that middle-class Hindu communities are engaged actively in creating and maintaining their communities. Imagination as a social practice has been a crucial component of defining a transnational life in the moments between actual contact across borders, and the narratives community members tell are key components of communicating these social imaginaries. Narrative performances shape participants’ social realities in multiple ways: they define identities, they create connections between community members living on opposite sides of national borders, and they help create new homes amid increasing mobility. The narratives are religious and include both epic narratives, such as excerpts from the Rāmāyaṇ, and personal narratives with dharmic implications. The book argues that this Hindu community’s religious narrative performances significantly contribute to shaping their transnational lives. The analysis combines scholarly understandings of the ways that performances shape the contexts in which they are told, indigenous comprehension of the power that reciting certain narratives can have on those who hear them, and the theory that social imaginaries define new social realities through expressing the aspirations of communities.

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