Catarina Juliana e sua sociedade de culto: rituais e práticas religiosas na Angola setecentista

<p>Este artigo descreve e interpreta as práticas religiosas realizadas pela sacerdotisa angolana Catarina Juliana (e sua sociedade de culto) em uma região interiorana do reino de Angola durante o século XVIII. Os rituais e símbolos descritos no processo inquisitorial contra Catarina Juliana são interpretados a partir de uma análise hermenêutica e comparativa, e o aparato conceitual do estudo é fornecido pela antropologia simbólica. O caso analisado revela que angolanos, mesmo quando batizados na religião dos colonizadores, resistiam em suas práticas religiosas tradicionais. Procura-se, aqui, demonstrar que diferentes rituais, antes conduzidos por sacerdotes especializados, passaram a ser acumulados pelos banganga de uma mesma sociedade de culto na Angola setecentista.</p><p>Catarina Juliana and her cult group: rituals and religious practices in eightheenth Century Angola</p><p>This article describes and interprets the religious practices performed by the Angolan priestess Catarina Juliana (and her cult group) in an inland region of the Kingdom of Angola during the 18th century. The rituals and symbols described in the inquisitorial process against Catarina Juliana are interpreted based on a hermeneutic and comparative analysis, using an approach coming from symbolic anthropology. The case analyzed shows that Angolans, even when baptized in the religion of the colonizers, continued their traditional religious practices. It seeks to demonstrate that different rituals, previously led by specialized priests, came to be accumulated by the banganga of the same cult society in 18th century Angola.</p><p>Cult society | Religious practices | Angola | 18th century</p>

Pożegnanie nomady. Antropologiczne pomyślenia Wojciecha Burszty (1957–2021)

The author limns an intellectual portrait of the cultural specialist and anthopologist Wojciech Józef Burszta (1957–2021), who died at the beginning of 2021. Burszta’s reflections centered on the “post-anthropological” shape of contemporaneity. Such thinking involved, on the one hand, relinquishing the idea of culture as a cohesive, harmonious system (ideas close to the symbolic anthropology of Clifford Geertz), and on the other, the increasing awareness of “being in culture,” of the possession and appropriation of culture by the community, individuals, and institutions (Burszta described these processes as “metaculture”). In addition to popular culture and pop nationalism, another important area of interest for Burszta was literature—an essentially anti-systemic reverse of anthropological reflections on reality.

The Symbolisms and Poetics of the Japa Mantra in Yogyakarta, Indonesia: An Anthropological Study

The heritage of Yogyakarta and other urban centres throughout Java, Indonesia, is such that their religions have become highly syncretic (Geertz). Here, animism, Hindu roots, and Islam, have been mixed to fashion modern spiritual practices. One of these is the Japa Mantra, a type of prayer used as a spell as white (and sometimes black) magic. The practitioners of the Japa mantra employ Javanese poetics to shape its poetics, in the belief that these mantras are magical and convey the will of deities and other spirits, who empathie with people and whose will allows these spiritual requests to amterialize. This paper presents an early stage in describing the symbolisms and poetics of the Japa Mantra, through the documenting of several hundred practitioners, priests, and others, in Yogyakarta and other urban centres. The analaysis of the poetics of the Japa Mantra practiced by these communities draws on symbolic anthropology, and describes junctures between spiritual speech communities and symbolic representations of a modern Java guided by a sustained heritage, in the face of an institutionalized Islam.

The elders of Mount Athos and the discourse of charisma in modern Greece

This paper considers the emergence of Mount Athos’ monk elders in Greek society in recent decades until the current economic crisis. Their social influence has grown over these decades, especially after some of them were recognized as charismatic and gerontismos (elderism) became one of the most important forms of religious discourse in contemporary Greek society. These elders were presented as a kind of cultural resistance in the service of an alternative economy of desire. This analysis suggests that they have ultimately worked in the service of a series of individual or collective fantasies of power and pleasure within Greek society. The theoretical tools informing this analysis are the product of a dialog between symbolic anthropology and Lacanian theory.

Why do the Indians Wear Adidas? Or, Culture Contact and the Relations of Consumption

The study of the consumption of goods has never achieved the prominence in anthropology of either production or exchange. Yet the accelerating consumption of western goods in non-western societies is one of the most obtrusive cultural and economic trends of the last three centuries. This article addresses the general issue of why goods flow between cultural groups by re-examining the concept of consumption. It raises questions of importance to studies of development, material culture, ethnohistory, and symbolic anthropology.