Everything Is Connected

It is a mainstay that spiritual seekers—from New Age thinkers, neopagans, esoteric cults, or people referring to themselves as “spiritual, not religious”—imagine nature as a mysterious, spiritual, and meaningful force to counter alienating and disenchanting modernity. In this chapter, I argue that this spiritual imagination about “mysterious incalculable forces” is not necessarily projected on nature, but, perhaps increasingly, on complex modern institutions. In critical dialogue with the ideas of the classics—that is, Weber, Marx, Mannheim—on modernity and religion, I will argue that such undertheorized forms of modern re-enchantment should be understood as cultural responses to powerful, yet highly opaque systems that are beyond the control of contemporary citizens. Although various examples are used throughout this chapter to illustrate this relocation of spiritual power from nature to society, the main case used is the phenomenon of conspiracy culture or, rather, the phenomenon of “conspirituality.”

Teachers’ critical reflection: what are the practices for social justice in education?

This article explores teachers’ participation in the school’s social justice system through the lens of the critical multicultural approach (May & Sleeter, 2010; May, 2000; 2003). Based on a research project about reconstruction and the theorization of teachers’ stories of practice (Desgagné, 2005) in a multiethnic context, data was collected from teachers in highly multiethnic primary schools in Québec. They were asked to narrate a story about a problem or an event with an immigrant or refugee student in their class. Four of these stories have been selected for this article. Our aim was to analyze the teachers’ cultural responses and their perception of their roles in supporting their students. Our analysis shows that although these teachers tend to make changes to their students’ reality, they cannot escape or contest “alone” the norms of an academic, societal and political system that governs its power relationships and privileges, its dominant norms and values.

Early Cinema, Modernity and Visual Culture

The end of the nineteenth century saw the Balkans animated with cultural movements and socio-political turmoil. Alongside these developments, the proliferation of print media and the arrival of moving images was transforming urban life and played a significant role in the creation of national culture. Based on archival research and previously overlooked footage and early press materials, Imaginary of the Balkans: Visual Culture, Modernity and Early Cinema is the first study on early cinema in the region from a transnational and cross-cultural perspective. This work investigates how the unique geopolitical positioning of the Balkan space and the multi-cultural identity of its communities influenced and shaped visual culture and early cinema development. Moreover, it examines the relationship between the new medium and visual culture through the notion of the haptic, and explores the role early cinema and foreign productions played in the construction of Balkanist and semi-colonial discourses. Reframing hierarchical relations between ‘centres’ and ‘peripheries’, this book departs from approaches such as “new cinema history” and “vernacular modernity” to counter modernity discourses of “lacks and absences”, and instead, establishes new connections between moving image and print artefacts, early film practitioners and intellectuals, the socio-cultural context and cultural responses to the new visual medium.

Tropical islands of the Anthropocene: Deep histories of anthropogenic terrestrial–marine entanglement in the Pacific and Caribbean

Islands are useful model systems for examining human–environmental interactions. While many anthropogenic effects visible in the archaeological and paleoecological records are terrestrial in nature (e.g., clearance of tropical forests for agriculture and settlement; introduction of nonnative flora and fauna), native peoples also relied heavily on marine environments for their subsistence and livelihood. Here we use two island case studies—Palau (Micronesia) and the Lesser Antilles (Caribbean)—and approach their long-term settlement history through a “ridge-to-reef” perspective to assess the role that human activity played in land- and seascape change over deep time. In particular, we examine the entanglement of terrestrial and marine ecosystems resulting from anthropogenic effects and cultural responses to socio-environmental feedback. We suggest that on the humanized tropical islands of the Anthropocene, mangroves, near shore and littoral areas, and coral reefs were major sites of terrestrial–marine interface chronicling and modulating anthropogenic effects.

Coalescence and the Spread of Glaze-Painted Pottery in the Central Rio Grande: The View from Tijeras Pueblo (LA581), New Mexico

The concept of coalescent communities has been widely used by North American archaeologists as a framework for understanding cultural responses to social upheaval. In this article we explore how the concept of coalescence helps us understand the processes that led to the emergence of aggregated settlements in the Albuquerque district of the central Rio Grande Valley around the turn of the fourteenth century. We argue that such communities emerged as strategic local responses to disruptive social and demographic trends on a macroregional scale. Specifically, we use NAA and petrographic sourcing of Western Pueblo- and Rio Grande-style glaze-painted pottery in conjunction with settlement data from the site of Tijeras Pueblo (LA581) to explore how the amalgamation of immigrant and autochthonous people, technology, knowledge, and ritual creatively and radically transformed local and regional practices of community and identity formation.

The re-emergence of nganaparru (water buffalo) into the culture, landscape and rock art of western Arnhem Land

The introduction of new animals into hunter-gatherer societies produces a variety of cultural responses. This article explores the role of rock art in western Arnhem Land, Australia, in helping to mediate contact-period changes in Indigenous society in the nineteenth century. The authors explore etic and emic perspectives on the ‘re-emergence’ of water buffalo into Aboriginal cultural life. Merging archaeological analysis, rock art and ethnographic accounts, the article demonstrates how such artworks were used as a tool for maintaining order in times of dramatic social change. The results of this research have significant implications for understanding how cultural groups and individuals worldwide used rock art during periods of upheaval.

Christianization, the New Testament and COVID-19 in Owambo, Namibia

This article explores religious and cultural responses to the COVID-19 crisis in Namibia, focusing particularly on the northern region of Owambo. Since the 1870s, Owambo has experienced a rapid and widespread process of Christianization. Today, the vast majority of the population (both in Owambo and in wider Namibia) identify as Christian. In this context, the supremacy of the Bible and Christianity was established, in no small part, through the instigation of cultural crisis – the upending of social norms and the demonization of African Traditional Religion (ATR) and local cultural practice. From foodstuffs to family structure, from initiation to forms of dress and adornment – the overtly ‘traditional’ became taboo. And yet, responses to the COVID-19 pandemic illustrate the endurance of ATR and demonstrate that the cultural ‘text’ is at least as significant as the biblical text in the current crisis, whether as sphere of impact or source of resilience. This article therefore reflects on responses to the current COVID-19 crisis in light of the historical cultural crisis, exploring how Christianity and ATR are perceived to be affected by COVID-19, and how communities are drawing on Christianity/the Bible and ATR as sources of resilience.

WHO’S LAUGHING NOW? SURVIVORS OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE JOKE ABOUT RAPE

Survivors of sexual violence in Canada face a culture that is largely hostile to their voices and experiences. Despite this, some survivors turn to the public sphere to work through their trauma. This thesis presents interview data from seven survivors who have performed stand-up comedy about their own experiences with sexual violence. It weaves together critical and clinical trauma theories, feminist work on sexual violence, and communications theories about humour and joking to offer new insights into how cultural responses to sexual trauma can work to challenge dominant attitudes about rape. This thesis ultimately argues that the cognitive, linguistic, and affective strategies that joking encourages can guide survivors towards reconceptualising the traumatic events they’ve experienced and facilitate the integration of those traumas into their lives. By focusing on a novel aspect of survivors’ affective expressions – their fun – this analysis works to make better sense of peoples’ complex responses to trauma.

WHO’S LAUGHING NOW? SURVIVORS OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE JOKE ABOUT RAPE

Survivors of sexual violence in Canada face a culture that is largely hostile to their voices and experiences. Despite this, some survivors turn to the public sphere to work through their trauma. This thesis presents interview data from seven survivors who have performed stand-up comedy about their own experiences with sexual violence. It weaves together critical and clinical trauma theories, feminist work on sexual violence, and communications theories about humour and joking to offer new insights into how cultural responses to sexual trauma can work to challenge dominant attitudes about rape. This thesis ultimately argues that the cognitive, linguistic, and affective strategies that joking encourages can guide survivors towards reconceptualising the traumatic events they’ve experienced and facilitate the integration of those traumas into their lives. By focusing on a novel aspect of survivors’ affective expressions – their fun – this analysis works to make better sense of peoples’ complex responses to trauma.