Mother Earth, Mother Africa and African Women’s Role in Indigenous Religions

This paper explores the nexus between African indigenous religio-culture and ecology, gender, rituals and the environment, in current ritual debates. Current debates demonstrate that ritual has filtered into the public space thereby being resilient and at the same time vulnerable to exploitation by the public sphere. Examining the current debates on rites of passage, this article reviews four chapters from the book Mother Earth, Mother Africa and African Indigenous Religions. African indigenous rituals are spaces that produce knowledge for African ways of living. However, in search of progress, development and better life, most African people have been neglecting rites as they seem unprogressive. In ritual spaces, the novices were instructed about how to engage with nature and how to live with others within communities. Ritual spaces gave women and men (initiates) agency over a vast number of life issues. Drawing on African feminist cultural hermeneutics, I examine ritual functions as a tool to understand how contemporary African people’s search for justice can be gleaned within such African rituals in order to uplift women’s agency.

Ritual Spaces, Governmentality and Cultural Governance in Urban Development: The Case of Shenzhen

Recently, the concept of “cultural governance” has gained analytical traction in research on Chinese urban development. This is mostly diagnosed as a top-down process of defining and imposing cultural forms in government-led projects, such as in tourism. We argue that the case of Shenzhen manifests important differences, and is highly significant, considering the national and international status of this mega-city. Based on detailed field studies, supplemented with information about other cases, we show that in Shenzhen local cultural forms show resilience and increasing public presence, while also being shaped by inclusive cultural policies that are informed by the national drive towards reinstating traditional Chinese values as part and parcel of national identity. One manifestation is the enactment of the traditional ritual space of the village in urban architecture, such as the duality of ancestral hall and village temple, often at so-called “cultural squares,” and the expression of territorial ambitions of lineages in competitive projects of redevelopment. We suggest enhancing the concept of cultural governance by the concept of governmentality to grasp these phenomena analytically.

Ruang Sakral dan Ruang Ritual Prosesi Adat Pernikahan Sintê Mungêrjê pada Masyarakat Gayo Lôt

Rational and empirical human dominate modern society. But in practice, modernity often lacks reflection. Wedding processions in modern Gayo communities illustrate this reality. The depth of meaning through symbols and social actions in every stage of the traditional Gayo wedding procession is beginning to be displaced by the ceremonial lack of understanding that tends to be rushed and infiltrated by global culture. This study documents the knowledge and subjective meaning of Gayo traditional actors regarding the tradition of sintê mungêrjê marriage by identifying sacred spaces and ritual spaces, then how the modern Gayo people interpret and act based on the observations of research informants. This qualitative research uses in-depth interview techniques in the data collection process. This research found that the essence of sintê mungêrjê was spirituality and communality nuances characterized by sacred and ritual activity stages. However, this set of norms is no longer institutionalized during modern Gayo society. This condition makes ritual meaningless and presents a culture without a clear personality identity. AbstrakMasyarakat modern didominasi oleh manusia yang bercirikan rasional dan empiris. Tapi dalam praktiknya, sering ditemukan fenomena modernitas minim refleksi. Hal itu sebagaimana pelaksanaan prosesi adat pernikahan pada masyarakat Gayo modern. Kedalaman makna yang ditampilkan melalui simbol dan tindakan sosial dalam setiap tahapan prosesi adat pernikahan Gayo tradisional mulai tergeser oleh seremonial minim pemahaman yang cenderung tergesa-gesa dan disusupi budaya global. Studi ini mendokumentasikan pengetahuan dan makna subjektif para pelaku adat Gayo mengenai tradisi pernikahan sintê mungêrjê dengan mengidentifikasi ruang sakral dan ruang ritual, kemudian bagaimana masyarakat Gayo modern memaknai dan bertindak berdasarkan pengamatan informan penelitian. Penelitian kualitatif ini menggunakan teknik wawancara mendalam dalam proses pengumpulan data. Berdasarkan hasil penelitian diperoleh pemahaman bahwa hakikat sintê mungêrjê adalah spiritualitas dan komunalitas yang diwarnai oleh tahapan kegiatan yang bersifat sakral dan ritual. Namun seperangkat norma ini tidak lagi terinstitusionalisasi di tengah masyarakat Gayo modern sehingga hanya melahirkan ritual miskin makna dan budaya tanpa identitas kepribadian yang jelas.

Public Masculinities at the Feast

This chapter takes readers on processions through Williamsburg, focusing on a trio of ritual spaces in feast geography: the Questua, the Line of the March, and the parish’s shrine. It explores the hierarchy of masculinities within this Catholic community and how those are performed in how men navigate neighborhood space. Manhood, masculinity, and male authority are contingent on props, stuff, clothing, and setting but are also institutionally granted and achieved in the eyes of other men. Men aspire to and achieve manhood through lifelong involvement with the feast. This chapter examines how life stage matters to ideals of manhood and masculinity and how fatherhood represents the promise of new generations dedicated to the feast and parish. It argues that heterosexuality is central to the community’s vision of a thriving feast and examines the marginalization and excision of gay men from that vision.

Ritualizing Christian Iconic Texts

Christian iconic texts are easily recognizable books and images that signify Christian scripture. From the earliest forms of Christianity until the present day, Christians have used their iconic texts, such as Bibles and Gospel books, in rituals such as processions and displays that create and maintain the legitimacy of the tradition and its adherents. Related to the incarnational theology of God’s Word, early Christian rituals often claimed to make Christ present in ritual spaces, so that Bibles operated as icons. After the Reformation and Protestants’ denials of most objects and images for worship, the Bible became the primary ritual object and image for Christian salvation. It is this ritual dimension of scripture that adds value, meaning, and power to the text when it is read or performed.

Co-Creating Ritual Spaces and Communities: An Analysis of Municipal Cemetery Tongerseweg, Maastricht, 1812–2020

Cemeteries have been viewed in opposed ways as ritual spaces that either mirror society or present an idealized model of society. In this article, we propose an analysis of cemeteries as ritual spaces, focused on the case study of municipal cemetery Tongerseweg in Maastricht, among the most important monumental cemeteries still in active use in The Netherlands today. Drawing on historical as well as interview material, spatial and ritual studies, the authors argue for a new “Arena Model” to understand cemeteries as dynamic ritual spaces. Cemeteries do not only form an ensemble of ritual spaces that are reliant on pre-existing communities, they also evoke, produce and maintain communities. Codeterminants are the physical layout and a wide range of ritual markers that variously underscore, mitigate or even contradict the communities created by the spatial layout. Important actors pertain to municipal politics and administration as well as the users, their respective allies and service providers. The article further analyses the wide range of competing values that help to shape a cycle of cocreating plural ritual spaces as well as communities.

Architecture of the World’s Major Religions

In Architecture of the World’s Major Religions: An Essay on Themes, Differences, and Similarities, religious architecture is presented and explained in ways that challenge predominant presumptions regarding its aesthetic, formal, spatial, and scenographic elements. Two positions frame its narrative: religious architecture is an amalgam of aesthetic, social, political, cultural, economic, and doctrinal elements; and these elements are materialized in often very different ways in the world’s principal religions. Central to the essay’s theoretical approaches is the communicative and discursive agency of religious architecture, and the multisensory and ritual spaces it provides to create and deliver content. Subsequently, mythical and scriptural foundations, and symbols of ecclesiastical and political power are of equal interest to formal organizations of thresholds, paths, courts, and centers, and celestial and geometric alignments. Moreover, it is equally concerned with the aesthetic—visual and material cultures and the transcendent realms they were designed to evoke, as it is with the kinesthetic—the dynamic and multisensory experience of place and the tangible experiences of the body’s interactions with architecture.

TREASURED TRASH: THE SACRED SIGNIFICANCE OF CERAMIC FRAGMENTS IN ELITE RITUAL CONTEXTS AT POSTCLASSIC XALTOCAN, MEXICO

In this article, I examine the use of ceramic fragments to mark sacred spaces at the Postclassic central Mexican site of Xaltocan. Recent excavations in Xaltocan's central precinct revealed a series of ritual features dating to Xaltocan's Middle Postclassic period (a.d. 1240–1350) that were carefully constructed with ceramic fragments. I argue that this practice might represent an effort on the part of Xaltocan's Postclassic leaders to mark these features as sacred. Although Xaltocan was ruled by Otomi peoples during this time, the careful incorporation of ceramic fragments into ritual spaces might be related to the Nahua concept of tlazolli and possibly reflects the increasing influence of Nahua ideologies across the Basin of Mexico. Despite its generally negative connotations, tlazolli was a powerful substance that central Mexicans could manipulate to energize ritual spaces. By carefully reordering ceramic fragments in and around ritual features, Xaltocan's leaders might have imbued these spaces with sacred energy. While the concept of tlazolli might have been quite widespread during this time, the specific practices discussed in this article appear to have been isolated to Xaltocan's Middle Postclassic leaders. Perhaps the specific practices observed were an invention of Xaltocan's Middle Postclassic leaders that never spread.