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- Convenors:
-
Volker Gottowik
(Frankfurt University)
Raphaela von Weichs (Université de Lausanne)
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- Formats:
- Workshops
- Location:
- V213
- Sessions:
- Friday 13 July, -
Time zone: Europe/Paris
Short Abstract:
While multi-religious rituals are subject to strong regulation in the West, they form an integral part of the ritual repertoire in other parts of the world. The aim of this workshop is to discuss the historical genesis and social implications of rituals of a rather ecumenical character.
Long Abstract:
While multi-religious rituals and ecumenical events are subject to strong regulation in the West, they form an integral part of the ritual repertoire in other parts of the world. In South and Southeast Asia in particular, but also in many parts of Africa, members of different denominations go on pilgrimages to graves and shrines in order to sacrifice and pray, and sometimes they even maintain common places of worship. For a long time this multi-religious practice was widely ignored by social anthropologists, who tend to reduce this practice to a convergence between different religious communities ("syncretism") or consider it to be an expression of a handed down nature and ancestor cult ("archaism"). It is obvious, however, that a ritual practice that incorporates members of different denominations into the same activities is not compatible with a fundamentalist reading of religion. We are interested in the following questions: What do multi-religious rituals actually do, and how do they do it? How do social conflicts and uncertainty interrelate with the assumed integrative function and the ambivalence of multi-religious rituals? Other questions refer to the historical genesis, social implications and current persistence of multi-religious rituals which we intend to discuss in this workshop in order to outline a theoretical framework.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 13 July, 2012, -Magdalena Lubanska (University of Warsaw)
Paper short abstract:
In my paper I will show that some syncretic religious practises, ascribed to Muslims living in the Western Rhodopes by their Christian neighbours, are in fact questionable. Using data from my fieldwork I will analyze them in terms of cultural misunderstandings
Paper long abstract:
According to Charles Stewart and Rosalind Shaw religious syncretism may be analyzed as an adaptation strategy deployed when individuals are exposed to competing religious paradigms coexisting within a community (1994). When seen from this perspective religious syncretism reveals its ambiguous features: some actions may appear syncretic in nature, but their underlying intentions may be not in fact motivated by syncretic tendencies. This is a situation which can be aptly described using the concept of "superficial syncretism," introduced by Aleksander Posern-Zieliński (1987) to describe apparently syncretic behaviours which nonetheless involve no significant changes to religious belief (as opposed to "deep syncretism", which actually influences the sphere of belief). In practise, superficial syncretism concerns often those behaviours which are classified as syncretistic by their observers, but are not seen as such by those who perform them. In this perspective superficial religious syncretism is grounded in cultural misunderstandings and may be seen as a facet of everyday peaceful coexistence between different religious communities. I would like to analyze this problem using examples from the fieldwork conducted among Muslim-Christian local communities in 2005-2009 in the Western Rhodopes.
Volker Gottowik (Frankfurt University)
Paper short abstract:
In many parts of Indonesia a transformation of local ritual practices (adat) is taking place, in order to meet the requirements of a modern religion (agama). This paper discusses the disintegration and persistence of multi-religious rituals on Lombok using the Lingsar Festival (Pujawali Pura Lingsar) as an ethnographic example.
Paper long abstract:
In many parts of Indonesia, a transformation of local ritual practices (adat) is taking place in order to meet the requirements of a modern religion (agama). This transformation is happening hand in hand with a codification of ritual performances and a process of rationalization within religious belief systems. Commonly performed, multi-religious rituals are being suspended and clear-cut boundaries between religious groups defined which finally allow socio-economic conflicts to be settled along religious lines. This paper discusses the disintegration of multi-religious rituals, as well as their persistence in central Indonesia, using the island of Lombok as an ethnographic example. Particular attention is paid to the Lingsar Festival (Pujawali Pura Lingsar), where, in a variety of ritual events, Hindus and Muslims, Balinese and Sasak emphasize what connects and what separates them as distinctive ethnic and religious groups. Ambivalence and uncertainty find their visible expression in a symbolic battle between Muslims and Hindus, which is settled with rice cakes (perang topat), but nonetheless performed with great seriousness, not entirely free from aggression.
Sylvie Beaud (Teikyo University)
Paper short abstract:
The Guan Suo Opera of the Han in Yangzong constitutes a case in point to understand China’s fundamentally multi-religious “popular religion”. This paper shall highlight the social implications of this masked ritual, namely the way in which it expresses the–apparently paradoxical–local Han identity.
Paper long abstract:
"Chinese popular religion" is fundamentally mutli-religious and so diverse from North to South that specialists still wonder whether China has one popular religion or several. The Guan Suo Opera's ritual of the Yangzong Han in Yunnan province proves relevant for the study of such practice: on the one hand, it involves altogether Buddhist and Taoist deities, exorcism, military as well as cosmological rites. On the other hand, the specificity of the Han of Yangzong is framed by an ongoing tension between two contrasting points of view: they appear both as one local ethnic minority among others, and, notably by means of ritualized theatrical representations, as the legitimate representatives of the national majority.
Through an anthropological analysis combined with a historical perspective on the origin of this ritual practice, I shall argue that the Guan Suo Opera constitutes a ritual way to resolve the ambivalence of the local Han identity. By re-playing the history of the crucial Three Kingdoms period (220-280) and acting out the hero's quest for his father, the Yangzong people establish the Guan Suo Opera as a local emblem. Paradoxically, it is by emphasizing their local specificity in this way that they lay claim to an overarching Han identity.
This case study shall thus make clear that what is at stake in such multi-religious rituals is not just a hazardous combination resulting from a peculiar history, but rather a social construct though which a local community can identify itself and relate to englobing entities at larger scales.
Lijing Peng (Trinity College Dublin)
Paper short abstract:
The role of vernacular religion is embedded in its relationship with mainstream religion/culture, and in its performance in everyday life. Vernacular religion is also re-contextualized when people gradually accept the doctrines of a religion which differs from it and to which they try to immerge it.
Paper long abstract:
Performance of Tibetan Epic Gesar features a pervasive system of practices involving the production and dissemination of belief systems. These homologous practices include improvisational verbal art, ritual dance based on sutras, dramas and daily worshiping within the family or region unit. They also reflect the relationship between Buddhism and vernacular religions related to mountain deities.
This paper concentrates on the role of storytelling in different Tibetan religions, and the varieties of speech in the narrative of Epic Gesar. It argues that the ambiguity of locating King Gesar into different religions can be observed in the daily narratives of Kham and Amdo Tibetans. In Kham Tibet - a half-farming, half-pastoral area - the official propaganda on orthodox live performances (storytelling in its literal meaning, in classical Tibetan) and exemplary ritual dances in Buddhist temples of Epic Gesar had in one way marginalized the vernacular religious beliefs in King Gesar as a mountain deity, and in the other provided a novel perspective of immerging vernacular beliefs into Buddhist religion. In Amdo Tibet, a purely pastoral area, the tradition of improvisational epic singing is well preserved, which is crucial in reflecting the belief of mountain deities; as a parallel, King Gesar as a mountain deity is worshiped in regional temples and family shrines. These daily practices are kept in distance from Buddhist rituals and sites, in searching for real efficacy of vernacular religion which benefits everyday life other than the search of mental fulfillment in Buddhist beliefs.
Tatiana Vagramenko (University College Cork)
Paper short abstract:
While internalizing Christianity, Nenets indigenous people reinterpret their past, alternately doubting and defending its efficacy for the present. Paradoxically they are using the logic and concepts of new religion to protect their ethnic authenticity and to claim their cultural distinctiveness.
Paper long abstract:
Although religious conversion is commonly understood in anthropology as a response to crisis, it is precisely religious change which can in some cases bring even more uncertainty into people's lives. They begin more self-consciously to reconsider their past, which induces them both to doubt and defend the efficacy of previous tradition. This leads either to cultural debasement and a sense of humiliation, or to cultural resistance and the emergence of nationalistic discourse.
The post-Soviet period has created new opportunities for cross-cultural interaction and revealed global markets of religion. Today, nomadic Nenets indigenous people inhabiting arctic tundras of Western Siberia are being challenged by international gas development, urbanization, the market economy, as well as numerous Christian missionaries. Adapting this new reality, Nenets use religious conversion to Protestantism as a resource for achieving stability, social protection and faith in the future.
But in fact religious "born agains" bring even more ambiguity and accumulate deeper social problems. Perceiving Christianity as "Russian faith" and historically dissociating from the dominance of Russian society, Nenets believe that religious conversion harms ethnic authenticity and breaks ties with traditional community. Facing such danger, converted Nenets creatively use the Christian conceptual system as a tool to shape and protect their cultural difference. They revise their past, inserting Christian logic into their history, as well as extending traditional cultural concepts into their Christian future. This paper examines how Nenets construct their history, doubt and defend their heritage, creatively using the logic of new religion in claiming their cultural distinctiveness.
Raphaela von Weichs (Université de Lausanne)
Paper short abstract:
This paper discusses the coronation festival as a set of multi-religious rituals sacralising the king, and argues, that this annual event enables the king to incorporate otherwise disparate religious cults and political groups in his kingdom.
Paper long abstract:
Economic, social and political uncertainty has induced a new dynamic of cultural revival movements in many parts of Africa. In Uganda, the revival of monarchical traditions in the 1990s, augmented by neo-traditions and multi-religious rituals, gives ample evidence of the need to cope with such uncertainty. This paper discusses the role and performativity of multi-religious royal rituals in the light of political and economic hazard, and global evangelization. It takes as a starting point the annual coronation festival (empango) of the Kingdom of Bunyoro-Kitara, one of the revived kingdoms of Uganda, in which spirit cults legitimize the mythological charter and the social and political order. While officially the Kingdom takes a Christian outlook and acknowledges Islam as the religious affiliation of a minor portion of the local population, it is legitimized by the royal ancestor cult (cwezi) as one of the local spirit cults. Royal ancestor worship, Christian liturgy and Islamic blessing join to a choreographic finely coordinated, partly secret, partly public performance which produces ecumenical and hybrid forms of religious concepts and practices.
By analyzing the performativity of the empango festival as a set of multi-religious rituals sacralising the king, I will argue, that this annual event enables the king to incorporate otherwise disparate religious cults and political groups in his kingdom. At the same time the multi-religious performance creates a semantic ambivalence that provokes the repudiation of the kingdom by fundamentalist Christian groups.