Aɖaʋatram (Madness Has Led Me Astray): Ritual Archives and Ewe Identities on the Ghana–Togo Borderlands

In this paper, I discuss the encounter and conflict between home space and outside space, and between unconsecrated space and ritual space, as they are represented in the biblical stories of the house of Micah (Judg. 17) and the house of the medium at Ein Dor (1 Sam. 28). Within the house of Micah, the ephod and the teraphim represent a means of communication with other spaces, namely, the space of heaven and the space of Sheol , the underworld. The home of the medium at Ein Dor is presented in the story with a dual function: It is a space of life, dwelling, and nourishment, but also a space that connects to the mythical space, Sheol , thus contrasting the space of the living to the world of the dead. The houses in these stories can therefore be viewed as liminal spaces that serve as gateways between spaces: between the ritual space and the private space; between the mythical space of Sheol and the space of the land of the living; between inside space and outside space; and between sheltered space and wild space.

This chapter explores heritage, ritual space, and contested urbanization in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. While Shenzhen is typically viewed (and promotes itself) as China's most modern, and most secular, “city without history”, the urban villages (or “villages-in-the-city” 城中村) that have made up much of Shenzhen's urban fabric remain important spaces of ritual practice in which religious and ancestral communities are called into being. Such villages owe their seemingly improbable resilience as ritual spaces not to any ability to somehow remain separate from the massive city that has grown up around them, but rather from the integral urbanizing role that they have themselves played in making that city possible in the first place. Many of these villages have now refurbished themselves as visitable heritage spaces in an effort to showcase their own history and their role in building Shenzhen. The chapter argues that traditional ritual spaces are not so much erased by urbanization, but have been transformed into heritage spaces within which ancestral and religious identities persist. Indeed, heritage has become the principle medium for the display of what Herrmann-Pillath, Guo, and Feng (2020) have called a “ritual economy” that continues to govern Shenzhen in significant ways. While much scholarship has argued that the landscape of Shenzhen's urban villages blurs the ideological divide of rural and urban, it also blurs the realms of the secular and the religious. The urban village can thus be understood as part of a broader Chinese landscape of popular religious revival masked as cultural heritage, in which practices of tourism and leisure are blended with those of religion and ritual.

In this editorial article for the Special Issue onUnlocking Sacred Landscapes: Digital Humanities and Ritual Space, we introduce the applicability of digital humanities to the study of ritual space. The Issue focuses on digital approaches both to ritual space and to artefacts relating to ritual practice and cult. The terms ritual and cult are used broadly to include sanctuaries, temples and churches, as well as the domestic and funerary spheres of life. We include contributions with a strong methodological focus on computational developments, digitisation processes and spatial analyses. Although the main focus of theUnlocking Sacred Landscapes(UnSaLa) Research Network is the Mediterranean region, we have also encouraged colleagues working in other areas of the world to contribute to this volume, with a view to stimulating wider methodological dialogues and comparative approaches. The chronological span ranges from prehistory to the recent past, and includes cultural heritage management.

Traces of Power:Recent Books on Women in Antiquity Laura McClure (bio) Philippe Borgeaud . Mother of the Gods: From Cybele to the Virgin Mary. Trans. Lysa Hochroth. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. xix + 186 pp. ISBN 0-8018-7985-X (cl). Susan Guettel Cole . Landscapes, Gender, and Ritual Space: The Ancient Greek Experience. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. xiv + 292 pp.; maps. ISBN 0-520-23544-4 (cl). Barbara Goff . Citizen Bacchae: Women's Ritual Practice in Ancient Greece. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. xiii + 400 pp.; ill. ISBN 0-520-23998-9 (cl). Diane Kleiner . Cleopatra and Rome. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005. 340 pp.; ill. ISBN 0-674-01905-9 (cl). These four ambitious books provide welcome new perspectives on the lives of ancient women, the spaces they inhabited, and the ways in which they influenced their societies. Although long a commonplace of classical scholarship that religion provided the primary access to power for ancient women, scant attention has been paid to the subject. All of these books address some aspect of gender and religion, from the ritual activities of women in ancient Greece, to the evolution of a maternal divinity in pagan religions and her translation to Christianity, and to the profound impact of a deified Egyptian queen on Roman culture. In Landscapes, Gender, and Ritual Space, Susan Guettel Cole explores the intersection of gender and ritual practice in ancient Greece, with close attention to the epigraphical evidence. Meticulously researched, the book weaves together a broad range of evidence, from inscriptions, literary and medical texts, to archaeological remains. What emerges is a complex picture of the organization of ritual space in ancient Greece and the ways it structured political communities. Cole begins by exploring three related and coextensive landscapes: the natural, the human, and the imagined. In Greece, the division of space always had political implications, and stories about the organization of space and the natural landscape were often "infused with gender." Early Greek epics, such as Hesiod's Theogony and the Catalogue of Women, contain [End Page 184] numerous geographical narratives that "locate the individual community in its landscape and connect it to mythic representations of the larger universe" (21). Such narratives also reflected human categories and social hierarchies: for instance, fixed locations, like the hearth, were associated in the Greek imagination with the female. Chapter 2 examines the ways in which the ancient Greeks delimited the human from the divine. Injunctions against washing in a woman's bathwater, setting a boy on a grave, or eating from an unconsecrated pot, illustrate the profound need to separate human physical processes from the divine. Directed to an exclusively male audience, they also show the importance of delineating male from female. The inability to maintain these boundaries could infect the entire political community with pollution, thus requiring constant maintenance through the symbolic marking of perimeters and the repetition of ritual. In chapter 3, Cole considers the form and function of regional sanctuaries. These helped to merge autonomous cities—separated by geography and fiercely independent political structures—into a unified culture of shared traditions. The gods worshipped at these sites—Zeus at Olympia and Apollo at Delphi—promoted the universal recognition of divine laws. Apollo in particular was invested with a judicial authority that transcended political and territorial boundaries, supporting the "process by which cities made decisions and protected citizens from capricious leaders" (73). The fact that his sanctuary at Delphi marked the imaginary center of the world attests to the god's universality. Just as Delphi provided a sacred center that unified separate city-states into a culture of shared traditions and common laws, so, too, each city-state itself was organized around the prytaneion, "a space . . . both sacred and political" (80) that enclosed its common hearth and sacred fire and forged male solidarity and community. Chapter 4 elucidates the gender asymmetries entailed in ritual practice. Because the ancient Greeks worshipped in groups, gender often came into play in ritual contexts. Although it was less common for men and women to participate in shared rituals, there was no single formula for determining ritual constituency. Rituals connected with the body, especially...

The influence of traditional Chinese ritual culture on courtyard spatial sequences is widely acknowledged. However, quantitative analytical methods, such as space syntax, have rarely been applied in studies of ritual–residential space relations. This study uses space syntax, specifically Visibility Graph Analysis (VGA) and axial maps, to conduct a quantitative study of the spatial relationship between ritual and residential areas in Prince Kung’s Mansion. The VGA results indicate a distinct gradient of visual integration, which decreases progressively from the outward-oriented ritual areas, such as the palace gate and halls, through the transitional domestic ritual areas to the inward-oriented residential areas, such as Xijin Zhai and Ledao Tang. This pattern demonstrates a positive correlation between spatial visibility and ritual hierarchy. The axial map results confirm that the central axis and core ritual spaces exhibit the highest spatial connectivity, reflecting their supreme ritual status. More importantly, spatial connectivity is intensified during ritual activities compared to in daily life, indicating that enhanced spatial connectivity is required during rituals. Ritual spaces are characterized by extroversion, high visibility, and connectivity, while residential spaces prioritize introversion and minimal exposure. The deliberately designed ritual–residential architectural spatial sequence of Prince Kung’s Mansion articulates Confucian ideological principles, such as centrality as orthodoxy, gender segregation, and hierarchy. This study visually and quantitatively illustrates the harmony between ritual and residential spaces in Prince Kung’s Mansion. It enhances our understanding of the mechanisms of expression of courtyard ritual cultural spaces, providing evidence-based guidance for functional adaptive transformations in heritage conservation practices. It also offers a fresh perspective on the analysis of courtyard ritual spaces.

When Fibre Meets Fibre

Paul Christopher Johnson, Diaspora Conversions: Black Carib Religion and the Recovery of Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. Pp. 330. Cloth $50.00. Paper $24.95. Paul Christopher Johnson offers a rich articulation of the complexity of the African Diaspora in Diaspora Conversions: Black Carib Religion and the Recovery of Africa. In his previous works Johnson focused on Brazilian Candomble; here he explores the little-studied Black Carib religion of the Garifuna and explains how it challenges some preexisting conceptions of the African Diaspora. He argues not only that diasporic religious rituals and culture from the homeland are transferred to a different space, but also that they change and evolve as these practices move into different time periods and locations. He also explains the effects of a diaspora, or the movement of a diasporic religion from one homeland to a second--both outside of Africa. Finally, he shows that African diasporic religions vary in their emphasis on the influence of Africa as the homeland. Johnson compares groups of Garifuna practitioners in both Honduras and the Bronx, New York, to explain how diasporic connections to Africa were formed. While the island of St. Vincent serves as a homeland for both groups of Black Caribs, Johnson shows that the racial and cultural politics of New York City have drawn Garifuna practitioners into a close relationship with their African roots. Whereas homeland Garifuna practitioners in Honduras regard St. Vincent as their place of origin, whence the spirits return, U.S.-based Garifuna view three places--Honduras, St. Vincent, and, increasingly, Africa itself--as territorial sites of religious power. In this way Johnson explains that second diasporic religions bear the effects not only of migration within the Caribbean, but also their subsequent movement to the United States. Johnson extensively reviews existing scholarship on diasporas and religion, as well as the African Diaspora specifically. His definition of diasporas revolves around gaps in space, time, and memory, and thus broadens the relationship between geographic homelands and hostlands. African diasporic religions are those sets of religious discourses and practices that invoke Africa as a horizon of memory, authenticity, and sacred authority--whether Africa is physically known, imagined, or ritually created--and which consider the distance from that idealized place as a problem that is remedied by rendering the place as present in ritual. Thus, he explores important links among ritual spaces--St. Vincent, Honduras, and Africa--as well as the role of memory in the ritual practices of the Garifuna. Johnson then presents a brief history of the Black Carib people on St. Vincent and in Central America. He relies on European ship captains' personal letters to sketch these historical details and provides an insightful analysis of their perspectives. …

This study discusses how “deficiency” is accepted and expressed in the jeons(傳) and novels, legends, and shamanism in the ‘Im Gyeongeop narrative’. It defines and analyses Im Gyeongeop’s failure as a “deficiency”.
 Im Gyeongeop, a historical person, failed and died unfairly while pursuing loyalty to the Ming(明) dynasty. Such failures and frustrations make ‘Im Gyeongeop Jeon’ a narrative of deficiency. Im Gyeongeop has two deficiencies. The first is the ‘deficiency of continuing the reality of the ideal world,’ Im Gyeongeop pursues his ideological ideals. He goes to Ming for ideology, but his pursuit fails as Ming falls. This frustration leads to a ‘deficiency in the existing ideal world’ for Im Gyeongeop. The second deficiency of Im Gyeongeop is ‘unfair death’. ‘Unfair death’ has two meanings: one is that he was framed, and the other is that he had to die when he could not have died. “Deficiency of persistence” in the real world is the second deficiency.
 A legend is characterized by historicality and evidence. In the legend of a historical person, that person can be evidence. It is decorated based on historical facts, and real people’s stories also meet history. Im Gyeongeop legends can be categorized as birth, growth, activity, and death. In the birth story, Im Gyeongeop’s father often appears, and it is highly related to Feng shui(風水). These legends create a deficient element in the Gyeongeop because his father gets an ideal spot but breaks taboos. This story tells us that legend-tellers identify the cause of Gyeongeop’s failure with narrative logic. The growth story explain why Im Gyeongeop couldn’t see the secrets of nature(天機), and in the activity story and the death story, we find an attempt to find the cause of the deficiency. The Im Gyeongeop legends contain content that search for the cause of the deficiency in Im Gyeongeop. The legends created a fictional world free from facts, unlike jeons and novels. However, the legend tellers also had to be in historical times.
 In the West Sea(西海), Im Gyeongeop is worshipped along with the ‘Croaker catching folktales.’ However, there are no deficient elements of Im Gyeongeop in the ritual space. In shamanic thinking, Im Gyeongeop has no deficiency. We can infer the reason through the metaphorical meaning of the West Sea. Im Gyeongeop fled to Ming through the West Sea. The West Sea is a ‘liminal space’ in which the realistic space is transferred to an ideological space. Gyeongeop could be worshipped because the West Sea was a liminal space for the Gyeongeop. Gyeongeop does not show a deficiency in shamanic thinking because it is made in a space that transcends reality. Gyeongeop, in shamanic thinking, is a being out of historical time.
 Jeons, novels, and legends were not free from history. However, Gyeongeop was free from historical time. Gyeongeop’s deficiency in the liminal space was placed in a ‘post-historical’ situation. And the deficiency disappeared.

Traditional religious rituals in Chinese rural society include community religious rituals of the village altar or temple, as well as private religious rituals of the individual, family, and other organizations. Together they constitute a ritual system of popular religion and are both rich in social significance. Previous scholarship has largely focused on the religious rituals of communities and overlooked the more private ones. This article, based on data gathered from field investigation conducted at Donghua, Huangshi Township, Putian, Fujian Province, will examine the xie'en (thanksgiving) ritual of the Yu Family and explore the private rituals' impact on the community relations. The article begins with an introduction of the xie'en ritual content, its historical origin and symbolic meanings, followed by an investigation of the community environment, ritual space and a description of the actual ritual procedures, the participants, expenses, etc. The status of the xie'en ritual within the rural ritual tradition and its influences on the community relations and cultural continuance will be analyzed to deepen our understanding of the rural social and cultural tradition.

ICAF promotes the edition of the journal Archives on Food, Culture and Nutrition (AFOCUN), which aligns the aims and history of the discipline, and which aims to be a meeting point to focus the contemporary debate around the food-culture relationship. The analysis of food and food processes is nowadays a fertile field for the analysis of culture. The journal thus aspires to situate the field of food as an epistemological metropolis in anthropology. Analysing these food processes in contemporary debates on the global or the local, the flows of people, migrations, tourism or other displacements, the relations between food and climate change, the processes of patrimonialisation, the tensions between identity and modernisation, virtual ethnographies on food, its presence in social situations of vulnerability such as the processes of health and illness or loneliness are combined in classical approaches of a symbolic or applied nature to delimit an enormous scenario of objects of interest for the journal. The relations between food and religious practices, the space of ritual or economic practices in the context of globalisation or work linked to development, to cite a small sample of contemporary reflection whose theoretical and epistemological debates may be developed in the following issues. In addition to a marked interest in the development of theory, the journal was born out of an interest in offering a space for the publication of texts of a markedly ethnographic nature. Among its sections, the journal will offer a space for reviews of works of interest for the Anthropology of Food.

<p>噶瑪蘭族（kavalan）正名運動，是一連串學術現身、原民現身的復返（returns）協商。原居於蘭陽平原的噶瑪蘭族，因與鄰近族群土地爭奪，南遷花蓮新社、臺東長濱、樟原等地附屬於阿美族。1987年由花蓮新社噶瑪蘭人偕萬來尋找偕姓族親，同年臺灣省博物館舉辦的「豐濱之夜」，噶瑪蘭人將傳統、充滿禁忌的儀式音樂kisaiz改編成歌舞組曲，透由kisaiz樂舞成為身分溯源與族群正名印記。1991年至1996年間族群成立「噶瑪蘭族復名促進會」、「噶瑪蘭族旅北聯誼會」等，藉由文化建構爭取能見度。2002年12月25日由行政院院長游錫堃正式宣布，噶瑪蘭族成為臺灣原住民第十一族。原本屬於女性祭司mtiu身分過渡的kisaiz儀式於1956年前後中斷，僅留在kisaiz後舉辦規模較小、存於祭司之間的治病儀式paqrabi。在現代醫療進步與鮮少人擔任女祭司的情形下，kisaiz與paqrabi的治病功能喪失，轉換成向外界發聲的樂舞文本。噶瑪蘭族人擔憂執行樂舞時神靈真正被召喚，於是，劇場kisaiz樂舞文本更動喚神順序以及曲序，並添加男性成員。性別權力的介入改變了原有文本的秩序，曲序變更、性別合成、儀式空間、時序與禁忌等文化轉譯，促使符碼樂動（musicking）產生當代意義。國家正名認同之後的噶瑪蘭，國家力量介入樂舞文化，透由教材編寫與教學傳承，kisaiz正典化（canonization）成為當代展演情境下的新正統。在工商社會與經濟變遷的環境脈動下，原有的離散（dispora）噶瑪蘭族裔再次離散。2019年爆發Covid-19疫情，定居於桃園一帶的噶瑪蘭族裔於2022年8月的後疫情時期，由當地市政府原住民文化局，以噶瑪蘭治病儀式「Pakelabi除瘟祭」為題舉辦歲時祭儀，族人與居於桃園地區的撒奇萊雅族共同建構都市泛原住民族群認同。新編的kisaiz有聲錄音在節慶活動中成為鏈結原鄉與他鄉的中介載體，原本脈絡有別的kisaiz與paqrabi逐漸混淆，以他者指代；其次，2022年10月臺灣音樂館「世代之聲」系列「噶瑪蘭Kebalan重返榮耀之夜」，以舞台場域凝聚部落社群，不同世代、不同區域的噶瑪蘭族裔音聲於當代劇場的共時展演，黑盒子空間成為「閾限」場域（liminal space），接合（articulation）不同音樂文化地質的質層認知與記憶。本文以噶瑪蘭治病儀式的音樂本體與轉譯，論述國家機制、文本重組與後疫情節慶認同的意義流動。</p><p> </p><p>The Kavalan people’s name rectification has raised awareness, marking an important negotiation between academics and indigenous presence. Originally, the Kavalan people inhabited the Lanyang Plain. Due to competition for land with neighboring ethnic groups, they migrated south to areas such as Hualien Shinshe, Taitung Changbin, and Zhangyuan, where they became affiliated with the Amis people. In 1987, Jie Wan-Lai from Hualien went to search for their relatives. That same year, during the “Fengbin Night” event held by the Taiwan Provincial Museum, the Kavalan people transformed the traditional ritual music called kisaiz. They added dramatic elements to create a music-dance performance that represented their cultural identity and fostered ethnic recognition. Between 1991 and 1996, the community established the “Kavalan Name Restoration Promotion Association” and the “Kavalan Northern Friendship Association” to increase visibility by promoting their language, life skills, and cultural expressions through music and dance. On December 25, 2002, President You Xi-Kun of the Executive Yuan officially recognized the Kavalan as the eleventh indigenous ethnic group in Taiwan. Originally, kisaiz was a ritual performed by female priests (mtiu). However, after activities ceased in 1956, the Kavalan only remained the smaller healing ceremony called paqrabi conducted by priests. As time passed, external beliefs influenced these rituals, leading to a decline in the number of practitioners. Consequently, the traditional functions of kisaiz and paqrabi diminished, transforming them into expressions of the ethnic group’s identity for external audiences. The Kavalan was concerned that music and dance could summon the gods; thus, they changed the order of kisaiz and sequence of invoking deities. Including male members in the female kisaiz ceremony altered the original structure, intertwining cultural translation with changes in sequence, gender dynamics, ritual spaces, timing, taboos, and musical practices to create contemporary meanings. Following the state’s recognition of their name, the music and dance culture, influenced by governmental intervention, began to be documented and taught, gradually canonizing the new kisaiz. Amidst industrial, commercial, social, and economic changes, the previously cohesive Kavalan community found itself further fragmented. The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019 affected the Kavalan who settled in the Taoyuan area. In the post-epidemic period, the local municipal government’s Indigenous Culture Bureau held the “Pakelabi Plague Eradication Festival” in August 2022, which included Kavalan healing ceremonies. Joined by the Sakilayar people in Taoyuan, they aimed to build an urban pan-indigenous identity. The newly compiled audio recordings of kisaiz became a critical link between their homeland and the new places they inhabited during festivals. Over time, the kisaiz and paqrabi rituals, which originally had distinct contexts, began to merge. Additionally, in October 2022, the Taiwan Music Center launched the “Voices of Generations” series, featuring “Kavalan Kebalan Return to Ancestry and Glory.” This initiative aimed to unite tribal communities through performances in various venues, showcasing contemporary expressions of Kavalan voices across different generations. The black box performance space became a “liminal” area, facilitating reflections on memory and cultural understanding. This article explores the essence and translation of Kavalan healing ritual music while discussing how meaning flows through state mechanisms, textual reconfiguration, and post-epidemic cultural identity.</p><p> </p>

Based on a case study of the 1513 conversion of ritual space at the Shanxi Pingyang Yao Temple, this essay aims to explore the relationship between Daoist religion and officially-recognized temples during the Yuan Dynasty and especially the changing attitudes of scholar-officials towards Daoist religion during the Ming. The Shanxi Pingyang Yao Temple had been included in Registers of Sacrifice in earlier dynasties. In the beginning of the Yuan dynasty, a Daoist priest Jiang Shanxin, together with his disciples seized the opportunity of temple renovation to assume control of this important temple. Since the Zhengtong reign (1436-1449), local officials had renovated the temple several times while keeping the Daoist elements (Daoist priests/Daoist deities) intact. It was not until 1513 that Censor Zhou Lun took charge to re-arrange its ritual space and eliminated the Daoist elements. This essay argues that the local officials' changing attitudes towards Daoist elements at the Yao Temple in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries reflect that the appeal to reestablish the Neo-Confucian orthodoxy had been gaining force. This change of social thought paved the way for a series of ritual reforms triggered by the ”Great Ritual Controversy” during the Jiajing reign (1522-1566).

Dung has been a very important material in human history. To date, large portions of the world rural population continue using it as construction material, fuel, and fertilizer. A few ethnographic and archeological studies show that dung has also been used for ritual practices in domestic and sacred places. Nevertheless, finding unambiguous evidence of ceremonial use of dung in the archeological record is a major methodological challenge. In fact, the use of dung for domestic purposes such as flooring, plastering, and fueling may produce evidence similar to ritual practices. Correct contextualization of the evidence is thus paramount for the identification of the use of dung in ritual practice and resolve any equifinality derived from other activities. Ethnographic studies of domestic and ritual use of dung may provide the isolation of contextual and analytical parameters useful for the identification of ceremonial use of dung in antiquity. The aim of this paper is hence the geo-ethnoarchaeological characterization of the dung floor built according to the Tswana people tradition in the Moffat Mission Church in Kuruman, South Africa. Macroscopic and microscopic geo-archeological parameters such as erosion features, slope angle, microfabric organization, mineral and organic composition, and relative sorting and orientation of plant fragments are described. The significance of these parameters for the identification of archeological dung floors in domestic and sacred space is discussed. Particularly significant appears to be the particle size distribution and orientation of the dung fibers. In the Tswana floor, these fabric characteristics are very distinct when compared to the one described for livestock enclosure in other ethnographic and archeological contexts. Nevertheless, no clear-cut distinction between the use of dung in domestic and ritual spaces can be achieved solely through the compositional analysis. On the other hand, to be noted is the peculiar shallow-channeled topography of the church floor originated from foot traffic “channeled” along constrained pathways delineated by the immovable disposition of the church’s furniture and ceremonial routines. It thus appears that the possibility of mapping erosional patterns of archeological floors (in addition to their compositional analysis) may offer archeologists an extra tool to distinguish between (dung) floors of ceremonials contexts and of domestic environments.

<p><b>The religious experience of women in ancient Greece is a difficult reality to uncover. There is very little in the way of epigraphical and historiographical evidence that preserves the voice of women themselves and our evidence is heavily defined by the male authors of the time. This issue of inadequate evidence is further problematised when one is to consider the rare and extreme cases of violence performed by women within a ritual context. The traditional methodological approaches to these violent cases have often understood women via these ideologically androcentric accounts which tend to reduce the actions of women to aberrant and scandalously extreme outliers, unwelcome in their polis communities.</b></p> <p>This thesis aims to add to the existing corpus of methodological approaches by proposing a new lens for the interpretation of women’s violent ritual practices, one that attempts to re-legitimise the violent rituals of women as necessary components of their poleis and authentic aspects of women’s ritual reality. This lens understands that ritual violence might be best understood as a ‘rupture’ to the social fabric that encircles the institution of religious practice. Building on the valuable framework of the traditional ‘functionalist’ approach to women in religion, the theoretical schema proposed in this thesis synthesises two pre-existing methodologies. Barbara Goff’s lens of an ideological theory of agency proposed in her 2004 publication Citizen Bacchae, combined with Pierre Brulé’s ‘safety-valve theory’ of religion in his 2003 work Women of Ancient Greece, come together to accept that women could exercise agency within their ritual spaces in a way that served to reconcile their own subjugated position in society. When the agency exceeds the expectations of the androcratic polis (who administer the tangible aspects of ritual practice), however, the evidence of male unease directed toward these violent cases indicates that something more than simple female agential activity is taking place. Women’s violence in ritual, therefore, might be considered an agentially forced widening of the safety-valve boundaries, here defined as a ‘rupture’. By interpreting women’s ritual violence by way of a ‘rupture’ to the safety-valve, we stand to re-legitimise the rare and extraordinary violent rituals of women.</p>

This study argues that as far as Haitian immigrants in Miami are concerned, issues of identity and health are interconnected. This stems from a Haitian understanding that sees health as the totality of wellbeing—material and spiritual. These two concerns merged in the creation of Halouba Hounfo, a ritual space in Little Haiti, where Haitian immigrants meet to produce and perform identity through Vodou ritual practices and meet their health needs at the same time. Using ethnography, the study traces the origins of Halouba, identifies the actors involved in its creation and the ritual practices performed there. It also analyzes how the rituals facilitate the integration of the group and produce health for them at the same time. As Haitians migrate to America, Vodou is becoming more relevant in their lives, even for American born Haitians because of the pressing need to respond to questions of identity and health.