Religious Repertoire Research Articles

Learning and performing Sanskrit as a sacred language: Children’s religious repertoires and syncretic practice in London

Aim: We investigate how children in the Sri Lankan Tamil Hindu/Saiva faith community in London learn and use Sanskrit alongside Tamil and/or English and other multimodal and embodied resources to communicate with the Divine. Methodology: The data were collected as part of a 3-year multi-sited collaborative team ethnography documenting how migrant children become literate in faith settings. Data and analysis: The data consist of participant observations across religious education classes, the Temple, and the home, and interviews with the key participant child, Chantia, her brother and the Chief priest at the Temple. The analysis focuses on instances in the data where sacred language learning and performance are thematised. In addition, we analyse a digital video recording of Chantia’s daily morning prayers using transvisuals. Findings: Learning Sanskrit consists of integrating a limited set of Sanskrit religious texts and practices, such as key religious concepts, mantras, and poetic verses in children’s evolving religious repertoire and is embedded in children’s everyday religious socialisation across contexts. Chantia unites and syncretises a range of conventionalised semiotic resources, including religious texts in Sanskrit to communicate with the Divine and personalise her act of worship. Conclusions: Children’s religious repertoires are learned, deployed, adapted, and expanded differently depending on the affordances of the socio-cultural context. Chantia’s meaning-making process is much more complex than the rigid categorisation of the different modal resources she deploys, forming an integrated system of communication. Originality: Our conceptualisation of Sanskrit sacred language learning is anchored on a multilingual and multimodal perspective that does not privilege Sanskrit over other (sacred) languages nor linguistic over non-linguistic resources. Significance: Our paper extends current critique of logocentric perspectives in applied and sociolinguistics to the examination of religious repertoires that are often driven by a communication hierarchy positioning sacred languages at the top and other aspects of communication as secondary.

Animal Protection (husheng) and Ethical Eating Practices in Modern Chinese Buddhism

Abstract This article presents a historical and ethnographic examination of a range of practices connected with the teachings of non-violence and animal protection. I situate Buddhist-inspired vegetarianism in everyday practice rather than referring to clichéd ideas of “identity” and argue that practices connected with ethical eating and the “protection of sentient beings” are useful as a theoretical construct. Conceptualizing vegetarianism as practice can shed light on key aspects of the religious repertoire and the materialities of care that Buddhists can draw from as needed.

Public Religion and Gendered Attitudes

AbstractDo religious commitments hinder support for gender equality and contribute to the stalled gender revolution as a social problem? Answering this question requires specifying what kinds of religious commitments affect what specific gendered attitudes. Using a cultural approach to the study of religion, we distinguish personal religious commitments (piety and practice) from public religious commitments (preferences for religious order in social life). Using a large national survey, we demonstrate (1) that support for public religious authority has a stronger positive relationship with support for separate gender roles and ambivalent sexism than does personal piety; (2) that these relationships do not hold for gender identity salience; and (3) that support for separate gender roles mediates the relationship between support for public religious order and support for a gender-equitable policy: paid family leave. We argue that public religious commitments in the United States are semi-autonomous from personal religiosity, and we identify one specific public religious repertoire that provides support for a public order based on a binary and complementary understanding of gender.

The Ghost in the Machine: Brexit, Populism, and the Sacralisation of Politics

ABSTRACT The current global wave of populism has fuelled a surge in scholarly interest but the links between populism and religion remain under-researched and most studies have centred on cases where religion remains socially and politically influential. This paper contributes to developing studies in this area by analysing the use of religious tropes and themes in a comparatively non-religious context, examining the populist discourse that was constructed to promote Britain's withdrawal from the European Union (‘Brexit’). Drawing on neo-Durkheimian ideas about the endurance of the ‘sacred’ in social organisation, it identifies three core themes: (1) a framing of the EU as a ‘folk devil’ and an existential threat to the liberty and prosperity of the British nation, (2) a presentation of Brexit as a source of national rebirth and salvation, underpinned by an exceptionalist view of the British people who were said to possess a unique global destiny, and (3) a sacralisation of ‘the People’ into an homogenous mass whose Will was to be enacted at all costs in the aftermath of the referendum. The study shows how populists are able to draw on a religious repertoire to mobilise voters, even in contexts that are largely non-religious.

Tonality of Folk Funeral Chants in the Rzeszów Region

Folk religious chants have already been the object of scientific study for several decades. The matter of morphological features of the religious repertoire in the living tradition includes several basic factors, such as poetic text structure (versification, strophic structure), stylistic and formal properties, metre and rhythm, melodics, and tonal considerations (cf. B. Bartkowski, Niektóre ce-chy muzycznej metrorytmiki polskich pieśni religijnych żyjących w tradycji ustnej, “Summarium. Sprawozdania Towarzystwa Naukowego KUL” 1978, no. 3 (23), p. 250). The purpose of this article is to present and analyse the tonal phenomena occurring in folk religious chants performed throughout the funeral rite in the region of Rzeszów (Rzeszów region – a region in South-Eastern Poland inhabited by the ethnic groups of Lasowiacy and Rzeszowiacy, which covers the approxi-mate area of the current ten districts (Tarnobrzeg, Stalowa Wola, Nisko, Kolbuszowa, Leżajsk, Mielec, Ropczyce-Sędziszów, Rzeszów, Przeworsk, and Łańcut). -cf. Kolędowanie na Rzeszowszczyźnie, ed. K. Smyk, J. Dragan, Kolbuszowa – Kraków 2019, p. 8, and range maps, pp. 382–383), especially during the prayer for the deceased at home, the procession to the church, the procession to the cemetery, and the inhumation at the cemetery). The musical scales upon which the melodies of the individual chants are based have particular significance in terms of their musical shape. In fact, the tonality, which constitutes a note system, influences the interval structure, the relationships between individual notes, the melody and, indirectly, the regional conditions for the performance of the chants (cf. B. Bartkowski, Niektóre cechy…, p. 250). The material will be presented based on the scale range criterion while individual tonal phenomena will be presented using selected examples.

Sur-Sangam and Punjabi Zabur (Psalms 24:7–10): Messianic and Missiological Perspectives in the Indian Subcontinent

How does the local raga-based music setting of Psalm 24:7–10 become associated with Christian identity in an Islamic context? How does Psalm 24 strengthen the faith of the marginalized church and broaden messianic hope? In what ways does Psalm 24:7–10 equip local Christians for missional engagement? This paper focuses on the convergence of the local raga-based musical concept of sur-sangam and the revealed text of Punjabi Psalms/Zabur 24:7–10. It argues that while poetic translated text in Punjabi vernacular remains a vital component of theological pedagogy, local music expresses the emotional voice that (re)assures of the messianic hope and mandates missional engagement in Pakistan. Throughout the convergence, musical, messianic, and missional perspectives are transformed to a local phenomenon and its practice is perceived in a cross-cultural connection. Furthermore, examining the text and tune of Punjabi Zabur (Psalms) 24:7–10 in the Indo-Pak context may stretch the spectrum of religious repertoire in the contemporary intercultural world.

The Faith We Left Behind? The Order of Saint Charbel, Roman Catholic Traditionalism, and the Conservative Reaction to Vatican II in Australia

The Order of Saint Charbel, and its founding prophet William Kamm (b. 1950), also known as “The Little Pebble,” has been a marginal presence on the fringes of the Roman Catholic Church in Australia since the 1980s. While a series of bishops from the Diocese of Wollongong (and other dioceses) have issued official statements taking issue with the beliefs and practices of the group and publicly distancing the group from normative Catholicism, little systematic analysis of its beliefs has been undertaken which situate these within a wider historical Roman Catholic context. This article offers a preliminary analysis of some key themes occurring in the “private revelations” which form a key aspect of the Order of Saint Charbel’s religious repertoire and their relationship with the broader theological positions of Catholic traditionalists. This article suggests that the Order of Saint Charbel, while sharing some concerns with traditionalist and other groups across the spectrum of conservative reactions to Vatican II, is best classified as a “devotionally traditionalist” lay movement exhibiting a kind of popular theology that can only be properly understood when viewed against the wider backdrop of traditional vernacular Catholic devotional practices, many of which have either declined or become marginalized since Vatican II.

Spiritual Song in Ukrainian Folklore Milieu

The paper outlines the original phenomenon of a spiritual song in the Ukrainian oral tradition, determines characteristic features of these texts and their functions. Besides, the author focuses on some special research issues concerning the folklore religious repertoire, first of all, the specificity of the relationship between spiritual and secular epic songs.
 The spiritual song in the Ukrainian oral tradition is a large group of poetical and musical works, united primarily by the religious Christian themes and endowed with the ability to acquire special spiritual meaning in the life of a believer, exercise an important function of satisfying his/her spiritual religious needs. Another defining feature of these songs is a lack of clear attachment to a certain rite, time, occasion. An episodic attachment of individual texts to the rite only reveals their multifunctionality, since, as a rule, the same work may be used in various rituals, appear in the repertoire of professional singers, and perform some other functions simultaneously. Essential for the differentiation of the spiritual song phenomenon in the folklore milieu is the fact of distinguishing this group of works and perceiving it as integrity by the bearers of tradition themselves until now. They use special folk concepts for its designation (‘God’s songs’, ‘psalms’). At the same time, this large stratum of folk repertoire is divided into two sub-groups, namely folklorized songs of book origin and those of folk origin. Thus, the phenomenon of a spiritual song in the Ukrainian oral tradition is characterized by a rich variety of texts in terms of character, time of emergence, nature, form, style, and genre features.
 The practice of perception, recording, and comprehension of spiritual songs has developed certain concepts and approaches. The present paper offers an attempt to systematize the previous experience and distinguish the problems that were raised in the works by various researchers and remained topical, often lacking a proper resolution. Attention to the system of the research approaches gives a guideline to the author and forms a sense of the continuing tradition.

Making Congregational Music Local, edited by Monique M. Ingalls, Muriel Swijghuisen Reigersberg, and Zoe C. Sherinian

By providing a comparison of congregational music-making in Christian communities worldwide, editors Monique M. Ingalls, Muriel Swijghuisen Reigersberg, and Zoe C. Sherinian offer a compelling account of music production through the interplay among structure, agency, change, and continuity. The book is a part of Routledge’s Congregational Music Series and offers snapshots of the vibrant process of making Christian congregational music local. As a more accurate description of the complex processes of making music, the authors opt for the term “localization” rather than the more common and contested terms “indigenization” or “inculturation.” As such, they argue that “localization” captures the processes by which Christian communities adapt, adopt, create, perform, and share congregational music.The volume’s twelve ethnographic case studies on six continents integrate disciplinary insights of ethnomusicology, anthropology, cultural geography, mission studies, and practical theology. They define congregational music-making broadly: “Congregational music-making is a multidimensional social activity encompassing a wide range of materials to interpret, including creative practices, social processes, institutional dynamics, beliefs, and values, and elements of material culture” (15). This definition might be too broad for some. But it does give the authors ample room to explore the multidimensional aspects of the processes of the localization of congregational music. Throughout the volume, significant attention is directed to how Christian assemblies use musical practices to position themselves relative to other groups, Christian and otherwise, with some authors relying on the insights from the architects of world Christianity: Andrew Walls, Lamin Sanneh, and Kwame Bediako.Part 1, “Engaging Musical Pasts: Continuity and Change in Congregational Song Practices,” focuses on how Christian communities employ past musical materials to create a distinct sense of the local. Here we learn about the role of subjunctive visions with vernacular Catholic practice (Brazil), the ways in which song leaders have transformed older hymns to become mechanisms of the supernatural (Navajo, USA), and the mainline Protestant adoption of evangelical hymns in a retro turn that creates a usable past in order to reposition themselves in response to their declining numbers (USA).Part 2, “Congregational Music and the Politics of Indigeneity,” highlights what are oftentimes competing powers of different sorts. This section looks at the creation of new forms of creativity and productivity that bridge the indigenous and cosmopolitan (Northern Territory of Australia), the challenge of utilizing hybrid musical forms to engage top-down inculturation (East Africa), and attempts at constructing religious repertoire that elevates local cultures with an aim of creating overarching unity for all Catholics (Indonesia).Part 3, “Rifts, Reconciliation, and Coexistence: Congregational Music-making in the Diverse Locale,” conveys how social interactions impact the localization of congregational music. This section explores different kinds of sustained localization, even in the face of the domination of English and Western hymnody in Anglican church music (South Africa), a government’s involvement to translate the Christian songs of an ethnic minority farmer’s chorus into usable, nationalistic songs to meet the government’s political demands (China), and the shifting performative relationships between Christian and Hindu music to create emergent religious pluralism (Indonesia).Part 4, “Christian Musical Cosmopolitanisms: Producing the Local Across Racial and National Lines,” underscores the positioning of local congregational music-making vis-à-vis other communities. This set of case studies presents a snapshot of longer processes of the integration of diverse racial groups and the emerging common ground centered on musical and linguistic accommodation (South Africa), and, among other interesting topics, the role that baptism plays in the experience of religious belonging, with singing as the primary conduit of the ritual (Ireland).While the case studies are regional in scope, some reflection on the near unidirectionality of global flows of congregational music from Global North to Global South, and urban to rural, would have been welcomed. While the volume focused on congregations, it would seem important to investigate the phenomenological site of transformations of the individual, thus to feature the experiences of ontological change that might suggest more is happening than just enhancing the experience of community. Rupture and discontinuity may well result in ontological change. An inclusion of not only the social and cultural dimension but also the spiritual and ontological might have unearthed more of what is unique about Christian congregational music in relationship to other forms of music.The volume is to be commended for filling a lacuna left by studies that overlook the contextual nature of congregational music making. This highly attractive collection makes a significant contribution to the study of congregational music.

Socialización española de la monarquía saboyana: la visita a Galicia de Amadeo I

En la difusión de la identidad española durante la segunda mitad del siglo XIX las visitas reales fueron ejemplos de ceremonias civiles —acompañadas del repertorio religioso y castrense de la época— explotadas a modo de políticas públicas para la difusión de la nation-building, participando así en la conformación de las identidades políticas y culturales. Este artículo propone incorporar el estudio de la monarquía saboyana desde la combinación del poder político y simbólico a partir de un episodio concreto: la visita a Galicia de Amadeo I en agosto de 1872. A través del ceremonial monárquico desplegado de cara a la legitimidad de la nueva dinastía, pretendemos analizar el verdadero alcance de la nueva Corona en la socialización y nacionalización de la misma cuando, en principio, los actores sociales que la sustentaban no se reconocían ni en la forma ni en la persona que la representaba. Indagaremos en dos aspectos fundamentales: la proyección política de la visita y la percepción social de la misma. Nuestras fuentes serán las crónicas y reportajes hemerográficos, tanto la prensa provincial y regional como la de edición central, junto con documentación del Archivo General de Palacio (Madrid), del Ministero degli Affari Esteri (Roma), del Arquivo Histórico Municipal (A Coruña), de la Biblioteca Municipal de Estudos Locais (A Coruña) y del Arquivo Municipal (Ferrol-A Coruña).

The Sound of the Unsayable: Jewish Secular Culture in Arnold Schönberg and Aharon Appelfeld

This article examines the use of central elements of the Jewish religious repertoire and transcendental realm, such as prophecy or revelation, within the aesthetic secular realm of musical avant-garde and modern Hebrew literature. By focusing on two case studies, I attempt to shed new light on the question of Jewish secular culture. Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951), an Austrian Jewish composer, was born into an assimilated Viennese family and converted to Protestantism before returning to Judaism in the 1930s while escaping to the United States. Aharon Appelfeld (1932–2018), an Israeli Jewish writer, was born in Czernowitz to assimilated German-speaking parents, survived the Holocaust and emigrated to Israel in 1946. My claim is that in their works both composer and author testify to traumatic experiences that avoid verbal representation by: (1) subverting and transgressing conventional aesthetic means and (2) alluding to sacred tropes and theological concepts. In exploring Schoenberg’s opera Moses und Aron and Appelfeld’s Journey into Winter among others, this article shows how the transcendent sphere returns within the musical and poetic avant-garde (musical prose, 12-tone composition, prose poem, non-semantic or semiotic fiction) as a “sound” of old traditions that can only be heard through the voices of a new Jewish culture.

The Cultural Roots of Contemporary Islamic Terrorism and Ways of Confronting It

This study aims at analysis and explanation of the phenomenon of the Islamic terrorism from a cultural perspective; i.e. a cultural reading of the religious violence phenomenon, and how the cultural systems would view the religion-induced use of violence at various levels. Generally, the unique nature of a culture sustains as well as revitalizes certain variants of extremism and terrorism.In the present study, the hypothesis was that the prevalent sociopolitical culture dominating the thinking of the majority of Arab Muslims, which is originally inspired by the religious and historical repertoire, was one of the most effective mechanisms producing extremisms and terrorism. Hence, to stand up to terrorism most effectively, the overall thinking shall be revolutionized towards a civic culture drawing on which to establish the critical mindset based upon novel social values that are capable to interaction with the most recent breakthroughs of the contemporary civilization of the globe.The researcher, as a consequence, recommends reproduction of the current Muslims' culture by employing the educational and media institutions to disseminate an open-minded civic culture that tolerates with others, and accepts multiculturalism and diversity. To that end, the researcher adopted the Content Analysis approach to analyze the content of the dominating culture and its relation to the production of terrorism and ways of confrontation.

From Salvation to Damnation: Popular Religion in Early America

From Salvation to Damnation:Popular Religion in Early America Janet Moore Lindman (bio) Paul B. Moyer. The Public Universal Friend: Jemima Wilkinson and Religious Enthusiasm of Revolutionary America. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015. xi + 264 pp. Note on sources, figures, maps, notes, bibliography and index. $27.95. Kathryn Gin Lum. Damned Nation: Hell in America from the Revolution to Reconstruction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. ix + 310 pp. Illustrations, notes, and index. $29.95. In the introduction to his book, Awash in a Sea of Faith, Jon Butler contends that a plethora of religious choices turned antebellum America into "a unique spiritual hothouse," which was so "complex and heterogeneous" that it "baffle[d] observers and adherents alike."1 In divergent ways, both the books under review here capture the diversity and discordance of popular religion in early American history. The authors present compelling evidence in cogently argued narratives that address the advent of the new nation and its relationship to the emergence, on one hand, of a new religious group (Moyer) and the persistence of a standard component of Christian doctrine (Lum) on the other. Building on previous scholarship that has documented the varied religious repertoire of early Americans (by Catherine Brekus, Jon Butler, David D. Hall, Nathan Hatch, Christine Heyrman, Colleen McCannell, Erik Seeman and a host of others), Moyer and Lum attend to their respective subjects with meticulous and perceptive examinations that will be widely read, debated and cited by future researchers. Both authors are to be commended for extending scholarly knowledge of early American religious history through forceful and substantive arguments. Moyer for his contribution to the history of gender by bringing attention to a well known but often overlooked religious figure and sectarian group, and Lum for her incisive commentary on a prevalent, contested, and meaningful religious concept in early American society. Paul Moyer's book, The Public Universal Friend, explores the life and ministry of Jemima Wilkinson, a young woman from Newport who, after a serious illness in the fall of 1776, awoke to claim that her former self had died, that [End Page 570] she was neither male nor female, and that she had been resurrected as the "Public Universal Friend." Refusing to answer to her birth name, the Friend announced her intention to embark on preaching tours throughout New England to spread her version of the Protestant religion. These trips gathered several converts, who formed a new sect that became known as the Society of Universal Friends. Devised as a microhistory, Moyer's book covers Jemima Wilkinson from her Quaker background and early life in Rhode Island to the onset and expansion of her ministry to her final demise in New York in 1819. Along the way, we learn of the Friend's early ministry and itinerant travels, her growing notoriety and religious leadership, as well as the group's spiritual dynamics, internal conflicts, western migration, and land disputes. But this book is as much about the Friend's followers as its leader. Its chronological focus tracks the group's development and evolution over time from the early days of new converts to the last remnant of the Friend's followers in the 1840s. Each chapter title, taken from the Old Testament, correlates to its topic, e.g., chapter two, on the sect's beginnings and the group's early converts, is called "Numbers." "Exodus," chapter five, discusses the migration of the Universal Friends to central New York, while "Judges," the seventh and final chapter, examines the sect's factionalism, which led to a series of legal battles during the last two decades of Wilkinson's life. Moyer both adds to and expands upon previous scholarship on Jemima Wilkinson by Susan Juster, Catherine Brekus, and Herbert Wiseby. Most notably, Moyer solves the thorny issue of how to refer to Wilkinson the sectarian leader. The author utilizes female pronouns when discussing the Friend's life before her ministry and when providing outsiders' views of Wilkinson; he uses male pronouns to refer to the Public Universal Friend because that was what his followers did and that was how the Friend conceived of his ministerial leadership (I will adopt the same strategy in this essay...

Mixing Musics: Turkish Jewry and the Urban Landscape of a Sacred Song

Mixing Musics: Turkish Jewry and the Urban Landscape of a Sacred Song

<em>Las Tonadas Trinitarias</em>: History of an Afro-Cuban Musical Tradition from Trinidad de Cuba

The tonadas trinitarias are an Afro-Cuban musical manifestation native to Trinidad de Cuba, a town on Cuba's south-central coast. They represent a transcultural product of guajiro (1) and Bantu-derived musical practices, originating among members of Trinidad's Cabildo de San Antonio de Congos Reales in late nineteenth century. Now confined to local folkloric stage as tourist entertainment, in their original form they were performed by neighborhood groups of singers and drummers during nocturnal transits through town's streets. In this article, I hope to accomplish three things. The first is to draw attention to and contribute to gap in research on music of Cuba's provincial areas (commonly referred to as las provincias)--particularly central provinces--which are often sidelined in favor of research focusing on cities of Havana, Matanzas, and Santiago. The second is to provide a comprehensive history of origins and evolution of a local, small-scale creole (2) genre in Cuba, drawing on literary sources and oral histories of elder musicians in Trinidad. Finally, I will assess both positive and negative effects of state support of tonadas trinitarias and accompanying process of folkloricization. My conclusions are drawn primarily from fieldwork I conducted in Trinidad in 2009 for my master's thesis, during which I interviewed various local musicians involved with tonadas trinitarias and took percussion lessons in order to learn parts. I also attended daily performances of Conjunto Folklorico de Trinidad, which are put on for tourists at El Palenque bar and restaurant. I met my informants through Cuban musicologist Enrique Zayas Bringas, a native of Trinidad, who encouraged me to document tradition. Many of musicians were longtime friends of Zayas Bringas, including members of Conjunto Folklorico de Trinidad as well as elder musicians who were no longer active participants. These elder musicians proved to be my most interesting informants, and their accounts are included here. Since tonadas trinitarias are currently only performed in staged tourist performances and primarily by younger musicians, elders' recollections served to paint a portrait of tradition in its original community-oriented context. Nonetheless, input provided by my younger informants in Conjunto Folklorico de Trinidad allowed me to contrast their experiences with those of elder performers and assess recent changes, such as effects of folkloricization. The tonadas trinitarias (also referred to as simply tonadas (3)) underwent a process of folkloricization under Cuba's Revolutionary government. Hagedorn defines folkloricization as the process of making a folk tradition folkloric, and uses performance of Afro-Cuban religious repertoire by state-sponsored Conjunto Folklorico Nacional in Havana as an example (2001, 12). She explains how creation of state-sponsored folkloric troupes by Revolutionary government in 1960s was meant to preserve and elevate folk traditions by turning them into staged, choreographed representations. Afro-Cuban folklore was heavily impacted by this, as it was a primary source of material for state's folkloric troupes. Afro-Cuban music and dance had long been looked down upon as vulgar by economically and politically dominant white population, and yet they were also promoted as a unique element of national identity since 1930s (Moore 1997). The creation of state folkloric troupes for Afro-Cuban music following 1959 Revolution was a way for state to promote traditions in a controlled setting (the public stage) in a way that was both educational and more acceptable to dominant (white) sectors of society. Notwithstanding undertones of racism and state control, state's creation of folkloric troupes had positive effects as well, particularly in case of Trinidad's folkloric troupe, created in early 1960s. …

On the Politics of Sainthood: Resistance and Mimicry in Postcolonial Morocco

In 1974 Sheikh Abdessalam Yassine wrote, surreptitiously disseminated, and sent an admonition to the king of Morocco entitled Al-Islām aw al tūfān (Islam or the Deluge). Since the mid-1960s King Hassan II, constitutionally defined as “commander of the faithful,” had retained total control over Moroccan politics, silencing the opposition and repressing dissidence from the Left and from the military. The Moroccan Left, at that time, articulated a powerful discourse of opposition but was harshly repressed by the regime. The religious and messianic repertoire of Yassine’s admonition signaled the rise of Islamist political rhetoric on the still-

Terror, corpse symbolism, and taboo violation: the ‘Haredi Disaster Victim Identification Team in Israel’ (Zaka)

Anthropologists dealing with death have pointed to a process of privatization, bureaucratization, and secularization of death in the age of ‘high modernity’. In this article I argue that the exploration of death within the framework of modern terrorism, a form of death that is becoming increasingly common, reveals new expressions and interpretations of death that are public and are represented by a complex religious repertoire of images and practices. Based on a field study that combines in‐depth interviews, observations, films, and textual analyses, this article examines how volunteers from the ‘Zaka’ organization (the Jewish ultra‐Orthodox team for identification of victims of disaster in Israel) explain their deathwork during terror attacks. Generally we would expect that this community's religious norms, which prevent them from involvement with the larger society, would also prevent members from participation in cases of death in the public sphere. Nevertheless,Zaka's tasks involve collecting, matching, and recomposing pieces of human flesh and blood in the public arena. Through these new practices,Zakavolunteers shape new narratives of public death, which are based on two central premises: a discourse of ‘corpse symbolism’ and a narrative of taboo desecration. This language reinforces and revives Haredis' own religious expressions during terror, allowing them to monopolize the death experience and the handling of dead bodies, introduce sacred meanings of corpses and death into the public sphere, and create their new position as specialists and deathworkers.

Religious music traditions of the jewish-babylonian diaspora in bombay

This article considers the religious music repertoire (liturgical and paraliturgical) of the Babylonian Jews in the port city of Bombay (now Mumbai) in western India, drawing primarily on material recorded from informants in the mid-1980s, both in Bombay and in the UK.1 The primary focus is six items from the repertoire for religio-social occasions in the annual and life cycles – prayer chants for the Holy Days, songs for Sabbaths and festivals and a song for the birth of a male child – performed by recognized experts within the community. Aspects of continuity and change emerge in the tradition as it travelled from its centre in Baghdad, established itself in Bombay and subsequently journeyed to further locales, where it continues to flourish. An account of the historical and social background and a consideration of the surrounding soundscape during the twentieth century precede the discussion of religious musical traditions and repertoire.

Oríkì, women and the proliferation and merging ofòrìṣà

1. Two Faces of Yoruba ReligionThe proliferation and overlapping of spiritual beings is a feature of many religions. Saints in popular Catholicism and Vishnu'savatārasin Hinduism represent, in different ways, the possibility of spiritual beings that are simultaneously one and many, clusters or series of manifestations whose inner relationships are often not fully explained. Yorubaòrìṣàare in good company. However, the way in which multiple aspects of gods are made and maintained clearly varies from one religious repertoire to another. I suggest that it is important to look at the means or medium by which fractions of gods are established, in order to understand how the relationships between them are conceived. Yorubaòrìṣàcan scarcely be apprehended without taking into account the specific textuality of the oral genres through which they are created, maintained and communicated with.

Diversity and elite religiosity in modern China

This article looks at religious diversity among late imperial and modern Chinese elites; by contrast with most of the existing literature, which looks at correlations between social class and religiosity, this article adds the dimension of the exercise of personal choice and agency in the context of a vast and variegated religious repertoire. After reviewing existing theoretical models, it argues for the importance of two factors: a level of commitment to religious practices, in both the public and private realms, and knowledge (about the religion of others, whether one engages in such religion or not). It then charts these two factors on a graph onto which individuals can be placed, and thus grouped into types. These types represent a new and fruitful way of thinking about religious diversity.