Ritual Manifestations Research Articles

Ceremonial preoccupations in the performances of the Iraqi playwright

The research deals with (the ceremonial preoccupations in the performances of the Iraqi playwright) the Iraqi ceremonial theater with a specificity that emerges as an Arab theatrical style that relied on reviving the legacies and popular folklore drawn from mythology and tales, as what was called quasi-dramatic phenomena as the foundations of an authentic Arab theatrical style employed in harmony with dung overlap with the ritual manifestations of The ceremonial dimensions are seen as one of the most important formative elements of the Arab ceremonial theater and one of the foundations of rooting. Those appearances, which came as constructive foundations, produced an idea that was reflected in the theatrical show with its festive style with an Arab identity, and that this reflection was represented in the operational structures of the theatrical show according to the Arab theoretical vision, and the research had focused on the representations of the festive appearances.
 The methodological framework came to review the research problem, the need for it and its importance in addition to defining and defining the terms. As for the second chapter, it came on two sections. Under the title (Celebratory Visions in Arab Theater Performances), the researcher went to create an approach between celebration and celebration in its philosophical dimension and the theatrical artistic work in Arab theater performances.
 The researcher adopted the descriptive, analytical and intentional approach in selecting and processing the sample in the third chapter of the research, and adopted the indicators that resulted from the theoretical framework as a tool for measurement.

Features of sheep breeding development in the Transnistrian territories of East Podillya at the end of the XIX – the first half of the XX century

Based on the interpretation of archival sources and field data, the article analyzes the specifics of sheep breeding in the ethno-contact zone of the Ukrainian‑Moldovan borderlands and traces the basic displays of ethnocultural interactions in it. It was found that because of long-term interethnic contacts in the Transnistrian territories of Eastern Podillya, ethnocultural complexes with a symbiosis of economic experiences have been formed, which is also typical for sheep breeding. Methods of historical comparisons, interviewing respondents, and partially – the principles of ethnographic mapping were used in the research. The materials of the Ukrainian archives in Kyiv, Odessa, Vinnitsa, as well as the National Archives of the Republic of Moldova in Chisinau, were examined. The main aspects of the topic were revealed with the help of the author’s expedition materials, recorded in 2013–2016 in the border villages of Vinnitsa and Odessa regions of Ukraine. The number of sheep, the characteristics of their keeping, forms of grazing and some ritual manifestations of sheep breeding were considered. In the conclusion, the facts were summarized and the directions for further research were indicated.

Symbolic Communication and the Notion of “Pachamama” in the “Quechua” and “Aimara” Cultures

The objective of this research is to interpret and understand the symbolic communication and the ritual manifestations of the earthly and aquatic incidence of the descendants of the Inca Empire. The research approach is qualitative, and the method is observation and in-depth interview, to analyze the underlying meanings and patterns of social relationships from the data obtained in field observation and the selection of key informants. The results of the communication and culture are manifested in the ceremony of the offering to the “Pachamama” Mother Earth in the main festivals of the agricultural calendar. As for the aquatic motivation, the water cult ceremony is associated with the symbolic figure of the aquatic beings, such as: the observation of the behavior of the toads, the fish and the birds, in the different months of the year.

Música, género e identidad: fandangos y coplas del Romero

Este artículo explora la relación de la música y el género en el contexto de una manifestación ritual festiva en Almonaster la Real, localidad de la provincia de Huelva. Durante la celebración de la Cruz de Mayo y en los actos preliminares a la fiesta, las mujeres cruceras protagonizan el ritual e interpretan las coplas del Romero y varios estilos de fandangos de la Cruz. Analizamos las implicaciones del género en esta actividad musical, en las tradiciones interpretativas, repertorio, formas expresivas y sus significados para las mujeres de las dos cruces o hermandades de Almonaster. Examinamos cómo esta práctica musical contribuye a afirmar y articular ideas, modelos y roles específicos relacionados con el género, que expresan y configuran la identidad de grupo e identidad personal de las mujeres en este contexto.

The Magic Beyond Ritual”- Exploring Raaba Ritual and Ritualization Among Arsi Oromos of Ethiopia

The purpose of this (mega) research project is to investigate the Raabaa Ritual and ritualization, one of the indigenous beliefs and Gada system practices in Oromo culture, among the Arsi Oromo. The Raabaa ritual is indigenous ritual practices which exercised by Arsi Oromo according to their Baalli. To this end, the researchers observed the ritual sites where the Raabaa ritual takes place. Besides, an interview with 13 key informants and 5 FGDs were conducted to collect wider data on the subject matter. Methodological the researchers’ were employee qualitative approach. The study found out that the Raabaa is being popular in the study area due to various reasons like: firstly, the practicing and living under the shade of Gadaa and belief in the ritual manifestation. The Arsi Oromo are believed to have possessed supernatural powers of empowering and performing various ritual rites to full fill necessary criteria’s while passing in the Gadaa system. Secondly, the belief that taking part in ritual ceremonies at all ritual sites of Raabaa is one method of getting relief from these worldly problems such as physical and psychological disordered and to have blessing life. The practices at the Raabaa ritual site also prove the tolerance that exists among some adherents of different religious, Baallis, hookaa and political backgrounds in the study area. According to our finding Raabaa ritual is used to increase awareness of the values of tolerance and understanding. The involvement of the local people, awareness levitation through community serves or education on ritual and ritualization of Raabaa, the practice of ritual and its sites protected areas should be encouraged to sustain and keep the practice.

Zooarchaeological Evidence for Domestic Rituals in the Iron Age Communities of North‐Eastern Iberia (Present‐Day Catalonia) (Sixth–Second Century BC)

SummaryMany socio‐economic changes occurred in southern Europe during the first millennium BC. In north‐eastern Iberia societies evolved from the small‐scale local groups of the Late Bronze Age to the more complex societies of the Iron Age. Together with a diversity of material changes (detected in pottery, agricultural techniques, architecture, etc.), a new ritual manifestation is attested in the Ancient Iberian Period (about 550 BC), lasting until some time after the Roman conquest. This consisted of sheep and goats (among other species) being carefully deposited below the floors of some domestic buildings. In this article the characteristics of these associated bone groups are described and their significance is discussed.

Between Rituals and Riots: The Dynamics of Street Demonstrations

In fall 2009, an interdisciplinary team of roughly twenty scholars from six different countries set out to collect data on street demonstrations. At the time of this writing, almost 70 demonstrations are covered and nearly 15,000 demonstrators surveyed, and we expect to cover an additional ten demonstrations in the future. Since 2009 the team has grown. The project now has more than thirty participants from nine different countries. Involvement has grown from a focus on the six original countries (Belgium, the Netherlands, the UK, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland) to now include scholarship on Italy, Mexico, and the Czech Republic. This special issue is a first report on the findings generated by what we believe is the largest comparative study ever of participants in collective action. Street demonstrations have become more and more common throughout the world. Almost daily, newspapers report on street demonstrations taking place in some city, somewhere. The research project, entitled Caught in the Act of Protest: Contextualizing Contestation (CCC), aims to increase our understanding of the dynamics of street demonstrations. Politics and societies have changed substantially during the last few decades (van Stekelenburg, Roggeband, and Klandermans forthcoming 2013). Increasingly, supranational political institutions have gained prominence and their impact on people’s daily lives has grown. At the same time, in many societies a new social fabric seems to be evolving. Loosely coupled networks have become a prime mode of structuring society, accelerated by the Internet, social media, and cell phones. In this new political and societal context, it remains poorly understood how people mobilize for change, who takes to the streets, and why. Studies of protest behavior tend to focus on single protest events or alternatively to employ general population surveys. Either type of study inevitably strips the data of contextual variation. Consequently, fundamental questions about how context influences contestation remain unanswered. Questions such as who participates in protests, why they participate, and how they are mobilized all lack, to date, comparative, evidence-based answers. The composition of the demonstrating crowd, the motivation of the participants, and the mobilization techniques that brought them to the streets are contingent on contextual variation, but, void of systematic comparison, we can only guess what the influence of the context may be. Tilly (2008) has argued that, like most contentious performances, street demonstrations obey the rules of strong repertoires. That is to say, participants in street demonstrations enact available scripts within which they innovate, but mostly in small ways. As a consequence, street demonstrations are the same and different every time they occur. Street demonstrations vary on a continuum from ritual parades to violent protest events. In this issue we will compare May Day parades and climate change demonstrations. Although May Day parades have a highly ritualistic character, they do vary in the political undertone they convey. climate change demonstrations, on the other hand, oscillate between ritual manifestations and more contentious events.

Healing with Certain Conditions

This article examines a specific component of medieval healing miracle accounts: the conditions set by the saint for helping those who require his/her mediation, focusing on two selections, an early medieval group and a thirteenth-century group. The former is represented by the miracles of Sts. Cosmas and Damian, St. Martin of Tours, St. Foy, and St. Benedict, the latter by the miracles of St. Elizabeth of Hungary (Thuringia), St. Stanislaus of Cracow and St. Margaret of Hungary. I analyze these miracles in the context of a broader set of do ut des type exchange transactions related to the supplication, the vow, and the ritual manifestations accompanying the experience of the healing and its public announcement. I also consider another miracle genre, the miracle of vengeance or miracle of punishment, which frequently sanctions the negligence of not fulfilling the supplicant’s original promise. I also ask whether there is a differentiation according to social status in this religious phenomenon, whether the “coercion of saints” has a distinctly lower class, “popular” variant. Surprisingly, the later dossiers, based on the massive miracle testimonies of the canonization processes present fewer examples for what I call hagiographic “pedagogy”. The more elaborate moral discourse of late medieval Christianity obviously used other constraining devices and miracles were no longer necessary for that purpose.

From Ojibwa to Dakota: Toward a Typology of Semantic Transformations in American Indian Languages

In this article we propose a radical new typological approach to the diversity of North American languages that is directly inspired by Claude Lévi-Strauss’s Mythologiques and his concept of transformation. As with mythology, the semantic dimension of phenomena is crucial. A comparison between the grammars of an Algonquian and a Siouan language will serve as a first illustration of the logical transformations linking two language families that previously have been considered to be fundamentally distinct. A parallel appears between the results obtained and those stemming from a comparison between the principal ritual manifestations of Sioux culture and Subarctic Algonquian culture.

Cultura festiva. Lo imaginario disloca lo cotidiano

This article approaches, from an anthropologicalsociological perspective, the understanding of the deep logic that presides over certain ritual manifestations of the contemporary culture in which a festive spirit expresses itself. First, it analyzes how in the West the implantation of an excluding and totalitarian model of rationality takes place that prohibits the order of the imaginary thing. Later, it examines the holiday as the privileged space where this rationality is broken and goes out to re-illuminate the imaginary one blocked socially. Finally, he proves to be a fundamental existing overlap between the spirit of the holiday and the capacity of the imaginary thing to go beyond the instituted reality.

New Year celebrations in central China in late imperial times

This study, which has been conducted in the spirit of a symbologically inclined anthropology, explores one of the major manifestations of Chinese popular tradition - the celebration of the New Year in a lunar calendar of very ancient origins. Focus here is on the various New Year customs of central China, the area of the extended lake-land in the mid Yangzi valley. The time is that of the late empire. A multitude of folk practices are analyzed within a holistic perspective on Chinese traditional society and the yield is a new picture of a world of the past in which the social rhetorics of gender, lineage continuity and ancestry are challenged by ritual manifestations of iconic symbolism. These symbolic constructs provide contrastive structural alternatives and a counterpoint to accepted social discourse. Through this study of Chinese imagery, the traditional calendar reveals new stories about the social organization of time as an expression of existential concerns in Chinese social life of the past.

A Courtier or a Prince: Shakespeare's Richard II as a Dramatization of Conflicting Paradigms of Political Craftsmanship

This essay explores Shakespeare's Richard II as a dramatic case study for the political methodologies of Machiavelli and Castiglione, as well as Pico della Mirandola's Oration on the Dignity of Man, which are examined as intersecting paradigms for self-fashioning and political dominance. Shakespeare's Richard is presented as a prince who, in addition to making serious strategic mistakes, fails to project a virtù sufficient to overcome the devastating peripheral conditions of his reign. Though the usurper of the throne, Richard's cousin Harry Bolingbroke, emerges as a consummate Machiavellian prince, his position is troubled by his inability to entirely disregard the spiritual nature of power which he has rejected with his bid for the crown. The public display of power necessitates ritual manifestation, which is utterly at odds with a utilitarian characterization of power, but quite consistent with a numinous or spiritually endowed basis for kingship. Bolingbroke, however, skillfully glosses his utilitarian approach with traditionally popular elements – bis “common touch” combined with his understanding of civic ritual, and authorized by humanist ideals of man as a self-realizing creature he ultimately prevails as a ruler.

Here's Where We Get Canadian: English-Canadian Nationalism and Popular Culture

don't wrote Robertson Davies. You are part of Canada, and that's that. (1) These words carry the weight of received wisdom. are habitually portrayed as diffident about their country and unassertive in their nationalism. Insofar as do love runs the conventional thinking, they tend not to show it. Few deny that Canadian nationalism has existed in a variety of forms. (2) But observers are prone to contrast Canadian patriotism with other, more vociferous varieties--particularly the brand. We are thus left with the image of the fiercely patriotic blinding the world with fireworks, while the timorous Canadian hides whatever light she has under a bushel. On occasion, the comparative perspective is abandoned, replaced by some more absolute statement about Canadian modesty. The result is the same: an image of as retiring, unassertive, and diffident. We want to offer an impressionistic challenge to this of diffidence. (3) are in the throes, not simply of a change in the nature of their nationalism (for there have been many of those), but a shift in its style of expression. (4) It is now better understood as noisy and assertive, even bellicose, and surprisingly analogous to the manner of patriotic expression with which it is traditionally contrasted. This paper inserts into an academic milieu an observation that has begun to surface in popular contexts. For instance, Will Ferguson's amusing Why I Hate complains that Canadians are the second-loudest people on earth, (5) while the newly assertive nationalism was recently discussed in Marketing Magazine as well as in articles in the Globe and Mail and Maclean's. (6) Demonstrating the predominance of loud nationalism in Canada is our central goal, but we also want to work towards a substantive analysis of that nationalism. The of diffidence, we argue, remains intrinsic to many manifestations of loud nationalism. It works as a justificatory device allowing to differentiate themselves from nationalists, even as they deploy a suspiciously American style of patriotism. So the myth remains present even as it is subverted. Most of the paper is concerned with establishing the of diffidence and offering an array of evidence, drawn mostly from Canadian popular culture, which demonstrates its obsolescence and sheds some light on the paradoxes of Canada's loud nationalism. We make some attempt at causal explanation as well--admittedly more in the way of speculations for future work than developed theses. The new patriotism, we hint, may be rooted more in anxiety than any coherent affirmation. Rather than revealing a new confidence in Canadian history, institutions, or shared projects, it is perhaps better understood as a reaction to fundamental challenges to the integrity of the Canadian state. So there may be little save anxious silence at the eye of the nationalist hurricane. As well, fundamental shifts in the relationships between institutions and society may also offer an explanation: the relative decline of state institutions as transmitters of culture and identity, in favor of commodified expressions of these goods, may be affecting the tone and content of Canadian nationalism. But these claims are secondary to our argument. The main purpose here is to critically re-assess the assumptions given in the of diffidence. These assumptions are explored below. The Myth of Canadian Diffidence The basic insight of the myth is given in Donald Smiley's remark that almost all English have at some time felt embarrassed by [Canada's] deficiencies in the ritual manifestations of nationhood [and] the absence of the characteristic manifestations of national self-expression so common elsewhere. (7) Nationalism, of course, requires some sense of the nature of the in-group to be celebrated, and the out-group which defines its borders. …

The eruption of the Santorini volcano and its effects on Minoan Crete

Abstract Sometime in the course of the second millennium BC , an earthquake appears to have triggered a massive eruption of the Santorini volcano. The immediate consequences of the earthquake closely followed by the eruption for Cretan society during the Late Minoan I period are rather difficult to characterize, although physical evidence in the form of Theran ash has shown up at an increasing number of sites. Certain features of the archaeological record, taken in isolation, have hardly been noticed in the past. The long-term effects of the eruption, however, have recently become more comprehensible thanks to a reconsideration of old and new archaeological evidence. The combined picture gives the impression of a period of societal stress following these events. Changes in architecture, storage and food production, artisan output, the distribution of prestige items, administrative patterns and ritual manifestations can be pinpointed archaeologically. These may and should be interpreted as disturbances in the political, economic, cult and security-related domains. It is argued that the inability of the Minoan palatial centres to adapt to changing circumstances caused by a double disaster, an earthquake followed by the eruption of Santorini, led to an increase in crisis-related situations, culminating in the widespread fire destructions which brought this palatial phase of Minoan civilization to an end and opened the way for mainland Mycenaean domination of the Aegean.

Politics and power relations in Portugal (sixteenth‐eighteenth centuries):

Summary This article surveys the work of the last decade or so on politics, government and representation in early‐modern Portugal. Traditional views of a ‘precocious’ absolutism are shown to have been modified by a newer understanding of political power as plural and dispersed. Underlying this perception has been the study of ‘political culture’ conceived as a deep and wide‐ranging grammar of political discourse expressed not only in the formal and symbolic, but also in the informal and less ‘visible’ aspects of political behaviour. A final section discusses the new, revisionist historiography of the Cortes, with its de‐mythification of the medieval assembly and the rehabilitation of the early‐modern Cortes as a ritual manifestation of the bond between king and kingdom.

Is a Theory of Caste Still Possible?

A theory of caste must offer a way of ordering the facts in such a way that it does not diminish the significance of some or ignore others. It must also be comparative. Caste organisation is found in some parts of South Asia but not all. Equally, structural parallels may be found in many other parts of the world and one should not therefore assume that the defining characteristics of caste are unique to Hindu communities or to the ideology of Brahmanism. What is needed is a theory which explains why all of the traits associated with caste are found together where and when they are, whether in South Asia or elsewhere.Various theories of caste are reviewed in this chapter before coming to the conclusion that one of these makes much more sense of the historical and ethnographic evidence than the others. Most theories depict castes as arranged in a ladder-like vertical order. Sociologists have tended to emphasise this ‘stratification’, regarding the ideological and ritual manifestations of caste, such as the pervasive concern with purity and impurity, as epiphenomenal. Anthropologists have generally avoided this error but have faced other intractable problems. Some see caste as a recent colonial artefact, others as an ancient indigenous category. Many are heavily influenced by the ideological reductionism of Dumont's theory of Hindu society. On the other hand, Dumont's analysis raises so many problems that some have attempted to retreat from theory and restrict their studies to ethnographic description.The argument here is that caste results from an uneasy stalemate between the pull of localised lineage organisation and the forces of political, ritual and economic centralisation encapsulated in monarchical institutions. Caste systems are the product of a certain degree of centralisation which involve the organisation of ritual and other services around the king and dominant lineages. The central institution is (as Hocart suggested) the monarchy, and not (as Dumont suggested) the Brahman priesthood. The removal of Hindu kings in India with the advent of colonialism does not negate this thesis, for it is a specifically western view of kingship which allows for only one monarch within a territory. Kingship (and the configurations of castes associated with it) was always reproduced at the court of lesser chiefs, and is still replicated today in the households of members of dominant castes.

Lucretius, Cybele, and Religion

F OR A CENTURY, SCHOLARS HAVE BEEN PUZZLED by what they regard as the un-Epicurean flavour of Lucretius' allegorical interpretation of the cult of Cybele in De Rerum Natura 2.600 ff., which appears to favour a morality based on religious fear. Patin viewed it as a digression betraying Lucretius' actual enthusiasm for religion (l'antilucrece chez Lucrece). Perret and Boyance attempted rather to explain the passage by postulating that Lucretius had taken it more or less uncritically from another source. Mueller has modified this view substantially by noting that Lucretius does not copy the allegory uncritically, but introduces it in order to reject it.' However, it has yet to be appreciated how Lucretius' allegory actually expresses an orthodox Epicurean point of view. Admittedly, there is conclusive evidence that at least the kernel of the allegory was derived from a source. Similar interpretations of this cult were elaborated by Varro, Ovid, and the Stoic L. Annaeus Cornutus, and all four versions show sufficient correspondences to establish a common source. It is unfortunate, however, that the discovery of these parallels has led scholars to interpret Lucretius from the other sources without fully analyzing how his version differs. In fact, the differences in all four authors are more telling than the similarities. Each author shows not only accidental variations, but a pattern of changes which mould the allegory systematically to express his own point of view. This applies to Lucretius as well, and in the present paper, I shall attempt to understand his version philosophically, and to evaluate it as an Epicurean critique of the Cybelean cult. The systematic alteration of the allegory can be illustrated also from the other authors. Varro's version, for example, is preserved by Augustine (Civ. Dei 7.24 B-C). When Varro differs from our other sources, he tends to relate the mythic and ritual manifestations of Magna Mater to the physical earth, which he believes to embody the Divine Spirit. Thus, for him, the processional clangour which Lucretius presents as a powerful incitement of religious awe merely signifies the plying of the earth with metal tools in agriculture. Similarly, only Varro suggests a special meaning for the drum; it