Rituals Of Rebellion Research Articles

"NIHIL SINE DEO" IN FAR-RIGHT PROTESTS

This study investigates the far-right counter-hegemonic discourses employed in Romania during the Covid-19 vaccine roll-out and the promotion of green certificates. Using an array of traditional and occult symbols as well as religious iconography, the protests held by the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) employed ritualistic ceremonies and espoused counter-hegemonic discourses that confronted the authorities’ with the extreme religio-nationalist idea of “Romanianness”. Methodologically, this study combines digital ethnography of more than 30 protests in 2021-2022, with data collected from both social and conventional media as well as visual analysis of relevant discourses. The results show that the iconography of analysed protests can be interpreted as new rituals of rebellion against the authorities’ decisions to restrict the movement of people. Likewise, AUR’s on-the-ground discourse conveyed new counter-hegemonic that rejected neo-liberal ideals. Moreover, the analysis reveals that the performance styles used during the demonstrations show striking similarities with the January 6th Insurrection in the United States.

Making sense of Tantric Buddhism: history, semiology, and transgression in the Indian traditions

List of Figures and Tables Preface and Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations Introduction: Making Sense in and of the Human Sciences Part 1: Historiography 1. Origins Understanding Tantric Buddhism through its Origins Quest for Origins as Method in the History of Religions 2. Narrating Tantric Buddhism Poetics of Historiography Tropology of Esoteric Buddhism Historical Narrative and Ideological Implication 3. Going Native: Traditional Historiography of Esoteric Buddhism Historiography and Cosmology in Exoteric Buddhism Historiography and Cosmology in Esoteric Buddhism Observations on Structure Part 2: Interpretation 4. Semiology of Transgression Literal and the Figurative in Tantric Hermeneutics Connotative Semiotics as Exegetical Method Connotative Semiotics in Tantric Ritual Connotative Semiotics in Tantric Scripture 5. The of Indian Esoteric Buddhism Terms of Art as an Interpretative Problem Interpreting the Practice Observance I: Irony and Inversion Interpreting the Practice Observance II: Prerequisites and Temporal Frame Interpreting the Practice Observance III: ?aiva Parallels 6. Tantric Buddhist Transgression in Context Social Location of Tantric Buddhism as an Interpretative Problem Contriving Marginality Common Repertoire of Buddhist Professionals Carnivalesque or Rituals of Rebellion? But...Did They Really Do It?! Conclusion: No Two Ways About It Appendix I: Indrabhuti Story According to Pad ma dkar po (ca. 1575) Appendix II: Chapter Nine of the Buddhakapala Tantra, The (Caryapatala) Notes Bibliography Index

Gays, Gaze and Aunty Gok

Informed by Foucault's theorisation of the docile body, the gaze, and the Panopticon, we analyse how the gaze is operationalised in the popular makeover show How to Look Good Naked (HTLGN). We explore how a regime of discipline is (re)produced through the drawing of boundaries constructing the feminine/masculine and straight/queer binaries. We analyse the delineation of rules and the performance of practices to maintain these boundaries, which support emphasised femininity and hegemonic masculinity. Whilst HTLGN claims to challenge the “body fascism” prevalent in the fashion, beauty, and advertising industries and rid women, and more recently men, of the shame associated with not meeting these ideals, we argue that the show's resistance is far from radical, functioning instead as a mediated ritual of rebellion, endorsing and sustaining key elements constituting prevailing constructions of femininity and masculinity.

Burying Lucky Dube1

This article focuses on the murder of the reggae icon Lucky Dube in late 2007 and on the events that followed until his burial a few days later. The article tries to assess why his music carried such power on the African continent and globally – as the instant digital responses to his death made clear. Did he sing to the subalterns of the world across and beyond national boundaries in a tradition that set the anger of reggae within the ‘phatic and ineffable’ power of the sonic, as Paul Gilroy writes of music in The Black Atlantic? The article also explores the tensions of the conjunction of sacred and secular as Lucky Dube's global, African and South African fans mingled with members of the Nazareth Baptist Church at his memorial and later at his funeral. It discusses the unease of the post-apartheid, postcolonial nation briefly made public by the manner of his death, the conflicts of national subjectivity that surfaced as the events of murdered icon and world success at rugby flashed up together in the national consciousness. In describing the memorial for Dube at the Bassline in Newtown, Johannesburg, the article asks if we should see this as a ritual of rebellion or a moment of liminality in the postcolonial state, searching for healing in a moment of crisis.

Rituals of Rebellion: Cultural Narratives and Metadiscourse of Violent Conflict in Iron Age and Medieval Denmark

Despite modern notions of cultural homogeneity in southern Scandinavia, substantial ethnic differences characterized its Iron Age and early Medieval populations. Creation of a unified state from earlier social formations ignited rifts leading to social disorder, rebellion, and uprising during a transitional era when upper and lower classes felt these changes most sharply. Ethnohistoric evidence preserves a record of ritualized public performances by state and local leaders, revealing relationships that shifted between fear, negotiation, challenge, and defiance. This is compared against archaeological evidence of widespread, rapid changes in settlement organization in some regions, and relative stability in others, interpreted as outcomes of unsuccessful and successful challenges to state authority. Groups electing to use violent conflict in challenging the state, who also had histories of inter-group interaction, were better able to preserve autonomy than those attempting legalistic arguments and 'rational' negotiations. Data are interpreted in light of ethnographic case studies and contemporary social theory.

Unmasking Racism: Halloween Costuming and Engagement of the Racial Other

We explore Halloween as a uniquely constructive space for engaging racial concepts and identities, particularly through ritual costuming. Data were collected using 663 participant observation journals from college students across the U.S. During Halloween, many individuals actively engage the racial other in costuming across racial/ethnic lines. Although some recognize the significance of racial stereotyping in costuming, it is often dismissed as being part of the holiday's social context. We explore the costumes worn, as well as responses to cross-racial costuming, analyzing how “playing” with racialized concepts and making light of them in the “safe” context of Halloween allows students to trivialize and reproduce racial stereotypes while supporting the racial hierarchy. We argue that unlike traditional “rituals of rebellion,” wherein subjugated groups temporarily assume powerful roles, whites contemporarily engage Halloween as a sort of “ritual of rebellion” in response to the seemingly restrictive social context of the post-Civil Rights era, and in a way that ultimately reinforces white dominance.

The Technological Gaze

The Technological Gaze

Seeing “Straight” through Queer Eye: Exposing the Strategic Rhetoric of Heteronormativity in a Mediated Ritual of Gay Rebellion

Bravo's hit series Queer Eye for the Straight Guy has garnered much popular and critical acclaim. While from a Queer theory perspective, Queer Eye's openly gay stars and their easy fraternization with straight men can be celebrated, there are reasons for critical concern. In interrogating the series as an expression of the strategic rhetoric of heteronormativity, we examine how Queer Eye functions as a mediated ritual of rebellion that domesticates Queers, contains Queer sexuality, and places straight men at the sociosexual center. The series thus supports the very heteronormative order it seems to challenge.

Book Review: The Maasai of Matapato: A Study of Rituals of Rebellion

Book Review: The Maasai of Matapato: A Study of Rituals of Rebellion

Rains gone bad, women gone mad: rethinking gender rituals of rebellion and patriarchy

This article reconsiders the argument that ‘rituals of rebellion’ be seen as women’s ritual response to everyday patriarchal structures – an argument originally suggested by Gluckman, but recently evoked by Spencer, the Creiders, and others – in light of recent anthropological theorizing on gender. Using as an example one such women’s ritual among the Ihanzu of Tanzania, I show how this particular formulation reduces complex notions of gender and gender practices to unnuanced, monolithic, and all‐encompassing gender‐systems, both in everyday and ritual realms. This it does, first, by conflating gender ideals with gender behaviours and, second, by ignoring people’s conflicting ideas about gender. By problematizing these contradictions, I demonstrate how Ihanzu women’s rites are not about rebellion but gender complementarity, played out by women dancers embodying both genders simultaneously. Above all, this case compels us to rethink, fundamentally, ‘rituals of rebellion’ and ‘patriarchy’.

The King Is King by the Grace of the People: The Exercise and Control of Power in Subject-Ruler Relations

In the face of the dominating tradition of British structural functionalism, anthropological studies of political leadership represented an important move towards accounting for the dynamics of centralized, as well as acephalous, polities (for example, Barth 1959 and Baily 1970; cf. Schapera 1956). Moreover, in focusing upon political actors and, by extension, political relations, these studies necessarily took account of the role of the subjects. Yet, despite Gluckman's innovative notion of “rituals of rebellion” (1954; cf. Beidelman 1966), the issue of political leadership has rarely focused upon the political dynamics of the ruler-subject relationship, examining the concerns and responses of those who more or less voluntarily subject themselves to an authority figure. Even such an important contribution as Succession to High Office (Goody 1966) completely ignores this issue.

Race Riots Past and Present: A Cultural‐Collective Behavior Approach

Four essential themes in a cultural‐collective behavior approach to race riots are developed. First is the historical shift in patterns of race rioting. Second is the application of a general collective behavior model accounting for extrainstitutionality, conversion of feelings into overt action, and acting collectively rather than individually. Third is process, stressing contingent developments during a period of testing. Fourth is the nullification of customary meanings of action, with clues to understanding drawn from anthropological study of “rituals of rebellion” and psychological studies of “obedience to authority.”

The Maasai of Matapato: A Study of Rituals of Rebellion.

The Maasai of Matapato: A Study of Rituals of Rebellion.

The Maasai of Matapato: a study of rituals of rebellion

The Maasai of Matapato: a study of rituals of rebellion

The Maasai of Matapato: A Study of Rituals of Rebellion

The Maasai of Matapato: A Study of Rituals of Rebellion

The Maasai of Matapato: A Study in Rituals of Rebellion

When first published in 1988, this classic study was the first to relate the dynamics of the Maasai age organisation to the tensions within the family. Together, these provide the twin strands of a man's career, opposed ritually and reflecting a fundamental ambivalence in Maasai thought. The analysis is illustrated with extensive case material from the the Matapato, selected for this study as a typical Maasai group.

The Maasai of Matapato: a study of rituals of rebellion

The Maasai of Matapato: a study of rituals of rebellion

Annual Rituals of Conflict

Great rituals of conflict—annual celebrations containing episodes of threat, insult, or contention—are widely, though sporadically, distributed worldwide. To account for their incidence, propositions derived from Gluckman's analysis of Southeast African rituals of rebellion are tested crossculturally. Results indicate annual rituals of conflict occur disproportionately among societies situated in environments prone to seasonal hunger and possessing political systems strongly inclined to favor communal over individual decision making. Analysis suggests that such rites originate in a spontaneous reaction to sudden, drastic uptakes of food energy. Further substantive findings bearing on mode and amplitude of collective enactments, combined with theoretical understandings of ritualization, lead to conclusions regarding subsequent cultural development.

Rituals of rebellion among contemporary Japanese youth: The outdoor disco at Tokyo's Yoyogi Park

Rituals of rebellion among contemporary Japanese youth: The outdoor disco at Tokyo's Yoyogi Park

Ritual, Rebellion, Resistance: Once More the Swazi Ncwala

This article reconsiders the Ncwala ritual, an annual revitalisation of Swazi society, polity, and natural environment, as reported by Hilda Kuper based on fieldwork of 1934-1936. Central to the argument is the insistence that ritual be considered within its proper historical context: here, the situation of colonialism. When this is done, the limitations of previous studies, particularly Gluckman's 'rituals of rebellion' theory, become apparent and a clearer picture emerges of how the Ncwala served as an instrument of resistance to British domination, through which Swazi solidarity was effectively mobilised and maintained. Broader discussions are devoted to i) the ritual construction, deconstruction and reconstruction of society via the evocation of sentiments reified as social borders, and 2) the nature of domination and resistance as specialised cases (respectively) of fusionary and fissionary processes.