Ritual,Continuity and Change: Greek Reflections

This article examines the tangled question of continuity and change from the point of view of ritual. It brings together in dialogue recent theoretical approaches to ritual in anthropology with several examples of diachronic studies of Greek death practices. It points to the importance of focusing on questions of “form” in ritual practices—that is, “how” rituals work and are transmitted, more or less completely, from one generation to the next. It also considers the importance of historical consciousness, in particular the notion of “changing continuities”, in understanding some of the existential ways that ritual addresses common human experiences of temporality.     

ROUTINE MAGIC,MUNDANE RITUAL: TOWARDS A UNIFIED NOTION OF DEPOSITIONAL PRACTICE

This article seeks to advance ongoing discussions within archaeology concerning the relationship between ritual and depositional practices. Previous researchers have argued that ‘structured’ or ‘placed’ deposits are the result of ritual activities, but also that in many societies the disposal of refuse is governed by social ‘rules’. Distinguishing ‘technical’ actions such as rubbish disposal from deliberately ‘placed’ deposits is extremely difficult, however, and reinforces modern dualistic thought. Instead, this article argues that there was a continuum of practices from formal and ritualized events through to small‐scale, informal acts undertaken on a routine basis, including everyday refuse discard. It also questions purely utilitarian interpretations of storage structures. Drawing on ethnographic and ethnohistorical examples, it explores case studies from the later prehistoric and Romano‐British periods of north central England, and concludes by proposing methodologies through which these practices can be explored more fully in the future.     

Settler-colonialism's anti-social contract The Wiley Invited Lecture at the 2019 annual meeting of the Canadian Association of Geographers

Contemporary liberal governance requires constant access to a historical “reset” button, a simultaneous acknowledgement and disavowal of history. This is especially so in times of emergency or crisis; we are, supposedly, “all in this together.” The political economic institutions that facilitate this false solidarity—the anti-social contract—range from the mundane to emergency measures, but they share an origin in, and gain their legitimacy from, a key mechanism of liberal social life: contract. If contracts “settle” the past, what can build solidarity in the shadow of a past that cannot be settled?     

Performing Hospitality in Moldova: Ambiguous,Alternative, and Undeveloped Models of National Identity

This paper examines performances of hospitality in everyday life to explore the lived experience of “being Moldovan”. National identity in Moldova can only be understood by reference to the peculiarities of history—to the presence of a neighbouring kin-state (Romania), a multiethnic population, Soviet ideology, and successive efforts at nation-building. The instabilities, contradictions, and ambiguities of national identity are also experienced and interpreted, as they are regularly performed in informal and formal settings. The “hospitality” of Moldovans—performed daily through linguistic code-switching, in practices of buying and selling, in life-cycle celebrations such as weddings, and in the official greeting and welcoming of dignitaries and visiting delegations by folk-costumed performers—is, paradoxically, an important site of this experience of ambiguity. The same set of practices both renders its performers “masters of their own houses”, while at the same time revealing the limits of the metaphor.     

Storytelling as Method in Spatial Planning

Abstract

Drawing on the case of the Wageningse Eng in the Netherlands, this paper considers the role of “storytelling” within spatial planning practices. It moves away, though, from seeing it as merely a model of spatial planning, where “storytelling” is sometimes used to justify planners' ideals for the landscape, or a model for spatial planning, which pushes for a normative use of “storytelling” as a means of encapsulating local knowledge and the views of those who live in, and use, the landscape. Rather, the paper engages “storytelling” as a method for revealing how formal planning practices may be destabilized by more vernacular narratives seeking to subvert dominant discourses and processes. In doing so, it seeks to not only show the contested nature of participatory planning within the Netherlands, but also the ways in which narratives—as revealed via such a method—construct specific positionalities with real implications for notions of inclusivity within planning practices.     

Prehistoric Human and Ungulate Remains from Preston Docks,Lancashire, UK: Problems of River Finds

Isolated and usually undated human crania from riverine deposits in the British Isles present something of an archaeological mystery. The large numbers sometimes involved—several hundred from the River Thames alone—together with the recovery of unassociated metal artefacts have been taken to imply some or other “ritual” activity. We offer a taphonomic investigation of human crania and ungulate remains obtained from dock excavations during the 1880s at Preston in Lancashire in northwestern England. Although apparently recovered in close spatial proximity, a series of AMS determinations on crania of humans, aurochsen (Bos primigenius) and red deer (Cervus elaphus) has established at least a Neolithic to Saxon age range for the sample. Such a chronological span for a diverse assemblage when considered against modern forensic studies of the taphonomy of bodies in water strongly implies that the human crania need represent no more than an accumulation of elements that normally separate quite naturally from the rest of the body. While the reasons for initial entry to the water may well have included “ritual” activity in one or more case there is simply no reason to infer such behaviour for the human sample as a whole in the absence of direct evidence.     

ONABASULU MALE HOMOSEXUALITY: Cosmology,Affect and Prescribed Male Homosexual Activity among the Onabasulu of the Great Papuan Plateau

This paper examines what has been called ‘ritualized homosexuality’ in a single ethnic group in the Strickland-Bosavi region of Papua New Guinea. Prescribed male homosexual practices are examined in the context of cosmology and the context of affect in the ‘everyday’ rather than ritual life of the Onabasulu. The perspective is derived from a more general interest in the social construction of the ‘world’ in everyday social life.     

CIRCLE DANCE FESTIVAL “GORKA”: TRADITIONS AND INNOVATIONS*

The circle dance festival “gorka” is one of the oldest Russian rituals of the spring and summer cycle, preserved by the Priestless Old Believers (Pomortsy) living in the Ust-Tsilma Region of the Komi Republic. This ritual activity requires the performance of seven dance fi gures or moves. Particular songs that are called “gorka songs,” correspond to each of the fi gures. In the past, the symbolism of the circle dance was linked to the renewal of life. The transition of adolescents to adulthood was arranged in ritual form; dramatized songs helped young people to fi nd potential marriage partners and to approve couples that had been formed earlier. The modern festival is held as a tribute to the ancestors. A recent innovation can be seen in the children's “gorka” and the inclusion of children into a single circle dance.     

NEW EVIDENCE FOR IRON AGE BURIAL AND PROPITIATION PRACTICES IN SOUTHERN BRITAIN

It has been 30 years since the first scheme that categorized fragmentary Iron Age human remains in southern Britain ( Wilson 1981 ), and nearly 20 years since Cunliffe's paper ‘Pits, Preconceptions and Propitiation’ was published ( Cunliffe 1992 ). This study integrates the osteological, forensic and field evidence to identify archaeological signatures from three interrelated areas. The results show different depositional trends for five sites in Hampshire, and that the hillforts studied – Danebury (Hampshire) and Maiden Castle (Dorset) – demonstrate yet another pattern. Three main depositional practices were observed; intentional exposure, propitiatory deposits, and intentional practices, in which the body was kept whole in death, ran in parallel with each another.     

Ritual Appropriation and Appropriate Ritual: Christian Healing and Adaptations of Asian Religions

This article analyzes the uses of the past for liberal Christians who borrow from Asian healing‐related practices such as yoga, Buddhist meditation and Reiki. It focuses on questions of historicity, both in the ways liberal Christians validate their syncretism by drawing connections to the Christian past, and in the way that longer histories of orientalism and colonialism shape current Christian interactions with Asian religions. Centred on the narratives of three North American Anglicans, and informed by attendance at their various healing services, meditation groups, yoga classes and Reiki sessions, this article is evidence of a wider liberal Christian embrace of difference via ritual. The article argues that these liberal Christians use “ritual proximity” to bring together symbols, acts and memories from various times and cultures, thus constructing new lineages of religious inheritance within webs of Christian ritual.     

DAVID CARR'S THEORY OF EXPERIENCING TIMES PAST

This article is a review of David Carr's “Reflections on Temporal Perspective” in which Carr argues that present‐day historians or philosophers can experience the past, given that the past persists into the present and thus has a “presence” in contemporary life that makes it directly accessible to us. On that basis, Carr seeks to craft a phenomenological approach to history that puts experience in the place of representation and memory, rejecting thereby traditional notions of how we come to know and understand the past. Inherent in this approach is a new, and now widely shared, revision of our understanding of historical temporality, for such an experiencing of the past analytically demands a revised understanding of what “past” signifies when it is “present.” In this, Carr participates in a much broader movement in current historiography, which can be seen in the work of Frank Ankersmit, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Dominick LaCapra, Ewa Domanska, Eelco Runia, and others who focus on the persistence of the past in the present, embracing a materialist rather than linguistic or narrativist approach to historical research and writing. But if history signifies change over time, what “past” in the present do we actually experience? How is it logically possible to embrace both a commitment to the notion of historical development—as Carr does—and a notion of historical perseverance so powerful that the past as such survives and can be experienced? Carr's answer to this query is that “the present point of view is somehow permanent and yet always changing, framed at each moment by a different past and future.” What makes this possible, in his view, is the reality of superimposed temporalities, an idea he illustrates in his analysis of Braudel's La Mediterranée and other works. Hence it is precisely his “reflections on temporal perspective” that enable the experience of the past.     

Seeing what you know: Changing constructions and perceptions of landscape in Epirus,Northwestern Greece, 1945 and 1990

This paper considers how current understandings of historical events, past practices and movements of the people of Pogoni in Epirus, Northwestern Greece, informs the way they currently visually perceive their physical and social landscape. Taking two periods, marked as prior to 1945 and up to 1990, the paper explores, with the use of maps showing different temporal versions of the visual perception of the area, the combination of social, historical and spatial elements which combined to generate Pogoni people's perception of their “place”;. It argues that the current experience of place emphasises both the visual and historical aspects of it (through notions such as “cultural heritage"). In this context, what people “see”; is the combined outcome of particular reconstructions of past relations and movements around the place, overlaid with current practices, experiences and movements through the place.     

The Enduring Toltecs: History and Truth During the Aztec-to-Colonial Transition at Tula,Hidalgo

Tula, Hidalgo, was an important early Postclassic city that dominated much of central Mexico as well as adjacent regions to its north and west. For many decades, Tula was thought to be the city that early colonial documents referred to as “Tollan,” or “place of the reeds.” It is clear that the Aztec Empire, a later civilization that dominated a much larger area, revered Tollan and connected themselves to the city and its people, the Toltecs, in various ways. Recent research has questioned whether Tula was indeed the Tollan that the Aztecs revered; instead, Tollan may have been a concept that referred to all of the great civilizations that preceded the Aztecs. These two perspectives, which I frame as the “single Tollan/many Tollans” debate, have important consequences for our understanding of the early Postclassic period as well as colonial configurations of power. I argue that to understand the Aztecs’ relationships with their past, and the colonial consequences of those relationships, it is important to shift away from questions of truth. Instead, I concentrate on historical narratives and the social, material, and biological effects that they produced, including the early and late Aztec interventions at Tula. I argue that Jorge Acosta’s data provide evidence for an Early Aztec period termination ritual and a Late Aztec period New Fire ceremony that ushered in a new population boom at Tula. In turn, these connections allowed for the unprecedented rise of the Moctezuma family during the colonial period. This evidence forms part of a broader argument that the two sides of the Tula debate are not mutually exclusive. Rather, they both form part of attempts to control, claim, and revere the past in the inherently unstable fields of power that characterized the late Postclassic and early colonial periods in central Mexico.     

“WHAT HAS POSTERITY EVER DONE FOR ME?”: FUTURE GENERATIONS,INTERGENERATIONAL JUSTICE,AND THE CHRONOPOLITICS OF DISTANT FUTURES

“Future generations” play a key role in current political debates. In the context of the climate crisis especially, political controversies are often framed as moral problems of “intergenerational justice.” This article aims to historicize the use of the concept of “future generations” in modern political discourse and to uncover its long—and often ambivalent—history. Its main argument is that talking about “future generations” was part of an attempt to integrate (distant) futures into the political discourse of the time. The first part of the article outlines a theoretical perspective on the relationship between generations and temporalities. The second part focuses on how anticipating “future generations” became an important part of the history of utopian thinking and political planning in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially in the realm of demographic and economic discussions. The third part analyzes the emergence of “future ethics” and “intergenerational justice” as important political discourses in the 1970s. This part refers both to the academic debates about “future generations” and to the way political decision-makers used the concept to legitimize their policies. The article argues that the concept of “future generations” should not be taken as an ethical principle that transcended the political debates of the present. Rather, it was itself the result of intense political controversies.     

The Tywerrenge as an Artefact of Rule: The (Post) Colonial Life of a Secret/Sacred Aboriginal Object

In this article, I examine an Aboriginal ritual object, the secret/sacred tywerrenge which in many respects lies at the heart of Central Australian Aboriginal religious belief. Given its ritual power, the tywerrenge has always held a special place in the administrative rationalities of both colonial and post-colonial authorities. For certain missionaries, the tywerrenge was seen as an object to be eliminated as it constituted an impediment to Aboriginal “salvation”. For early anthropologists such as Baldwin Spencer, they offered material evidence supporting social evolutionist theories regarding the “staged” transformation of “primitive” religious beliefs into science. More recently, tywerrenge have been subject to an intensive regime of inspection and evaluation by government authorities, museums, and land councils. Indeed, they have come to play a significant role in the enforcement of Australian law under the Aboriginal Land Rights Act since the possession of a tywerrenge can decide the ownership of traditional lands. In short, these religious objects—and the beliefs associated with them—have been co-opted and employed by a variety of authorities in order to achieve a range of governmental ends. In this sense, tywerrenge have been transformed into instruments of colonial and post-colonial rule.     

Vagabond Capitalism and the Necessity of Social Reproduction

A vagabond, as is well known, moves from place to place without a fixed home. However, vagabondage insinuates a little dissolution—an unsettled, irresponsible, and disreputable life, which indeed can be said of the globalization of capitalist production. This paper reframes the discussion on globalization through a materialist focus on social reproduction. By looking at the material social practices through which people reproduce themselves on a daily and generational basis and through which the social relations and material bases of capitalism are renewed—and the havoc wreaked on them by a putatively placeless capitalism—we can better expose both the costs of globalization and the connections between vastly different sites of production. Focusing on social reproduction allows us to address questions of the making, maintenance, and exploitation of a fluidly differentiated labor force, the productions (and destructions) of nature, and the means to create alternative geographies of opposition to globalized capitalism. I will draw on examples from the “First” and “Third Worlds” to argue that any politics that effectively counters capitalism's global imperative must confront the shifts in social reproduction that have accompanied and enabled it. Looking at the political‐economic, political‐ecological, and cultural aspects of social reproduction, I argue that there has been a rescaling of childhood and suggest a practical response that focuses on specific geographies of social reproduction. Reconnecting these geographies with those of production, both translocally and across geographic scale, begins to redress the losses suffered in the realm of social reproduction as a result of globalized capitalist production. The paper develops the notion of “topography” as a means of examining the intersecting effects and material consequences of globalized capitalist production. “Topography” offers a political logic that both recognizes the materiality of cultural and social difference and can help mobilize transnational and internationalist solidarities to counter the imperatives of globalization.     

“Catching the Yellow Ghost”: A Case Study of Popular Religious Activities and Social Transformation in Rural North China

This article studies the relationship between local society and social change in rural north China from the late Qing dynasty to the People’s Republic of China period through the activity of “Zhuo huanggui” (literally, “Catching the Yellow Ghost”). “Catching the Yellow Ghost” is a ritual activity in Guyi village, Wu’an county, Hebei province. According to villagers there, “Catching the Yellow Ghost” has been celebrated since the late Qing dynasty. However, due to political pressures in the 1950s, it was not until the 1980s that “Catching the Yellow Ghost” began to be revitalized. Since that time, “Catching the Yellow Ghost” has gained rapid popularity and fame in north China. Through the lens of the “Catching the Yellow Ghost” ritual, this article explores social transformation in China from the late 19th to the early 21st century. By analyzing the continuity and discontinuity of “Catching the Yellow Ghost,” this article offers a new understanding of the relationship between local society and social change in rural north China.     

Writing on Stone; Writing on Paper: Myth,History and Memory in NW Amazonia

This paper deals with the relation between different kinds of indigenous speech and music and various iconographic forms such as petroglyphs, house painting, basketry designs and also features of landscape that are understood in graphic terms. It examines how Northwest Amazonian myth-history is structured and memorized, how it can appear in both verbal and non-verbal forms, and how contemporary books, maps and diagrams produced by indigenous organizations as part of programmes of research and education show continuity with these traditional forms. Rather than making firm distinctions between peoples with and without writing, I argue that it is more profitable to focus on how various mnemonic systems—“writing”—work in tandem with different narrative forms—“myth”. When “writing” and “myth” are understood in indigenous terms, contemporary written documents appear in a new light.     

Beyond the beyond(s): On the (many) third way(s) beyond primordialism and instrumentalism in the study of sectarianism

This meta‐study examines the nature of past and current theoretically informed debates on sectarian politics in the Middle East and identifies the biggest challenges and possible directions for the future study of sectarianism. Contrary to the conventional narrative about a “sectarian journey” torn between a flawed primordialist and instrumentalist approach in between which a new superior “third way” is needed, the article shows that both primordialism and instrumentalism are rare in the academic debate on sectarianism, quite similar to the broader ethnicity/nationalism debate. However, this has not resulted in a “new conventional wisdom” about how to proceed. Thus, the article identifies a cacophony of suggestions for how the much aspired‐to third way should look like. Against this background, the article suggests that it is time to go beyond the ritual calls to “get beyond primordialism and instrumentalism.” Instead, it is time to devote more attention to examining the multiple already existing suggestions for “third ways”. Rather than highlighting a single third way as superior, the article contributes to this move in two ways: it shows how the various third ways can be grouped into three “beyond strategies” (the New Saviour, the Baby and the Bathwater, and the LEGO eclectic strategies) and outlines a number of meta‐theoretical issues to consider in order to move the debate forward.     

PARADIGMS BEHIND (AND BEFORE) THE MODERN CONCEPT OF RELIGION

This essay identifies five paradigms that are basic to understanding the historical emergence and uses of the generic idea of “religion” in the Christian cultures of Europe and America. The spread of this concept has been sufficiently thorough in recent centuries as to make religion appear to be a “social fact,” to use Durkheim's phrase, rather than so many cultural expressions and different social practices. The supremacy of Euro‐American culture—and an academy still saturated with Christian ideas—has enjoined other cultures and forms of religiosity to conform to this idea of religion; for these cultures contentment with the status quo can vie with the anxieties of influence, including “modernization.” The key paradigms discussed are the following: Christianity as the prototype; religion as the opposite of reason; the modern formulation of “world religions”; the cultural necessity of religion; and critical analysis of the Western “construction” of religion. These paradigms demonstrate the limits on theoretical variety in the field, the difficulty in making real changes in set ways of thinking, and productive foci for interdisciplinary methods of study.