This paper explores processes of self-identification and constructions of historical memory among the Bene Ephraim of Andhra Pradesh, a community of former Madiga untouchables who came to practising ...Judaism in the late 1980s. Our discussion is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2009-2010, in-depth interviews, and an analysis of written sources on the history of the Bene Ephraim produced by community leaders. We consider the case study of the Bene Ephraim in the context of broader academic discussions about the universalist and particularist dimensions of the Jewish tradition and suggest that this movement illuminates both the exclusive/genealogical and the inclusive aspects of Judaism. We argue that though the perceived "ethnocentricity" of Judaism may have been the basic logic for the emergence of the Bene Ephraim movement, it nevertheless resulted in the development of groups demonstrating syncretic practices and diverse modes of engagement with the Jewish tradition.
Medical herbalism in Malawi Morris, Brian
Anthropology & medicine,
08/2011, Letnik:
18, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Medical herbalism is the most widespread and the most ancient form of medicine. This paper offers an account of medical herbalism in Malawi, and discusses the role of medicines - both plant and ...animal substances - in the social life of the matrilineal peoples of Malawi. It aims to counter the widespread tendency to interpret medical practices in Africa solely in terms of a spiritual or religious metaphysic. After critiquing some early approaches to African medicine, the paper discusses the nature and role of medicines in Malawi, the main forms of therapy, and the relation of medicine to the ancestral shrines.
Anthropology, like most other branches of modern philosophy, dwells in the Cartesian gap. While a majority of anthropologists seem resigned to the fact that the separation of mind from body is ...intellectually inevitable, even analytically indispensable, others have been disturbed by the flow of ethnographic evidence from around the world which suggests that this distinction is not epistemologically universal. This speculative essay considers how such exotic understandings may advise us about ways in which the Cartesian gap might be bridged, if not actually closed. Lukoho, an East African boy who is his own grandfather, apparently subverts the Cartesian premise that one person (or mind, or soul, or similar impalpable entity) cannot normally inhabit more than one body. The explanation we anthropologists would most readily offer is that such a relationship is merely metaphorical, a manner of speaking: that for certain purposes one Lukoho is regarded as `like' the other. This article proposes that the phenomena we imagine discretely as `mind' and `body' in such cases may be better construed as emergent properties of human life, imagined not as the individual passage from birth to death, but as a process of becoming which necessarily goes on between people, and in which personal identities may temporarily merge. Comme la plupart des autres branches de la philosophie moderne, l'anthropologie est marquée par le clivage cartésien. Alors qu'une majorité des anthropologues s'est apparemment résignée, au fait que la séparation de l'esprit et du corps est intellectuellement inéluctable, voire indispensable pour l'analyse, d'autres sont troublés par l'afflux d'indices ethnographiques venus du monde entier qui suggèrent que cette dichotomie n'est pas épistémologiquement universelle. Cet article explore la façon dont ces concepts exotiques peuvent nous renseigner sur la manière dont le « fossé » cartésien pourrait être franchi, voire refermé. Lukoho, un jeune garçon d'Afrique de l'Est qui est son propre grand-père, subvertit en apparence le principe cartésien selon lequel une personne (un esprit, une âme, ou autre entité impalpable similaire) ne peut normalement pas habiter plus d'un corps. L'explication que les anthropologues donnent le plus volontiers est que cette relation est simplement métaphorique, que c'est une façon de parler, qu'à certaines fins, un Lukoho est considéré « comme » étant l'autre. L'auteur suggère ici que le phénomène que nous imaginons formé de « l'esprit » et du « corps » séparés pourrait utilement, dans de tels cas, être envisagé comme les propriétés émergentes de la vie humaine, imaginées non pas comme le passage individuel de la naissance à la mort mais comme un processus de devenir qui se poursuit nécessairement d'un individu à l'autre et dans lequel les identités personnelles peuvent fusionner temporairement.
This paper analyses the discursive regime of Islamic study circles within an organization of female students (BICSa) informally affiliated with the leading Islamic political party in South Asia, the ...Jamaat-e-Islami. I investigate this textual modality of Islamic socialization as a site where members partly discipline their sensibilities in accordance with BICSa's project of Islamization, which is grounded in the jihad (exertion)-orientated model for Islamic reform in South Asia of the Islamist Abul Ala Maududi. I also explore group discussion dynamics arising from activists' daily experiences that not only critique conventional distinctions between the political, social, and religious, in accord with the Islamist worldview, but also facilitate argumentation interrogative of Islamist ideological-textual boundaries. The simultaneously centripetal and centrifugal ethos of the study circle as a contemporary Bangladeshi Islamist pedagogical technique is analysed in relation to shifting discussions of jihad among Islamist women. /// L'auteur analyse le régime discursif des cercles d'études islamiques au sein d'une organisation d'étudiantes (la BICSa) affiliée de loin au principal parti politique islamique d'Asie du sud, le Jamaat-e-Islami. Elle explore la modalité textuelle de la socialisation islamique comme lieu où l'on discipline partiellement sa sensibilité, selon le projet d'islamisation de la BICSa, calqué sur le modèle de réforme islamique de l'Asie du sud formulé par l'islamiste Abu Sala Maududi et fondé sur le jihad, au sens d'effort. L'auteur explore également la dynamique des discussions de groupe qui naît de l'expérience quotidienne des activistes. Celle-ci permet une critique des distinctions classiques entre politique, social et religieux, conformément à la vision du monde islamiste, mais facilite aussi une argumentation qui questionne les limites idéologiques et textuelles de l'islamisme. L'éthos à la fois centripète et centrifuge de ce cercle d'études, qui représente une technique de la pédagogie islamiste contemporaine au Bangladesh, est analysé en relation avec les discussions mouvantes du jihad parmi les femmes islamistes.
Global health-related efforts today are usually shaped by two very different ideological approaches. They either reflect a human rights-based approach to health and equity, often associated with ...public health, medicine, or economic development activities; or they express religious or humanitarian “aid,” usually motivated by personal beliefs about charity, philanthropy, missional dynamics, and/or a ministry of “mercy.” The underlying differences between these two approaches can create tensions and even outright hostility that affect and may even undermine the best intentions of those involved. This book challenges this stereotypical polarization through stories designed to help shape a new lens on global health, one that envisions a multidisciplinary integration of respect for religion and culture with an equal respect for and engagement with human rights and social justice. The book’s six chapters range broadly, from pilgrimage texts in the Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, and Islamic traditions, to the effect of ministry and public policy on the nineteenth-century sick poor; the story of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) as it shaped economic, social, and cultural (ESC) rights; a “religious health assets” approach based in Southern Africa; and the complex dynamics of gift exchange in the modern faith-based focus on charity, community, and the common good. The book will appeal to readers interested in global health, faith-based aid, public policy, humanitarian response, liberation theology, charity, gift exchange, and a good story.
This article provides an ethnographic account of the tensions arising from the different ways of building authority as teachers and the role of higher education in establishing teachers' legitimacy ...in Russia through the specific example of religious education. After state atheism was abandoned in 1991, an unprecedented demand for religious knowledge appeared in Russia, in particular in relation to Russian Orthodoxy. Since the Russian context of Orthodox education lacks shared standards, there is considerable latitude in the criteria determining norms and rules. Seeking to increase its influence, the Russian Orthodox Church aspires to have Orthodox catechism taught in a systematic way both in parishes and in secular schools. In practice, the Church is encouraging professional pedagogues to submit their curriculum proposals that would be suffused with Orthodoxy and at the same time be eligible for adoption in all settings and institutions. Thus, in order to educate teachers of religion, the Church has made available multiple, diverse sources of religious knowledge (self-learning, various courses offered by the eparchies, Spiritual Academies, and other institutions of higher education). But the legitimacy of these sources is often questioned, for instance by asking whether the institution that delivers diplomas of religious higher education has been granted formal state recognition. The teachers' quest for being acknowledged as competent technicians of religious education leads to competing claims for the authenticity of the sources of their training.
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