Migrating rituals: negotiations of belonging and otherness among Tamils in Norway

ABSTRACT

By examining a funeral ritual devised by Tamil refugees living north of the Arctic Circle in Norway, I argue that the study of migrant rituals offers new insights into migrants’ senses of belonging, identity and wellbeing. Within a context of the exclusion and inclusion of cultural minorities, I describe the process of creating a funeral ritual that involves encounters between local Norwegians and Tamil refugees. The funeral followed the sudden death of a Tamil worker at the local fish plant as a result of a freak accident. The article focuses on how the Tamils’ work of devising and performing the funeral speaks to local migrant experiences of living on the boundaries between the Tamil and Norwegian life-worlds. A centrepiece of the case study involves a young widow, thus the analysis includes social and cultural dimensions of widow- and womanhood, while also highlighting issues of migration and the shared human condition. In conclusion, I underscore the way in which the migrant ritual, embodiment and (Othering) discourse cohere together to form a temporal phenomenon that responds to the present-ism of human life.     

Mobilising diasporas for justice. Opportunity structures and the presencing of a violent past

ABSTRACT

This article investigates how the global dominance of the transitional justice (TJ) discourse and practice – and the controversies and conflicts that arise around TJ – have come to make up an important context for diaspora mobilisation. The article looks at the increasingly globalised mechanisms and norms of transitional justice as a set of opportunity structures – political, legal and discursive – which shape diaspora mobilisation. Diaspora engagement in commemoration, truth-seeking and legal justice in relation to atrocities in Rwanda and Sri Lanka is studied. The article shows that in relation to Rwanda, state dominance and divides are largely replicated in the diasporic space, while the Sri Lankan case provides examples of how Tamil diaspora engagement have been able to reverse power dynamics around TJ. Combining opportunity structures with the concept of ‘past presencing’, the article shows how diaspora groups appropriate and strategise in relation to the dominant norms and practices of TJ, and how in doing so the past is performed and experienced in ways which are both personally and politically meaningful.     

同仁县年都乎村村落山神信仰与村落民俗的民族志分析

神灵信仰和仪式构成了文化的基本特质,也构成了社会形貌的象征展示方式。精神世界的神灵存在是现实世界中仪式举行的观念依据,祈求护佑的功利性意愿使得作为村落守护神的外来神并没有受到客观上的排斥,即便是既有的历史文化的冲突也被主观上包容或消解。本文通过对年都乎村村落山神信仰与村落民俗的民族志分析,探讨村落信仰与仪式、民俗空间与村落社会建构之间的关系。     

Communities of belonging in the temporariness of the Danish Asylum System: Shalini’s anchoring points

Refugees often find themselves in a protracted situation of temporariness, as applications for asylum are processed, deportations negotiated and possible extensions of temporary protection status considered within the context of increasingly restrictive governmental policies across Europe. Through the case of a young Sri Lankan woman who arrived in Denmark as an ‘unaccompanied asylum-seeking minor’ and spent five years within the Danish asylum system, this article explores how she experienced moving through different legal categories and the institutional settings associated with them. I argue that, by engaging in social relations in the localities where she was situated, she developed places of belonging that could serve as ‘anchoring points’ providing some measure of stability in her otherwise unpredictable and precarious life situation. This case suggests that, even under conditions of protracted temporariness and legal uncertainty, individuals are able to create important anchoring points and develop communities of belonging that can serve them in a difficult process of belonging to Denmark.     

人类学仪式研究评述

仪式研究一直是人类学研究中的一个重要领域，几乎所有的人类学流派都对仪式有着独特的理解和认知角度，人类学研究的发展自然也会在仪式研究中有所反映。本文试图对人类学中的仪式研究作一个大致的评述。这无论是对仪式的知识谱系的梳理，还是对学科的学理逻辑方法论的理解，都是必要的。     

Back to the future: religious mobility among Danish Pakistani Sufi Muslims

ABSTRACT

Pakistani migrant families in Denmark are embedded in a transnational social field, one that stretches between the rural villages in Punjab that they left behind in the 1960s and 1970s, and their new home in greater Copenhagen. However, the upcoming generation, born and raised in Denmark, often has an ambivalent relationship with the homeland of their parents. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the Sufi tariqa(order, path) called Naqshbandi Mujaddidi Saifi, this article explores how the ritual of ‘zikr Allah’ (the commemoration of God) provides an opportunity for the Copenhagen Saifis to cultivate new connections with Pakistan, beyond the kinship networks and the family village of origin. The ritual is significant for their aspiration to become pious Muslims. In this process, Pakistan comes to be ascribed with new meanings. Whereas the parents’ generation associated Pakistan with family and kin, property, houses, and power connected to the village of origin, these pious Saifis begin to associate Pakistan with spirituality, purity, and love for their shaykh in particular and the Sufi tariqa in general.     

人类学视野下的仪式分类

作为人类学核心研究内容之一的仪式观念与实践,其分类纷繁多样,神：圣／世俗是仪式分类的基本架构。不过在新近的人类学研究中,仪式的分类突破了传统的二分思维,越来越具有世俗与日常习俗的包容性。本文借助近年来人类学的相关研究,对仪式行为和近似仪式实践作一简略梳理。     

Tourist brides and migrant grooms: Cuban–Danish couples and family reunification policies

ABSTRACT

As a development strategy mass tourism often precipitates social changes, expected and unexpected. Emigration through marriage may seem to be an unlikely by-product of the expanding tourist industry in Cuba, but the increasing number of Cubans emigrating through marriage to a foreign partner has paralleled the influx of tourists since the mid-1990s. This article explores how gender dynamics in the Cuban tourist milieu intersect with gendered underpinnings of family reunification policies in Denmark by focusing on the marriage migration pattern of Cuban grooms with Nordic brides. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Denmark among Cuban marriage migrants and their spouses, the study shows a cross-border migration pattern shaped by multiple factors including global economic asymmetries, the eroticisation of Cuban culture in the tourism industry, and the gender egalitarian welfare state of Denmark.     

清明祭祖节俗的城市化进程——以香港“清明思亲法会”为中心

清明祭祖节俗依附于中国传统农业社会对土地的依赖.随着社会城市化进程日益加快,香港清明习俗并未因为取消土葬而日渐式微,反而衍生出清明思亲法会的新节俗.这意味着传统清明祭祖的仪式空间由户外转向室内,参与仪式的主体由个体家庭转为群体,仪式目的从传统的思亲报恩扩大到了具有公益性质的慈善事业.2008年清明节被列为中国内地法定假日之后,香港清明祭祖的新节俗,也已经在部分内地城市如温州、三亚等地出现.     

Incense and holy bread: the sense of belonging through ritual among Middle Eastern Christians in Denmark

ABSTRACT

This article investigates how two Middle Eastern Christian churches in Denmark are constructed as particular sensorial spaces that invite attendees to participate in and identify with specific times and spaces. As with other Christian groups, rituals of the Sunday mass constitute a highlight of the activities that confirm the congregations’ faith and community, but for members of a minority faith, these rituals also serve other functions related to identification and belonging. Inspired by a practice-oriented [Bell, Catherine. (1992). Ritual Practice, Ritual Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press] and phenomenological approach to place-making [Cresswell, Tim. (2002). “Introduction: Theorizing Place.” In Mobilizing Place, Placing Mobility: The Politics of Representation in a Globalized World, edited by Ginette Verstraete and Tim Cresswell, 11–32. Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi B.V.] through sensory communication [Leistle, Bernard. (2006). “Ritual as Sensory Communication: A Theoretical and Analytical Perspective.” In Ritual and Identity: Performative Practices as Effective Transformations of Social Reality, edited by Klaus-Peter Köpping, Bernhard Leistle, and Michael Rudolph, 33–74. Berlin: LIT Verlag; Pink, Sarah. (2009). Doing Sensory Ethnography. London: Sage], the article examines constructions of religious identity and belonging through ritual practices. The findings stem from fieldwork carried out in 2014–2015 and are part of a larger cross-disciplinary study of Egyptian, Iraqi and Assyrian Christians in Denmark. We argue that in various ways, the ritual forms a performative space for memory and belonging which, through bodily practices and engagement with the materialities of the church rooms, creates a memory that reconnects the practitioners with places elsewhere. More specifically, we argue that the Sunday ritual facilitates the connection with God and the eternal, a place and time with fellow believers, and a relocation to remember and re-enter a pre-migration past and ‘homeland’.     

裕固族的礼仪歌及其功能解读

本文通过对裕固族生活礼仪歌、人生礼仪歌和生产礼仪歌的浅析,指出裕固族的礼仪歌是其独特生产方式和草原文化的产物,并在一定程度上反作用于裕固族社会生活的方方面面。     

Winning,Westminster-style: Tamil diaspora interest group mobilisation in Canada and the UK

ABSTRACT

Migration scholars are becoming increasingly interested in diasporas and in their ‘host state’ activities. In a separate body of literature, foreign policy analysts have been considering domestic sources of foreign policy and increasingly the impact of diaspora interest groups on host state foreign policy. The convergence of these two strands offers fertile ground to explore the efforts of diaspora interest groups on host state foreign policy. This illustrative, comparative case study adds additional rigour to existing analyses of mobilised diaspora host state lobbying by further conceptualising policy outcome through the application of the literature on interest groups. Theoretically, it further situates diaspora lobbying into the foreign policy literature by introducing Role Theory, which aids in demonstrating the impact of structural differences when considering similar actors. Via this theoretically informed template, the paper argues that slight contextual variation in two seemingly analogous contexts can discernibly impact outcomes, in this case on whether or not Tamil diaspora interest groups influenced British and Canadian foreign policy in 2009 toward the civil war in Sri Lanka.     

‘I didn’t think I would be emotional until I started saying the oath’ – emotionalising and ritualising citizenship

ABSTRACT

The quote in the title from a newly naturalised citizen emphasises that taking an oath and affirming one’s loyalty to a new country can be experienced as a surprisingly emotional matter. But how does the ritual transformation of migrant identities turn into an emotional experience? This paper explores primarily the emotional dimension of naturalisation rituals and the distributed agency involved in two concrete cases from Australia and Denmark. Although practical reasons may be considered to be the most important motivating factor when it comes to applying for citizenship, these are often mixed with a more identity-based perception of citizenship as a symbol of affiliation with the new society. And citizenship ceremonies become one of the occasions in which the symbolic and emotional dimensions of citizenship are enacted. Thus, the introduction of ceremonies in an increasing number of countries may be considered a step towards the emotionalisation of citizenship, in order to ensure cohesion, unity, and a sense of belonging, since the emotional significance of citizenship is considered to be a guarantee for loyalty and the desired civil awareness.     

电视仪式:电视人类学研究发展

相较于其他艺术现象,电视及其传播、接受、反应行为具有更多的人类学涵意。对电视仪式的揭示与探索是电视人类学研究的核心。本文指出,电视节目的策划制作与收视实践,是一种仪式的现代性表征。电视仪式就是以电视为媒介中心组织起来的结构性行为。人类学仪式借助电视这一现代传媒技术已经深刻地切入到人们的日常生活之中,发挥着重要的结构性作用。对电视仪式的研究既可以展示古代仪式的现代表征,亦可以揭示当代电视人类学的深刻意义与广阔前景。     

论台湾原住民的农耕祭仪

农业一直是中国各民族重要的经济形态,很多民族长期以来形成了重视农业、以农作物种植为中心的价值观以及形式多样的风俗和信仰。台湾原住民作为中国少数民族独特的一支,以农耕为主业,农作物的丰收与否,对其生活有着极为重要的影响。在认为人的一切吉凶祸福皆与广义的神灵存在有关联的族群部落中,祈求物产丰收、消除灾祸的种种祭祀仪式扮演着重要的角色,有关播种、收获的种种祭仪成了共同祭祀的根源。     

阿细密枝山祭祀仪式与生态和谐——以云南省弥勒县西一镇红万村为例

仪式历来被认为是社会生活的重要因素,影响到人类生活的诸方面。在生态和谐方面,仪式的作用是不可忽视的,仪式为人们制造了神圣的时间与空间。以云南省弥勒县西一镇红万村的密枝山祭祀为例,我们可以看出仪式与生态的依存关系,以及村民们如何在仪式实践中实现与生态的和谐。     

Homeland holidays as anchors of immigrant identity: New Year (Novy God) celebration among young Russian Israelis

ABSTRACT

The article presents the emerging forms of ethno-cultural activism among the so-called Generation 1.5 of Russian-speakers, who immigrated as older children or adolescents and came of age in Israel. It describes and interprets two episodes of the New Year’s Eve (Novy God) celebrations organized by these 1.5ers in Israel in 2015 and 2016 through the constructionist lens applied to ethnic identity in migration. The article explores the process of reinvention of homeland rituals by the children of immigrants by focusing on the emerging hybrid forms of New Year celebration in the Israeli context where, until recently, this holiday was deemed illegitimate. It examines the hybrid components of this invented (or renovated) ritual, which combines Russian-Soviet traditions with the local repertoire of Eastern Jews and other components borrowed from Orthodox and Secular Judaism. The main argument is that ritual celebrations are expressions of immigrant evolving ethnic identity, the need for empowerment, a claim for public visibility, belonging and social inclusion.     

Between international student mobility and work migration: experiences of students from EU’s newer member states in Denmark

ABSTRACT

Since 2009, there has been a noticeable increase in the number of students from EU’s newer member states, who enrol as full-degree students at Danish universities. Attracted by the fee-free access to highly ranked universities, these students often arrive with dreams of creating better lives for themselves, and of accumulating Western educational capital. Students from the EU’s newer member states are usually reliant on jobs to sustain themselves in Denmark. However, many find it hard to get regular jobs, and some of them become trapped in semi-legal employment or in low-status, low-paid jobs. Drawing on empirical material collected during a long-term ethnographic fieldwork among full-degree students attending English-medium MA-programmes at a Danish university, this article explores how students from the EU’s newer member states make sense of their lives as students and workers in Denmark, and how they respond to experiences of unequal access to student jobs.     

记忆仪式沉浸化：共同体意识传播的情感动员

2019年国庆70周年群众游行情感动员的化境,指向共同体意识传播的心理化过程,"活动"与"时间"的结合赋予记忆空间以表达意义的角色,凸显了从"体验到沉浸"的叙事性转变。其中,诉诸情感、仪式设计和情感变压,折射情感动员"符号凝炼-内涵解释-交互联动"的"修辞结构",以互动仪式链的运作机制衔接相互关注与情感连带的修辞指向;时空情境创设与视听符号的综合运用,映射观念象征符和行为移置链交互作用的"沉浸结构",以符号所指的解码释义连接"凝缩"与"唤醒"的修辞实践;情感动员的价值感知、情感同化和接纳重构,投射共同体意识传播"情感-利益-价值"演绎的"认同结构",以沉浸空间的层级性演进链接自我建构与匹配性建构的修辞意蕴。     

辛家法会仪式及文化解读

本文在田野调查的基础上,运用民族学的方法及仪式理论,对辛家法会的仪式结构及文化进行了初步解读。