Walking atomic vegas: ritual,memorial, and toxic landscapes

ABSTRACT

This article proposes the use of ritualized walking to mark and remember invisible threats and the ‘slow violence’ of contaminated landscapes undergoing gradual change. To exemplify the idea, the article describes our proposal for a Plutonium Memorial design, which would be a mnemonic device for marking the location of a proposed nuclear waste storage facility buried under the iconic Las Vegas Strip. Supported with evidence that ritual is commonly used to reinforce collective conscience and memory outside the sacred realm, the core of this memorial design would be regularized and ritualized pilgrimages from one of the most important and symbolic American landscapes, Las Vegas, through the equally prominent Grand Canyon to the less well-known uranium mines in Arizona (the source of nuclear power). Though hyperbolic, the Plutonium Memorial demonstrates how an active cultural-based memorial has potential to preserve narratives around contaminated landscapes. To expand beyond this radical example we schematically speculate on other scenarios that could incorporate more representative (less extreme) haptic rituals around memorials marking slowly unfolding environmental disasters. The intention is to provide new visions for durable memorials built around culture rather than structures, which are engaged with not only the past, but also the future.     

Signs,Symbols, and Interaction Theory

Abstract

People may attribute their success in life to their own hard work and ability or to forces external to themselves like luck, chance, God, or other people. These attributions have social causes and emotional consequences (Seeman 1959; Wheaton 1980). Theory and research indicate that belief in personal control is associated with low levels of psychological distress compared to the belief that outcomes are determined by forces external to oneself. Less is known about the varieties of these external forces. If people do not attribute success to pesonal control, they may attribute it to luck, family background, connections, or God I examine the relationship of various attributions of success with distress, as measured by symptoms of depression and anxiety. I find that attributing success in life to luck and to good connections with others significantly increase distress. However, attributing success to God and to family background are not significantly associated with distress. The internal attribution of success to personal control significantly decreases distress. I discuss possible reasons why some external attributions increase distress, while others do not.     

Transnational households and ritual: an overview

In this article we introduce five papers, all by social anthropologists, all concerned with transnational households and ritual. Despite wide–ranging research on transnational migration and diasporas, many aspects have been accorded less consideration than they deserve. The transnational practices of migrant families, other than remittances and other economic activity, remain under–investigated. Some thought has been given to the transnational dimension of religious belief systems, notably Islam, but the micro–politics of religion has been largely ignored, and there has been little discussion of transnational religious practices (rituals) at the level of households and families, especially those performed by migrants back in their countries of origin. Household–level analyses of the performances of and meanings attributed to life–crisis rituals and consideration of what Salih has called the ‘transnational division of ritual space’ offer a valuable route to understanding relations between place, culture, ethnicity and gender among migrants in a transnational world, and illuminate contemporary processes of globalization.     

Symbols,sentiments, and stories: Urban culture and social problems

Cultural approaches to the study of urban life have enjoyed brief bursts of popularity within the social sciences over the past century. Although many urban sociologists acknowledge that meanings, symbols, narratives, and feelings, in other words local culture, help shape urban places, relatively few take this notion any further. In this article, I first lay out the foundations of cultural approaches to the study of urban life. Second, I argue for the continued significance of the distinction between space and place. Third, I describe a contemporary stream of urban sociology called the urban culturalist perspective. Fourth, I describe important insights gleaned from studies embracing cultural urbanist approaches to an area of urban research receiving increasing attention: gentrification. Fifth, and finally, I outline a few ways in which micro‐cultural investigations of urban phenomena provide useful opportunities for public sociology.     

Creativity,brands, and the ritual process: Confrontation and resolution in advertising agencies

The intensity of modern business has increased pressure for innovation, which places greater emphasis on creativity. This article explores one of the central sites of creativity in the American corporate world, the advertising agency. We examine how creativity in agencies is managed, controlled, and channeled to produce advertisements. We contend that the brand advertised and the agency’s creative collaborations have properties of ritual symbols and that rituals mediate tension inherent in two forces, stability and change, which define the brand and the advertising collaboration. The article offers an analytical perspective on creativity and a new perspective on rituals and ritual symbols.     

Return to work: a case of PTSD, dissociative identity disorder, and satanic ritual abuse

This case study investigated an intervention that enabled an individual with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), and satanic ritual abuse to return to work after discharge from psychiatric inpatient treatment. The Occupational Questionnaire [88] revealed past difficulties in organization, awareness of time, communication, cooperation, frustration tolerance, competition, stress management, goal setting, and amnesia resulting in incomplete tasks and sporadic attendance at work. The Role Checklist [72] identified alters valuing work and employed in the past. The Modified Interest Checklist [70] identified running as an interest that 24 alters shared. Based on the initial evaluations, three times a week treadmill running was used as an intervention that built work skills (as measured by the Clerical Work Sample of the Valpar Component Work Sample Series [97]) necessary to sustain gainful employment upon discharge. After intervention, this individual improved in awareness of time, stress management, and goal setting abilities and was less amnestic as per the Occupational Questionnaire [88] and four additional alters expressed an interest in work according to the Modified Interest Checklist [70].     

Controversies and challenges of ritual abuse

Children who have survived ritual abuse have endured physical, psychological, and sexual trauma; brain-washing; and mind-altering drugs. Their trust in adults has been eroded. Their coping strategies include anxiety, denial, self-hypnosis, dissociation, and self-mutilation. Although reports of ritual abuse initially seem hard to believe, nurses have a responsibility to detect clues to abuse, diagnose the child's responses, and recognize controversial issues regarding ritual abuse. To evaluate ritual abuse, nurses should avoid interview strategies that influence the child's recall (e.g., coaching, suggestions) and recognize that some reports are discounted as false memories because they emerge from fantasy, distortions, innocent deceptions, false beliefs, lies, or adult coaching. Nurses play an important role in case finding and treatment. They can evaluate clues to ritual abuse to reduce sources of error in assessment, build a child's trust, monitor their own attitudes toward ritual abuse, and intervene to increase self-esteem, empathy, boundary establishment, and coping. Nurses have an important opportunity to detect and begin healing the wounds caused by a child's abuse.     

Ritual,and child sexual abuse,but not ritual child sexual abuse

Central to the controversy over ritual (satanic) child sexual abuse have been claims concerning agency ‘diagnoses’ of cases. Specifically, it has been alleged that agency findings of ritual abuse have been erroneous and are the product of poor practice. There is, though, little systematic information regarding agency assessment of suspected ritual abuse cases. This paper presents two cases where there was evidence both of child sexual abuse and ‘ritual’ but where agencies adjudged that these aspects occurred independently of one another and were not indicative of ritual child sexual abuse. The existence of these cases underlines the need for a broader and more balanced debate in respect of ritual abuse in general and the agency handling of these cases in particular. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Nationalising civilisational resources: sacred mountains and cosmopolitical ritual in Mongolia

This paper is concerned with the historical process by which elements drawn from a religious ‘civilisation’ have been reinvented as specifically national phenomena. It examines the Mongolian state ceremonies for sacred mountains conducted by the President as an example of the reinvention of an institution originally produced by the wider culture or civilisation of the Buddhist ecumene encompassing both Mongolia and Tibet. Such ritual, I argue, can be thought of as ‘cosmopolitical’ in that sense that they engaged with non-humans as actors in the political arena. Furthermore, the contemporary reinvention of these practices has generated a space for a very different, but also cosmopolitical, register for conceiving of relations between human persons and the landscape.     

Age, debt and anxiety

What is the association between debt and anxiety? Is the relationship between age and anxiety in part due to financial debt? Recently there has been a renewed interest for the reconceptualization and measurement of socioeconomic status that moves beyond the standard education, occupation, and income. This paper uses credit card debt and stress regarding debt to examine the relationship among age, debt, and anxiety. Using data from a 1997 representative sample of more than 1,000 adults in Ohio, results show that anxiety does increase with the ratio of credit card debt to income, and with being in default; but credit card debt accounts for little of the age-anxiety association. Stress regarding overall debt does explain some of the age effect. In addition, stress also explains some of the effect of the credit card debt to income ratio, and all of the effect of default on anxiety.     

Symbols and the world system: National anthems and flags

When one examines current national anthems and flags, one finds a great deal of variety. What explains this variation? Possible factors include a nation's world-system position and its degree of modernization. Specifically, I analyze the ways in which world-system position and modernization affect the design or configuration—the syntactic structure—of the symbols national leaders adopt to convey their nation's identity. Findings reveal a link between a nation's world-system position and the structure of its symbols. Leaders of core nations adopt more basic anthems and flags than their semiperiphery and periphery counterparts. However, modernization has no such influence.     

Olfaction and transition: an essay on the ritual uses of smell

11 y a une connexion intrins6que entre I'olfaction et la transition, c'est-8-dire, le changement de catkgories. Etant donnk que cette association se retrouve dans le contexte des divers rites de passage 8 travers le monde, elle semble Otre universelle. C'est a cause du fait que les odeurs 6mannent toujours de leurs objets, et qu'habituellement elles signalent les processus de transformation, v.g., cuisson, putrkfaction, qu'elles sont utiliskes comme mkdiateurs (et comme support aux transitions) entre des catbgories sociales.
There is an intrinsic connection between olfaction and transition, or category-change. This association would appear to be universal, for it finds expression in the context of diverse rites of passage the world over. The author suggests that it is because smells constantly escape from their objects, and because of the way they normally signal processes of transformation, e.g., cooking, putrefaction, that they are used to mediate (and manage transitions) between social categories.     

The ritual abuse of children: Implications for clinical practice and research

The development of a 14‐year‐old female from defending herself from sexual crimes to committing such a crime is presented in case‐report form. Her individual history, family dynamics, and transgenerational patterns are explored. A review of the current literature is utilized to understand why some abused persons become abusers.