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Anthropologist: Europe Should Face Itself in Turkey’s Mirror

Published on April 27, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, Europe, religion cosmology, Us and Them

Zaman Daily Newspaper

At this time of the season, purple flowers bloom more fully in all corners of the Bosphorous, and purple clusters, enchanted because spring is coming at full speed, twine around. Being in Istanbul is a privilege under the shadow of purple clusters. Philosopher, anthropologist and sociologist Edgar Morin, was in Istanbul last weekend. Morin says, “Love is part of a life poem,” and he himself has proven the fact that if one does not know anything about poems, he/she cannot be a scientist.

“Despite all efforts by intolerant Europeans, Turks climb a 200-meter hill on the way to Saint George Orthodox Church in Istanbul, together with Christians and Muslims. It is not our duty to judge the people’s beliefs here, but the ability to pray side by side and the fraternity among nations. Europeans are not very familiar with this ability. They have been after sharing since the beginning of the 19th century. They do not see the “people” around but only race, religion and discrimination. Europeans, who are busy setting double standard snares, are now lagging far behind the idea of humanism”, Morin says. >> continue

Zaman Daily Newspaper

Shattering shaman myths: New book explores female roots of shamanism

Published on April 8, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, culture traditions, gender, persons and theories, religion cosmology

University of Buffalo Reporter

In a new book published last month by Random House, Barbara Tedlock, professor of anthropology, challenges the historical hegemony of the male shamanic tradition, restores women to their essential place in the history of spirituality and celebrates their continuing role in the worldwide resurgence of shamanism.

Tedlock’s book, “The Woman in a Shaman’s Body”, also presents empirical studies that find common shamanic practices to be very effective in medical terms and discusses why this is the case. Women shamans, she says, have often practiced in the fields of healing, birthing children, gathering and growing food, keeping communities in balance, presiding over ceremonies and rites of passage, maintaining relations with the dead, teaching, ministering to those in need, communing with nature to learn her secrets, preserving the wisdom traditions, divining the future and dancing with gods and goddesses. >> continue

University of Buffalo Reporter

Indigenousness and the Politics of Spirituality

Published on April 6, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, culture traditions, indigenous people / minorities, Native American, religion cosmology, Us and Them

Sabina Magliocco, Anthropology News April 2005, American Anthropological Association

The commodification of indigenous spirituality is based on Romanticism’s construction of indigenes as more authentic, closer to nature and the sacred than Westerners; but it grew out of popular fascination with indigenous spirituality, fueled partly by ethnography and its imitators. By the 1980s a growing popular literature on New Age mysticism was emerging, drawing many concepts from Romantic notions of indigenous spirituality.

The commodification of spirituality led to outrage on the part of many indigenous peoples that white “wannabees” were playing at being Indian and appropriating their spiritual traditions. Some Native American groups decreed that only members of their own tribes would be permitted to practice certain traditions. Another possibility that appealed to some indigenous groups was to copyright their spiritual practices through the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

The idea that the right to spiritual practice is determined by blood violates everything we know about the constructed nature of race, ethnicity and culture. As anthropologists, we cannot turn our backs on our most fundamental assumptions, even to protect indigenous groups whose spiritual traditions have been fetishized. Taken to its logical extreme, it leads directly to essentialization and racism. >> continue

Sabina Magliocco, Anthropology News April 2005, American Anthropological Association

New book: Divination and Healing: Potent Vision

Published on April 1, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, books, medical anthropology / ethnobothany, religion cosmology

Tucson Weekly

Divination and Healing: Potent Vision, a scholarly collection of articles from the University of Arizona Press, examines a number of divinatory systems in Africa, Asia and the Americas. Divination is present, to some extent, in all cultures, ranging from well-known types like astrology, tarot and a variety of psychic activities, to those a bit more arcane, involving such diverse phenomenon as umbilical cords, comet tails, bouncing pearls, roosters, rats and cheese.

For the most part, social scientists have viewed these pursuits from a materialist perspective, seeing them as the illusionary byproducts of the human desire for control in a perilous and unpredictable world. However, in recent years, anthropologists have begun reassessing divinatory frameworks and the subjective meaning they have for participants, because of the growing recognition that many of these techniques actually work. >> continue

Tucson Weekly

Young Muslims: Search for a True Islam – by Anthropologist Martijn de Koning

Published on March 28, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, religion cosmology, websites

Anthropologist Martijn de Koning (Leiden University, Netherlands)

Since the murder on Van Gogh radical Muslims are the centre of attention. However, it is still a minor group that is radicalizing. In this lecture the focus will be on the life of ordinary, not radical and not criminal, young Muslims and how they negotiate in different domains (especially internet) about what Islam is, what the importance of Islam is and how they should practice Islam. In the end some concluding remarks will be made on the relationship between ‘radical’ and ‘moderate’ Islam. >> continue

SEE ALSO:
Anthropologist Martijn de Koning is one of the blogging anthropologists! I found his blog after he had left a message in my guestbook. He writes mostly in Dutch but has a huge collection of Islam-related links. Very interesting – and partly in English – is www.religionresearch.org, a blog by several academics who research religion including Martijn Koning. Check also their news aggregator with links to religion-related news stories from around the world!

Anthropologist Martijn de Koning (Leiden University, Netherlands)

Since the murder on Van Gogh radical Muslims are the centre of attention. However, it is still a minor group that is radicalizing. In this lecture the focus will be on the life of…