The study shows, in chronological fashion, how African women writers in the past five decades have introduced a new, autobiographical discourse around their experience of excision, bringing nuance and vitality to the FGM debate.
Colombia has the largest black population in the Spanish-speaking world, but Afro-Colombians have long remained at the nation's margins. Their recent irruption into the political, social, and cultural spheres is tied to appeals to cultural difference, dramatized by the traditional music of Colombia's majority-black Southern Pacific region, often called currulao. Yet that music remains largely unknown and unstudied despite its complexity, aesthetic appeal, and social importance. Rites, Rights & Rhythms: A Genealogy of Musical Meaning in Colombia's Black Pacific is the first book-length academic study of currulao, inquiring into the numerous ways it has been used: to praise the saints, to grapple with modernization, to dramatize black politics, to perform the nation, to generate economic development and to provide social amelioration in a context of war. Author Michael Birenbaum Quintero draws on both archival and ethnographic research to trace these and other understandings of how currulao has been understood, illuminating a history of struggles over the meanings of currulao that are also struggles over the meanings of blackness in Colombia. Moving from the eighteenth century to the present, Rites, Rights & Rhythms asks how musical meaning is made, maintained, and sometimes abandoned across historical contexts as varied as colonial slavery, twentieth-century national populism, and neoliberal multiculturalism. What emerges is both a rich portrait of one of the hemisphere's most important and understudied black cultures and a theory of history traced through the performative practice of currulao.
Recent years have seen extensive discussion about the continuing retreat from marriage, the increasing demand for the right to marry from previously excluded groups, and the need to protect those who do not wish to marry from being forced to do so. At the same time, weddings are big business, couples are spending more than ever before on getting married, and marriage ceremonies are increasingly elaborate. It is therefore timely to reflect on the rites of marriage, as well as the right to marry (or not to marry), and the relationship between them. To this end, this new interdisciplinary collection brings together scholars from numerous fields, including law, sociology, anthropology, psychology, demography, theology and art and design. Focusing on England and Wales, it explores in depth the specific issues arising from this jurisdiction's Anglican heritage, demographic development, current laws and social practices.
This multi-disciplinary collection of essays from the Cambridge Socio-Legal Group is concerned with the varying circumstances, manner, timing and experiences of birth. It contains essays from a wide range of disciplines including law, medicine, anthropology, history and sociology, examining birth from the perspectives of mother, doctor, midwife and father. Questions considered in the book include: who has power during the birthing process? How has the experience of birth changed over time? Should birth mark a significant change in the legal status of the foetus? What is the proper role of birth registration? What role, if any, do fathers have in the birthing process? What legal rights should the woman have to refuse treatment during the birthing process? What is the significance of changes of the age at which women give birth? This stimulating collection of papers provides new insights into one of life's most momentous moments.
Refugee displacement is a global phenomenon that has uprooted millions of individuals over the past century. In the 1980s, repatriation became the preferred option for resolving the refugee crisis. As human rights achieved global eminence, refugees' right of return fell under its umbrella. Yet return as a right and its practice as a rite created a radical disconnect between principle and everyday practice, and the repatriation of refugees and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) remains elusive in cases of forced displacement of victims by ethnic conflict. Reviewing cases of ethnic displacement throughout the twentieth century in Europe, Asia, and Africa, Howard Adelman and Elazar Barkan juxtapose the empirical lack of repatriation in cases of ethnic conflict, unless accompanied by coercion. The emphasis on repatriation during the last several decades has obscured other options, leaving refugees to spend years warehoused in camps. Repatriation takes place when identity, defined by ethnicity or religion, is not at the center of the displacing conflict, or when the ethnic group to which the refugees belong are not a minority in their original country or in the region to which they want to return. Rather than perpetuate a ritual belief in return as a right without the prospect of realization, Adelman and Barkan call for solutions that bracket return as a primary focus in cases of ethnic conflict.
Colombia has the largest black population in the Spanish-speaking world, but Afro-Colombians have long remained at the nation's margins. Their recent irruption into the political, social, and cultural spheres is tied to appeals to cultural difference, dramatized by the traditional music of Colombia's majority-black Southern Pacific region, often called currulao. Yet that music remains largely unknown and unstudied despite its complexity, aesthetic appeal, and social importance. Rites, Rights & Rhythms: A Genealogy of Musical Meaning in Colombia's Black Pacific is the first book-length academic study of currulao, inquiring into the numerous ways it has been used: to praise the saints, to grapple with modernization, to dramatize black politics, to perform the nation, to generate economic development and to provide social amelioration in a context of war. Author Michael Birenbaum Quintero draws on both archival and ethnographic research to trace these and other understandings of how currulao has been understood, illuminating a history of struggles over the meanings of currulao that are also struggles over the meanings of blackness in Colombia. Moving from the eighteenth century to the present, Rites, Rights & Rhythms asks how musical meaning is made, maintained, and sometimes abandoned across historical contexts as varied as colonial slavery, twentieth-century national populism, and neoliberal multiculturalism. What emerges is both a rich portrait of one of the hemisphere's most important and understudied black cultures and a theory of history traced through the performative practice of currulao.
Reclaim the Right to a Sacred, Sustainable Death Exploring the spiritual and legal aspects of alternative death-ways, home funerals, and green burial Death Rights and Rites presents practical information and questions for approaching death and dying with a sense of sacred meaning. You will discover ideas for navigating the spiritual and legal issues related to home-based dying, home funerals, and alternative burial methods. Reverend Judith Karen Fenley offers insights into approaching relevant legal frameworks with respect while assisting your loved one in ways that support the best medical care, the natural environment, and the emotional needs of the community. Explore ideas for memorial services and ways to be open to spontaneous rituals for letting go, preparing for death, being at peace, and more. It is possible to manifest your deepest values before, during, and after death. Death Rights and Rites shares examples and provides support as you explore final transitions that are environmentally conscious and spiritually meaningful. Includes a foreword by Jerrigrace Lyons, founder of Final Passages: The Institute of Conscious Dying, Home Funeral & Green Burial Education and an epilogue by Oberon Zell, cofounder of the Church of All Worlds
Although generally resented and deemed unfavourable for individuals, societies and nations, grief, grievance, and grieving, along with a complex list of epithets that could, under varying circumstances, accompany them – racial grief, political grievance, protracted grieving, chronic grief, traumatic, unresolved grievance – nevertheless occupy a significant place in culture and its manifestations in literature, art, history, science, and politics. Culture and the Rites/Rights of Grief offers an intellectual excursion into realms of potentially regenerative problematics, too frequently dismissed without due consideration. In this light, the volume constitutes a weighty contribution to the field of literary and cultural studies. First and foremost, however, Culture and the Rites/Rights of Grief is to be intellectually enjoyed by readers with an interest in present-day literary, cultural and political phenomena, at the intersection of which grief and grieving execute an imposing presence, albeit one that remains as indeterminate and flitting as the nature of contemporary cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary encounters.
Women's Rites of Passage grew out of Abigail Brenner s desire to answer some fundamental questions about the role of rites of passage in contemporary women s lives. Relying on a research study involving over 50 women, Brenner shows how women today understand the need to take responsibility for their lives and for directing their own paths, and are beginning to do so by creating their own very personal rites of passage.