Ritual Revitalisation After Socialism
Ritual Revitalisation After Socialism

Author: László Fosztó

Publisher: LIT Verlag Münster

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 3643101759

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Although postsocialist Romania ranks as one of the most religious countries in Europe, the role of religion in public life is relatively little understood. This book investigates a village in Transylvania populated by members of two minority groups, Hungarians and Roma. Religion and ritual provide important resources for individuals and communities seeking to assert themselves publicly. The need for public affirmation among minorities is acute, but the forms of ritual they adopt differ. Some groups are more receptive to the revival of communal rituals and "traditions", whereas for others revitalisation seems to be more effective when it is individually focused through conversion to Pentecostalism. The book demonstrates that, even within a small community, different segments may opt for divergent forms of religious and cultural revival. Whereas Calvinism relies on the affirmation of cultural values to mobilise the faithful, Pentecostalism advocates a new form of moral personhood which is particularly attractive to Roma.

Ritual, Rapture and Rebellion
Ritual, Rapture and Rebellion

Author: Marianne Blom Brodersen

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2024-11-01

Total Pages: 542

ISBN-13: 1805397729

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Gitanos of el Rastro carry an ‘ontology of simultaneity’ as self-employed traders and Pentecostal practitioners in Madrid. This makes the Spanish Romani be considered as both a part of and apart from mainstream society. This book is an anthropological account of a group of middle and upper-class Gitanos and their ways of creating a ‘society within society’ based upon distinct cultural, moral and ideological values, notions and practices. The study renders a comprehensive perspective on social processes of classification, stratification, ‘othering’ and the role of ‘strangers’ in society and how these processes unfold in the interface between social, ritual and economic life on a local to global scale.

Dying and Death in 18th-21st Century Europe
Dying and Death in 18th-21st Century Europe

Author: Corina Rotar

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2014-03-17

Total Pages: 496

ISBN-13: 1443857467

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book features the second selection of the most representative papers presented at the international conference “Dying and Death in 18th–21st Century Europe” (ABDD), a traditional scientific event organized every year in Alba Iulia, Romania. The book invites the reader on a fascinating journey across the last three centuries of Europe, using the concept of death as a guide. The past and present realities of the complex phenomena of death and dying in Romania, the United Kingdom, Lithuania, Serbia, Macedonia, Poland, USA, Germany, Sweden, Finland, and Italy are dealt with by authors from varying backgrounds, including historians, sociologists, psychologists, priests, humanists, anthropologists, and doctors. This is proof that death as a topic cannot be confined to one science; the deciphering of its meanings and of the shifts it effects requires a joint, interdisciplinary effort.

From the Mists of Martyrdom
From the Mists of Martyrdom

Author: Ildikó Gyöngyvér Sárközi

Publisher: LIT Verlag Münster

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 3643908938

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book is the result of nearly three years of fieldwork among the Sibe, an ethnic minority long caught up in processes of Chinese imperial expansion and nation building. Split into two groups since the eighteenth century, 5000 kilometres separate Sibe in their Manchurian homeland from their co-ethnics in Xinjiang, northwest China. After 200 years, contacts were re-established in the 1950s. In this study, the author focuses on the (re)construction of ethnic awareness by ``local'' and ``official'' Sibe historians. Analysing how the cornerstone of Sibe history~-- the Great Western Resettlement~-- was turned into a myth, she demonstrates that writing their own history allowed the Sibe to reinterpret their shared past and identity. Combining analysis of primary sources and text-based data with ethnographic observations, this monograph offers a window on previously unknown dimensions of Chinese nation-building and makes an original contribution to historical anthropology.

Managing Firms and Families
Managing Firms and Families

Author: Daria Tereshina

Publisher: LIT Verlag Münster

Published: 2022-02

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 3643914083

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book investigates the moral dimensions of petty capitalism in Russia. Drawing on an ethnographic enquiry into the small-scale, family-based private sector of the city of Smolensk, it examines the values, moral ideas and sentiments that are entangled in the everyday workings of small businesses. The book situates the realm of values within the broader dynamics of Russia's political economy and the global circuits of capital. The moral frameworks of entrepreneurs incorporate conflicting values, such that moralities associated with the Soviet order are intertwined with market orientations and neoliberal ideologies.

On Money and Mettā
On Money and Mettā

Author: Laura Hornig

Publisher:

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 3643963408

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Based on eighteen months of research in the lowland Myanmar town of Pathein, this book investigates manifold economic activities on the ground. Particular attention is paid to the self-employed and their relationships with relatives, workers, and community members. The ethnography covers a range of topics, including business formation and succession, recruitment, child labour, ethnicity, indebtedness and charity. It is demonstrated that, amidst rapidly changing socio-economic conditions, values rooted in kinship morality and Buddhism remain significant and continue to shape people's economic reasoning and activities. These values und moral aspects stand in a dialectical relationship with changing economic realities.

Small Is Good
Small Is Good

Author: Anne-Erita Berta

Publisher: LIT Verlag Münster

Published: 2023-04

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 3643914091

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In a neoliberal market economy, small, independent businesses represent an alternative to large corporate enterprises. Based on 12 months of fieldwork in Aarhus, DenmarkÆs second largest city, this book explores the lives and social values of small, independent business owners, most of them shopkeepers. Owners organize their firms according to a morality that deviates from capitalist norms by aspiring to create inalienable commodities within networks of meaningful economic exchange. Their success in doing so is explained through in-depth analysis of contemporary household organization.

Doing "Gong Culture"
Doing

Author: Hoai Tran

Publisher: LIT Verlag Münster

Published: 2022-12-28

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 3643914067

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book shows how the efforts of various actors in 'doing Gong culture' contribute to preserving the intangible heritage of ethnic minorities in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. Tran's research challenges the conventional perspective that views heritagization as a process of cultural appropriation in which local heritage practitioners become cultural 'proprietors', who in UNESCO's view differ from 'culture carriers'. He shows that local artists actively engage with other actors in the 'heritage community', thus contributing to the performance of a 'living' image of the 'Space of Gong Culture' on the heritage stage. In this intangible cultural heritage, practically, all actors are 'culture carriers'. "Drawing on long-term fieldwork and placing the focus on human interaction, Hoai Tran paints a very subtle and sophisticated picture of the 'heritage community' and its actors in Vietnam's central highlands. By investigating who is acting in and on the space of gong culture, with what motivations, interests, intents or desires, how they are doing so and how effectively, this book arrives at new ways of thinking about 'heritagization' in Vietnam." Gábor Vargyas, Research Center for the Humanities, Budapest

The Formation of Peripheral Capital
The Formation of Peripheral Capital

Author: Ceren Deniz

Publisher: LIT Verlag

Published: 2023-04-01

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 3643964072

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book engages critically with mainstream accounts of ‘Anatolian Tigers’ in contemporary Turkey. Based on her fieldwork in Çorum, Deniz explores the dynamics of medium-size businesses with a dual optic of political economy and moral economy. She demonstrates that the formation of the entrepreneurial stratum is a multifaceted process and zooms into a range of workplaces to show the entanglements of market and non-market dynamics in everyday life. This innovative work sheds original light on the role of kinship, religion and social values in shaping the everyday politics of labour. Ceren Deniz taught 'Economic Anthropology' at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg in 2020-2021.