{"title":"African archives in the Caribbean: the yoruba tradition, cultural experts, and the unmaking of religious knowledge in twentieth-century Trinidad","authors":"D. Stewart","doi":"10.1080/02757206.2023.2249485","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2023.2249485","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Attending to how religious custodians, colonial agents, and scholars have exchanged knowledge across sites in Africa and the Caribbean during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this article raises questions about continuities and ruptures in religious traditions that challenge perceptions of homelands as sites of stable, originary knowledges/heritages and diasporas as sites of improvised and severed knowledges/heritages. Highlighting the Yoruba-Orisa1 religion in Trinidad as a rich diasporic site to work through these issues, I employ a transdisciplinary methodology to argue that historicizing and theorizing African heritage religions that have unfolded around and in the wake of the events of the transatlantic slave trade require comparative research methods – historical, sociolinguistic, phenomenological, decolonial, material cultural studies – that facilitate critical explorations of the multidirectional circulation of expert religious knowledge between Africa and its diasporas. In so doing, we can examine the Caribbean and the Americas not only as sites of African diasporic archives and religious history but also as archival diasporas of African continental religious and socio-political history.","PeriodicalId":46201,"journal":{"name":"History and Anthropology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88016175","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Introduction. Unsettling encounters: Sites, knowledge exchange, and the making of religion in Southeast Asia and the Caribbean","authors":"M. Bloembergen, D. Kloos","doi":"10.1080/02757206.2023.2249479","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2023.2249479","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article introduces a special issue on practices of religious and scholarly knowledge exchange in Southeast Asia and the Caribbean. In both regions, the makings of religion have been informed by unsettling encounters between religious experts on the one hand and academic scholars of, and in, religion on the other. These encounters, we argue, can be revealed and productively analyzed through a focus on sites of learning and exchange, such as schools and universities, temples and monasteries, holy shrines, conferences and workshops, but also texts and archives. At such sites, alternative actors, referred to in this special issue as ‘strategic amateurs and accidental experts’, often emerge as unexpected agents of religious change. After explaining the central theme and approach, we draw together and synthesize two strands of argument found in the separate articles, respectively the centrality of moral geographies and geographic imaginations to the making of religion and the intriguing role played by performances of expertise, either as a form of gatekeeping in religious communities and institutions or as alternative sources of religious knowledge and authority. The article concludes with a reflective note on the role of scholars in both fortifying and destabilizing understandings of region and religion.","PeriodicalId":46201,"journal":{"name":"History and Anthropology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88279950","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Graduate attributes, state policy, and Islamic preaching in Indonesia","authors":"J. Millie","doi":"10.1080/02757206.2023.2249482","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2023.2249482","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The development of state institutions for the management and administration of Islam has enriched the range of Islamic authorities in Indonesia, with distinctive effects for public Islam. The article examines the effects of an Indonesian policy decision of 1975 that was intended to develop specific graduate attributes – ‘modernity, openness and critical thought’ – in graduates of Islamic post-graduate study. It was decreed that Islamic graduates would be sent to post-graduate programmes at universities in the West, altering a policy setting that had previously favoured venerable sites of Islamic learning in the Middle East. The Ministry of Religion associated sites of post-graduate learning in the West with graduate attributes of openness and critical thought, and perceived that these attributes were necessary for the development of a cohort of technical experts with competency to observe and analyse Islam in Indonesian populations. Article problematizes this notion of graduate attributes in the religious sphere, noting their novelty in comparison with competencies required of Islamic leaders in Indonesian communities (connectedness, affirmation of tradition, ritual expertise, etc). Attributes of ‘openness and critical thought’ position technical experts as critical observers of other segments in Indonesian Islamic society, such as Indonesia’s popular preachers, many of whom are trained in sites of Islamic learning in the Middle East. In Indonesia’s contemporary Islamic public sphere, such technical experts, many of whom were trained in Western social science departments, maintain a critical distance from Indonesia’s popular preachers, the majority of whom (ironically) received religious training in sites of learning in the Middle East.","PeriodicalId":46201,"journal":{"name":"History and Anthropology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86064620","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Siting Islamic feminism: The Indonesian Congress of Women Islamic Scholars and the challenge of challenging patriarchal authority","authors":"D. Kloos, Nor Ismah","doi":"10.1080/02757206.2023.2249495","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2023.2249495","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article takes the first ever Indonesian Congress of Women Islamic Scholars (Kongres Ulama Perempuan Indonesia, KUPI), and its methodology for formulating religious opinions, as an entry point for analysing the challenge of challenging male, male-centred, and patriarchal authority in Islam. Although a recent initiative, KUPI must be understood in the context of a long and often contentious history of Indonesian secular activists and Islamic scholars (men and women) sounding each other out and seeking common ground in their efforts to reinterpret religious sources and develop new ideas about the position of women in society. Studying the event ethnographically as a site of public communication and exchange – of religious knowledge, views, and experiences – , and contextualizing it in the history of Indonesian Islamic practices and institutions, we argue that the main significance of KUPI lies in the way in which it expands the global Islamic feminist project from a scholarly and intellectual movement into a locally resonant and potentially impactful social movement.","PeriodicalId":46201,"journal":{"name":"History and Anthropology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-08-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86935240","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"No place like home for metalworkers: Household-based metal production at Early Bronze Age Çukuriçi Höyük and beyond","authors":"Sabina Cveček","doi":"10.1080/02757206.2023.2248169","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2023.2248169","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article questions the cross-cultural ethnographic insight of metalworking as a male craft, commonly performed in male spaces (workshops) away from female members of society, through the analysis of archaeological evidence for the household-based metal production within multi-gendered and multi-generational households and corresponding but rare ethnographic examples.","PeriodicalId":46201,"journal":{"name":"History and Anthropology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-08-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77490453","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
History and AnthropologyPub Date : 2023-08-25eCollection Date: 2024-01-01DOI: 10.1080/02757206.2023.2248166
Patrick Naef
{"title":"Walls of resistance: Underground memories and political violence in Colombia.","authors":"Patrick Naef","doi":"10.1080/02757206.2023.2248166","DOIUrl":"10.1080/02757206.2023.2248166","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In this article, I examine 'underground memories' to demonstrate how they serve as resources for resistance in the margins of Colombia. I focus on their relations with the urban fabric, looking at the ways the walls of Bogota and Medellin are used as canvases for spreading images and narratives about the conflict. I suggest that murals representing the violence serve as a repository for memories; they challenge hegemonic narratives and contribute to the recovery of public space. This analysis draws on three case studies. In the first one, I examine the impact of a mural in Bogota that denounced extrajudicial killings involving the Colombian army. The second case focuses on a community initiative aimed at collecting testimonies from residents in a marginalized district of Medellin. Finally, the last case study analyses the touristification of some of the many murals depicting the violence in Medellin. I argue that, to different degrees, all the memorial projects presented in this study challenge state narratives. Through representations of murdered teenagers, suspect military officers and even drug cartel bosses, they raise questions of social justice, impunity, illegality and the dramatic banalization of violence in the country. They broaden the narrative on the recent past, through histories and images that the Colombian state is still reluctant to unearth.</p>","PeriodicalId":46201,"journal":{"name":"History and Anthropology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-08-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10841080/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89172847","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ingesting indenture: Lydia Cabrera, yellow blindness, Chinese bodies, and the generation of Afro-Chinese religious knowledge","authors":"Martin a. Tsang","doi":"10.1080/02757206.2023.2249484","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2023.2249484","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article explores the ways that Afro-Cuban religious texts called libretas and recorded oral divination narratives create entryways for Asian, especially Chinese, deities in the practice of Afro-Cuban religions, specifically the Yorùbá-derived orisha religion known as Lucumí. Lydia Cabrera, a self-taught ethnographer of Afro-Cuban religions, is a pivotal interlocutor in the generation of Afro-Chinese knowledge, having conducted fieldwork with practitioners of both African and Asian descent in Cuba whose ancestors were taken to Cuba as enslaved and unfree plantation labourers. Cabrera’s many published volumes, as well as her archive posthumously housed at the University of Miami, are important sources of information for both religious scholars and practitioners. By examining the exemplary divinatory narrative of the orisha Shangó travelling to China, as documented by Cabrera, we can better understand the processes of enmeshing, recording, and sharing of African and Asian knowledge and worldviews occurring in Afro-Atlantic religious practices.","PeriodicalId":46201,"journal":{"name":"History and Anthropology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-08-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72984083","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The land of forgetting: silence and resonance in Chile’s histories of political violence","authors":"Diana Espírito Santo","doi":"10.1080/02757206.2023.2248161","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2023.2248161","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46201,"journal":{"name":"History and Anthropology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-08-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76813755","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Frontier friction: colonial infrastructures, Chinese (im-)mobility, and the attack on Sam Neua (NE Laos) in 1914","authors":"Oliver Tappe","doi":"10.1080/02757206.2023.2237059","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2023.2237059","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46201,"journal":{"name":"History and Anthropology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86252837","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"On stone tools and the ‘prehistoric’: The value of Tasmanian Aboriginality at the Smithsonian","authors":"Christopher D. Berk","doi":"10.1080/02757206.2023.2235410","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2023.2235410","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46201,"journal":{"name":"History and Anthropology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-07-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75547036","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}