But still, they are with me, in their thoughts and feelings. Are you a real devotee? I don't think so. Am I part of your life? If you were always thinking of me, I would be in your side, I would guide you, but how can I do that if you do not focus on me? You affected my entire puja. You know that. But you have to earn my confidence. Now, leave and go in peace. Think about your deeds.
It is in this sense that divinities act as oracles since they verbally express revelations through human vehicles. Elsewhere I have described at length the relationships between oracular revelations, the occurrence of manifestation, and doubts associated with them Mello Among the various criticisms, one element was highlighted by various people: Eon affected the smooth functioning of the festival.
And moreover the machete itself. Among other opinions, I present three, sufficiently illustrative for the purposes of this article:. He affected the machete. Eon caused these disgraces. He affected the machete, the sacrifice, everything, and he offended the goddess. Over the course of the Big Puja, Eon had no problems decapitating another fifteen cockerels, along with another five goats, but his blows missed on three occasions.
Retrospectively, his conduct and the contact with the altars and the machete became the explanatory cause of his errors. The blows did not follow the expected trajectory because they had been affected, impregnated with the effects of conducts, gestures, feelings, affects and thoughts. Furthermore, precisely because of Eon, the deotas caused the trajectory of the cut to deviate, manifesting their discontent.
If responsibility for the failures in the sacrifices ultimately fell on a single individual, this was precisely because the boundaries between material objects, humans and divinities are porous. Sacrifice: its nature and function. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Sacrifice in Africa. A structuralist approach. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Hau - Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 8 3 : American Ethnologist , 44 3 : Given that, in diverse contexts, deities become present through distinct types of mediating acts verbal utterances, objects handled at rituals, musical and bodily performances and so on , mediation establishes both approximations and distances between the divine and the mundane, comprising something essential in religious life and social life as a whole.
Ultimately, relations of prestation and counterprestation are bound up with the problem of presence. In Kali worship, divinities are present in murtis and other artefacts, on altars and in the bodies of religious specialists, distributing their power shakti within a particular ambience.
The manipulation and consecration of objects like the machete show the importance of paying attention to materiality in the mediation practices between humans and divinities. In: T. Ingold ed. London: Routledge. The machete brought by Eon from his home can be thought of precisely in these terms, since, compared to others, he possessed an ephemeral relationship with the temple, with the altar of Khal Bhairo and with the purposes of its use.
Religion and Society, 4 1 : Nuer religion. Following the path indicated by Evans-Pritchard, we could ask apropos the case being studied here: machetes are extensions of whom, exactly? Deities, the officiant of the sacrifice, or both? Considering that the gods and goddesses guide the course of the blows struck by the sacrificer and the latter utilizes an object kept on the altar of a god associated with the sacrifice, the machetes can also be conceived as an extension of the deities, their manifestations and the murtis, since the artefactual bodies of the divinities are distributed during the rites, permeating the people all around.
In his already classic reformulation of how art objects, images, icons and the like should be treated as persons in the context of an anthropological theory of art - that is, as sources and targets of social agency - Gell GELL, Alfred. Art and agency. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Proposing a new anthropological theory of art instead, inspired by other existing anthropological theories, in diverse passages of Art and Agency Gell makes use of reflections on the notion of the person - evident in his diverse references to Marcel Mauss, Roy Wagner and Marilyn Strathern, as well as to monographs on exchange systems like kula and studies of Hinduism, especially those relating to idolatry.
Mana - Estudos de Antropologia Social, 24 3 : As Gell remarks, the attention paid to idolatry and volt sorcery, for example, aims to desacralize the attitude of an aesthetic, almost religious, veneration of art works, as well as foment a desacralization of the concept of the individual.
The ideas implicit to the concept of the individual not only result in dichotomies, they also permeate theoretical propositions relating to art - as in the supposition that artistic creation depends above all on individual genius.
Thus, it is indispensable to return to debates relating to the person, paying sufficient attention, following Mauss, to the limits and boundaries of persons, questioning the premise that individuals are clearly identifiable, self-contained and delimited. For Gell, diverse ethnographic instances suggest that persons are not confined to specific sociotemporal coordinates, but are distributed in ambiences, objects, minds, bodies and material traces.
In: Being alive. Essays on movement, knowledge, and description. Thinking through things: theorising artefacts ethnographically.
In: A. Henare, M. Holbraad, S. Wastell eds. On the other hand, the ethnographic material analysed and presented by Gell concerning the physical fragments decoupled from distributed persons, as in the case of volt sorcery, and the forms of tactile contact established by the exchange of gazes between Hindu idols and worshippers see also Babb BABB, Lawrence.
Journal of Anthropological Research, 37 4 : In: B. Kapferer ed. Directions in the anthropology of exchanging and symbolic behavior. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, pp. The author proposes that Hindu society and Indian society as a whole developed a transactional thought characterized by explicit and institutional preoccupations with the given and the received in the universes of kinship, work and religion.
From the Western viewpoint, Hindu thought is especially oriented towards biological substantialism and hierarchical classification. Hindu thought concerning transactions differs from Western sociological and psychological thought since it does not presume the separability of actors from their actions.
In Indian modes of thought, what happens between actors is connected to the processes of mixture and separation happening between them, meaning that their particular natures are conceived as the causes and outcomes of particular actions. Codes of action or conduct, in turn, are conceived to be naturally incorporated into the actors and substantialized in the things that flow and pass between them. The separability of the actions of agents into code and substance, a typically Western premise, is absent from Hindu thought.
Citing Marriott:. To exist, dividual persons absorb heterogeneous material influences. They must also give out from themselves particles of their own coded substances - essences, residues, or other active influences - that may then reproduce in others something of the nature of the persons in whom they have originated. Persons engage in transfers of bodily substance-codes through parentage, through marriage, and through services and other kinds of interpersonal contacts.
They transfer coded food substances by way of trade, payments, alms, feasts or other prestations. Persons also cannot help exchanging certain other coded influences that are thought of as subtler, but still substantial and powerful forms, such as perceived words, ideas, appearances, and so forth.
It is essential to stress that although Marriott refers to human persons in this excerpt, he suggests that virtually the same happens with other categories of beings like deities. The author also cites ethnographies that emphasize how men and gods are conceived in rural areas of India as mutually continuous, not separated by distinctions like sacred and profane, spirit and matter. In summary, for Marriott the transformations that occur within actors also involve transactions between parts of actors, while transactions between actors can lead to transformations of these actors.
Transformations and transactions, however, must be understood as part of a single process. In transactions, actors and their actions change constantly though recombinations of their parts. Actors and their interactions are never separate from each other; they change together, including because the circulations and combinations of particles of the codes-substances are occurring continuously.
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 3 2 : Nevertheless, I believe that his conceptualization provides space for thinking about the permeability of persons to bodily substances originating from other persons Daniel DANIEL, E. Fluid signs. Being a person in the Tamil way. Berkeley: University of California Press. Anthropological Theory, 18 4 : Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute , The gender of the gift.
Problems of women and problems with society in Melanesia. For an interesting analysis of the differences in the notions of the person in Southern India and Melanesia, see Busby It is not a question, therefore, of postulating essences but of testing the possibilities for incorporating into Caribbean scholarship perspectives produced elsewhere and, principally, for re-evaluating major themes of this production in light of native categories.
It would be necessary to investigate in more detail the reasons why some clues offered by ethnographic studies conducted in India have attracted little interest among Caribbean scholars see, however, Khan KHAN, Aisha. American Ethnologist , 21 2 : Contributions to Indian Sociology, 40 2 : This can be partly explained, I would suggest, by the fact that the heterogeneity, complexity and historicity of the Caribbean prevented, from very early on, the application of the conceptual devices of compartmentalization, encompassment and framing to the realities of Caribbean collectives.
Annual Review of Anthropology, They act as theoretical simplifiers to restore the ethnographic present and project of timeless culture. Gatekeeping has never been successful in the Caribbean. In general, the existence of an ideal type of caste system is postulated and a categorical response is sought concerning the maintenance, or not, of this system outside India.
Khan had already highlighted this issue previously, as well as demonstrating that although caste, as a structuring element of hierarchies, is not present in Trinidad, the notion of jhutta - food or drink polluted by being partially consumed by a person - is an important dimension of the Indo-Trinidadian cultural repertoire, deriving its diverse meanings from notions of pollution associated with caste identities.
In other words, the migration from India to the Caribbean and the living conditions in the plantations weakened notions relating to ritual purity. The settlement of Indians in Guyana, Leeds: Peepal Tree Press. Indentured labor, Caribbean sugar. Chinese and Indian migrants to the British West Indies, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. A question of labour. Indentured immigration into Trinidad and British Guiana, Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers.
Comparative Studies in Society and History , 19 1 : Callaloo or tossed salad? East Indians and the cultural politics of identity in Trinidad. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. In: R.
Smith ed. Power, pluralism, and politics. Routledge: New York. As the years passed, the identification of Indo-Guyanese people with specific castes faded and was continually condemned for promoting distinctions allegedly given by birth. While the emphasis on the changes to institutions central on the Indian subcontinent seems to me sound, an emphasis solely on those processes of transformation occurring at a macro-analytic scale - that is, the outcomes of broader historical processes - can lose sight of local perceptions of mixtures and heterogeneities.
Khan focuses especially on the disputes over the legitimization of religious practices and knowledge in asymmetric power contexts. For this reason, the author does not predefine what is religion but rather scrutinizes the understandings, conceptions and native categories of religion. In the case under discussion here, the stigmatization of Kali worship in Guyana forms the backdrop to a series of discourses on sacrifice. Two points should be emphasized, though.
Firstly, the foundation myths of Kali worship are not just responses to disputes for power, nor raw material for attempts to legitimize practices considered morally suspect. At a microscopic level - and this is the second point I wish to bring forth - the circulation of substances like blood, a fundamental vector of connections between persons with a distinct ontological status Carsten CARSTEN, Janet.
In holding Eon responsible for the failures in the sacrifices, members of Blairmont temple did much more than search for a scapegoat with apologies for the pun. Initial accusations, which soon became rubberstamped verdicts, including due to the view expressed by the manifestation of the goddess Mariamma, were consistent with the premise that, rigorously speaking, no being, or object, is separate from other beings or objects.
Far from being a singular and unitary event, animal sacrifice forms part of a heterogenous set of practices. Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology, 79 3 : Although I deliberately did not set out to centre my research on villages, I believe that questions relating to the exchange of substances, pollution and commensality are fundamental to Indo-Guyanese everyday life.
In the case of Kali worship, then, it is indispensable to situate sacrifice within practices of animal care, the handling of ritual artefacts, and diverse other relations between deities and humans.
It is notable that the machete utilized by Eon absorbed substances, feelings and emotional states from the sacrificer. The Journal of Asian Studies, 53 3 : Sacrifice thus assumes a specific configuration in each situation, irreducible to the presupposition that two or more separate and self-contained entities transact.
On the contrary, the boundaries between different entities are not only not given, they can produce transformations via the channelling and flow of vital forces. Humans, deities, animals and material objects participate in each other through mutual and complex chains of permeability.
Open menu Brazil. Vibrant: Virtual Brazilian Anthropology. Open menu. Abstract Resumo English Resumo Portuguese. Text EN Text English. Abstract This paper describes the ritual procedures associated with animal sacrifice in the worship of the Hindu goddess Kali in Guyana, formerly British Guiana. Kali worship and the sacrifice of animals Transplanted to Guyana by Indians who moved to the country as indentured labourers between , in the aftermath of the abolition of black slavery in the British Caribbean in , 3 3 Almost , Indians migrated between to what was then British Guiana.
He put his feelings on things. His thoughts and behaviours affected the things that he touched. Comment of a devotee, during a conversation with another women. Journal of Anthropological Research , 37 4 : Coolie woman. We believe strong fiscal measures are a much better way to offset these economic costs than prematurely loosening restrictions.
As has been foreshadowed in your public remarks, our borders will need to remain under tight control for an extended period. It is vital to keep social-distancing measures in place until the number of infections is very low, our testing capacity is expanded well beyond its already comparatively high level, and widespread contact tracing is available. A second-wave outbreak would be extremely damaging to the economy, in addition to involving tragic and unnecessary loss of life.
Professor Jeff Borland , University of Melbourne. Professor Efrem Castelnuovo , University of Melbourne. Professor Chris Edmond , University of Melbourne. Professor John Freebairn , University of Melbourne. Professor Joshua Gans , University of Toronto. Professor David Johnston , Monash University.
Professor Flavio Menezes , University of Queensland. Professor James Morley , University of Sydney. Professor Joseph Mullins , University of Minnesota. But not football. All ten Division 1 conferences are playing this fall. And so move-in day took place, the masks came off, the football games proceeded, and college kids started partying right away.
Some schools kept the virus in check , but at others, it spread fast. An outbreak at Notre Dame, one of the first campuses to commit to a return to campus , temporarily pushed instruction online almost immediately after classes had started. The spread also justified an extreme curtailment of campus life.
Schools implicitly promised the college experience to get students back, but when students arrived they ruined things by being there and partaking of it.
Students were confined to their dorms , save for eating and going to classes or work. Faced with college as a prison, some students have rebelled, and some schools have retaliated. In September, Northeastern University expelled 11 students for hosting a party in violation of COVID-safety policies, because it put even a modified college experience at risk. From off-campus, some outsiders objected on the grounds that not partying is also a threat to that experience. The Trump administration leaned on state governments to reopen colleges.
Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont even wanted Yale to reopen. Read: Colleges are getting ready to blame their students. It might seem ludicrous to sacrifice public health to preserve indiscretion as an ideal of college life, but that life has never aspired toward well-being in the first place.
The pandemic made some parts of the traditional college experience, such as parties and close-quarters socialization, dangerous. But campus life thrives on dangerous behavior in the first place. College creates a bubble that upends responsibility to the outside world. For example, after public-health officials in Boulder, Colorado banned gatherings of toyear-olds in an effort to control the spread outside the college community, students only felt more entitled to gather in groups.
A s the leaves turn and fall arrives in earnest, colleges and universities are starting to understand what measures are needed to prevent outbreaks on their campuses and in their communities. As of mid-October, the University of Georgia, for example, had reported more than 3, cases since March. But by comparison, at Georgia Tech, where I teach, researchers created a high-volume surveillance testing program, and the institute has reported about 65 percent fewer cases per capita.
Other schools, such as Cornell , have also used surveillance testing to great effect. But there are over 5, colleges and universities in America, and not all of them can respond like an elite school can.
The drive to open campuses at all costs during a pandemic shows how deeply higher education has sunk its claws into the American imagination. The NYU business professor Scott Galloway has contended that most colleges will die out, and the survivors will partner with big tech companies such as Apple and Google to take over the sector.
John Warner, a higher-ed critic, hopes for an opposite future of sustainable, state-funded education. Read: The future of college looks like the future of retail. But instead, online learning has mostly become a way to spare commuter students the travel or to attract mid-career students to professional programs—neither of which ever tried to deliver the college experience of American myth.
It has shown the whole nation, all at once, how invested they are in going away to school or dreaming about doing so. Higher education survived a civil war, two world wars, the Great Depression, and the Spanish flu, the worst pandemic the U. American colleges will outlast this crisis, too, whether or not they are safe, whether or not they are affordable, and whether or not you or your children actually attend them. The pandemic offered an invitation to construe college as an education alone, because it was too dangerous to embrace it as an experience.
Nobody was interested. They probably never will be.
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