Search Results (71)

Kumbapattu is a folk song of the indigenous Kurichiya community sung during Thira, a religious festival celebrated during the month of Kumbham (February). It narrates the mythical life and actions of Malakkari, an embodiment of Lord Shiva and the chief deity of the Kurichiya. A critical study of this 1051-line folk song, its ritual performance, and its ecological fountainheads can contribute to our understanding of the cultural and ritualistic energies and functions of indigenous art forms. This paper examines the role played by religious folk songs in reiterating Kurichiya identity and community integration, and the relevance of such narratives in addressing ecological challenges while sustaining cultural heritage. The method of close textual analysis of Kumbapattu is employed to decode the religious concepts and philosophies of the community, supplemented by observations of ritual performances during fieldwork. This study draws on both primary and secondary materials for the analysis. The study employs Bronisław Malinowski’s myth–ritual theory to examine the relationship between myth and ritual and their role in shaping the Kurichiya identity. Further, William R. Bascom’s four functional categories are applied to identify the ecological functions expressed through the song, since the community is traditionally agrarian and still largely depends on forest and environment for a significant part of their community life. To provide a culturally grounded interpretation that reflects Kurichiya worldviews, the study also incorporates indigenous epistemology to make the analysis more relevant and comprehensive. Full article

His baptismal name, Fernando de Bulhões (1195–1231), may say little to many people, but his religious name, St. Anthony, certainly says a lot, especially to the Portuguese. In fact, the cult of St. Anthony is indelibly inscribed in the religious landscape of Portugal, with particular intensity in Lisbon. This study, of an ethnographic and historical nature, is an innovative approach to this emblematic medieval figure, capable of so many miracles, veneration, revelry festivals, and processions among the people of Lisbon and the Portuguese in general, right up to the present day. The history of this Saint and his cult, as an expression of popular religiosity, will be discussed, favouring the dimensions of marriage and commerce in a comparative approach between two ethnographic contexts: Lisbon and Viana do Castelo. The notions of popular religion, syncretism, cult of the saints, and pilgrimage–procession will, therefore, be instrumental. The data collected and analysed are based on a mixed methodological triangulation of qualitative data complemented by quantitative data, using direct participant observations (ethnographic) and indirect observations (collected through semi-structured interviews and informal conversations), as well as documentary sources. Full article

Rome, historically regarded as a monumental center of Catholic Christendom, now stands as a multi-layered environment shaped by diverse religious communities whose overlapping architectures, rites, and narratives expand the city’s cultural memory. This article employs Warburg’s Mnemosyne methodology to investigate how symbolic motifs, architectural forms, and intangible practices—from Eastern Orthodox iconography to the Great Mosque of Rome’s transnational design—migrate, adapt, and reconfigure within Rome’s urban fabric. Drawing on interdisciplinary approaches from cultural memory studies, religious studies, and urban geography, it reveals how minority communities—Jewish, Muslim, Orthodox Christian, Protestant, Methodist, and Scientology—act as “memory agents”, negotiating visibility and introducing new heritage layers that challenge monolithic perceptions of Rome’s identity. The analysis underscores that intangible heritage, such as chanting, prayer, and interfaith festivals, is equally central to understanding how collective memory is produced and transmitted. Tensions arise when key stakeholders do not validate these emerging cultural forms or question their “authenticity”, reflecting the contested nature of heritage-making. Ultimately, Rome’s religious plurality, shaped by migration and historical transformations, emerges as a dynamic memoryscape. By recognizing the vital role of minority faiths in heritage-making, this study contributes to broader debates on cultural pluralism, super-diversity, and the evolving definitions of religious and cultural heritage in contemporary global cities. Full article

A pastor and academic theologian is invited to perform a devotional service at a marksmen’s festival in a small German village. Unaccustomed to this kind of festive culture, he also finds himself confronted with theological and ethical questions: Is it possible to provide a place of shooting with rifles and pistols with a prayer service and thus shape it liturgically as a place of God’s blessings? One could also ask: is it not necessary for theology to engage with communal forms of festivity, not just theoretically, but performatively, if Christianity itself is fundamentally festive? According to practical-theological reasoning, occasional services, i.e., celebrations of life rites, accompanying liminal situations and transitionary events of human life are growing in variety and importance and “new occasional services” are being developed. Also, the church and (public) theology continuously search and find their role in civil society. After all, there are many life situations in which God’s blessing should be clothed in a festive garment. But in which way is the marksmen’s festival to be considered? Two theologians explore these questions—autoethnographically and theoretically—and thus shed light on the marksmen’s festival as a theological topic. Full article

This paper explores the intersection of race, religion, and colonial legacies through the lens of the Oruro Carnival, examining its role in shaping Bolivian identity. Critical religion scholars argue that the entanglement of race and religion is a product of Western modernity and colonialism, which has influenced both historical and contemporary power relations. This framework is applied to analyse the Carnival, where religious practices and festive performances intersect, reflecting colonial efforts at religious conversion and racial categorisation. By focusing on the ethnography of Oruro’s embodied festive practices, this study investigates how the Carnival contributes to the construction of difference amid Bolivia’s socio-political transformations. This paper also examines how, by the 20th century, colonial religious frameworks intertwined with secular racial categories, particularly through the rise of mestizaje as a nation-building discourse. A historical analysis of Carnival performances reveals how race, religion, and power have continually shaped the celebration, tracing its evolution from a segregated religious practice to a national spectacle, particularly after the 1952 revolution. The mutually configuring relationship between race and religion in Carnival highlights its role in both reinforcing and challenging dominant power structures. Full article

This paper explores the material culture of religious life on the Greek island of Anafi during the peak tourism season of summer 2023. Through ethnographic fieldwork, the paper examines the public celebration of a number of feasts coinciding with the summer high season: the Transfiguration of Christ, one of the Great Feasts of the Orthodox Church, celebrated on the sixth of August; the Dormition of the Theotokos (Mary the “Birthgiver of God”) on the fifteenth, with evening Supplications to the Theotokos in church on every August weekday leading up to the feast; the feast and commemoration of the immensely popular Saint Fanourios on the twenty-seventh of August, with the main celebration centering on the preceding day’s vespers; and, in September, the major feast of the island: the Nativity of the Theotokos (8 September), which unfolds into four-days-long festivities, due to the main shrine of the island being dedicated to the protectress of Anafi, Panayia Kalamiotissa. This paper focuses especially on the role of commensality and shared meals in maintaining kinship ties and social communion. Ritualized festive eating emerges as a way of consolidating the community of permanent island residents and diasporic islanders returning for summer. The continuity of these embodied practices provides insight into Anafiot identity and lived religion. Ultimately, this paper reflects on how contemporary Orthodox theologians have re-discovered the priority of materiality and the senses in ecclesial life. Full article

Religious freedom and the right to practice a religion by persons deprived of their liberty do not cause controversy in democratic states. The challenge, not easily met, is to exercise guaranteed religious rights in penitentiary facilities. This study aimed to compare legal regulations and the level of protection of religious freedom that they impose with the real possibility of the voluntary performance of religious practices. In other words, this study sought to answer the question of whether prisoners in Polish penitentiary facilities are free to practise the religion of their choice and are not forced to participate in religious practices against their will. This article presents the general results of a survey on religious practices carried out in the Polish penitentiary facilities that were examined. The data were supplemented by prisoners’ comments about freedom to practice religion. This article includes the comments of both believers (assessing the availability of practices) and non-believers (assessing the compulsion to participate in the practices of the dominant religion). Opinions about practising a religion given by the penitentiary staff will serve as a specific counterpoint. The presented study results allowed the formulation of basic conclusions of a general nature, which can contribute to further discussions on religious freedom in post-criminal isolation units. The survey was carried out from March to October 2022 based on a prepared questionnaire. It was completed by 556 prisoners, including 34 females and 444 males (68 respondents did not indicate their gender). In total, prisoners incarcerated in 35 penitentiary facilities located throughout Poland were surveyed. Simultaneously, a survey was carried out among educators and teachers in all the above penitentiary facilities, who completed, in total, 164 questionnaires. An analysis of the replies to the questions and the free comments of all the respondents and their comparison with the current regulations make it possible to conclude that Poland—on a constitutional and statutory level—adequately safeguards prisoners’ religious rights, but their practical application must be assessed as unsatisfactory. Prisoners do not always have the possibility to observe rites or manifest their religion. Problems are encountered by both followers of the strongly dominant religion in Poland (Roman Catholicism) and minority denominations. Despite the reported difficulties, Roman Catholics are indisputably in a much more favourable position. Freedom from religion is also not fully respected—prisoners involuntarily participate in certain practices and take part in the religious observance of church festivals. Full article

The aim of this study was to analyse the motivations of the participants of the festivity in honour of Our Lady of Antime in Fafe (located in the north of Portugal) and provide an overview of the tourism opportunities and impacts associated with the event. To this end, the study analysed the main events on the programme for the 2024 edition of this religious festivity. According to the interviews and participant observations, the impact of the religious festivity in honour of Our Lady of Antime on the faithful who participated was evident. For this study, semi-structured face-to-face interviews and participant observations were conducted, and the former were recorded for subsequent content analysis and categorisation. Participant observation was conducted, focusing on the events that occurred during the religious festivity in honour of the Lady of Antime. The limitations of this study relate to the fact that this is a resource that has not yet been explored as a lever for religious tourism in the municipality, although it has received more media attention in recent years. After carrying out this study, it was possible to conclude that the religious festivity in honour of Our Lady of Antime is attracting more and more believers, and that this event has become a resource that is complementary to the basic tourist resources of the destination of Fafe. Full article

Attending a Christian summer camp or festival is a regular feature of many evangelical church calendars within the UK. This article uses a practical theology approach to explore definitions and distinctives of evangelical camping, both within the literature on evangelical camping and through examining the websites and publicity materials of three specific camps—New Wine, Big Church Festival and Newday Generation. The analysis highlights the significance placed upon the location, size, rhythms and purposes of gathering in the festivals’ self-understandings. This leads into a theological reflection upon the biblical festival of Sukkot to examine the ways in which God’s work might be disclosed through the practice of evangelical camping. Three pairs of themes emerge from the comparison: located and temporal, secular and religious, and rejoicing and re-examining. These themes are drawn upon to propose ways in which God might be at work in the social world disrupting a sense of permanence, blurring the boundaries between faith and the world, and calling people into radical solidarity with creation and with the marginalized. Finally, suggested actions are proposed as to how evangelical festivals may better respond to God’s disclosure. Full article

This paper examines personal names derived from traditional religious beliefs and practices among the Erei people in Biase Local Government Area of Cross River State in South-South, Nigeria while utilising insights from the multidisciplinary inferences of socio-onomastic theory to account for the cultural, social and situational contexts that create the religious content of the names. Data were obtained by means of participant observation and semi-structured interviews during six months of fieldwork involving 40 participants who were the name-givers, name-bearers and name-users. Our findings highlight the socio-onomastic tradition of Erei people in which personal names are bestowed through a conscious application of symbolic linguistic resources to express and perform ideologies and identities that are rooted in the traditional religion’s foundations and sociocultural practices that represent Erei people’s indigenous beliefs system and spiritual worldview. Focused on the ideals of African traditional religion, religious identities are constructed through the use of personal names related to idol worship, the mysteries of death, reincarnation and commemoration, cultural festivals and performances, symbolic objects, familial rankings and other aspects derived from their environment that also bear traditional religious significance. And because this set of personal names is now predominant among the ageing population and is losing contemporaneity due to an increasing subpopulation with a new (Christian) beliefs system, this study serves to preserve a transiting and endangered Erei socio-onomastic practice that represents the people’s traditional cosmology. Full article

This article studies the recent evolution of five cases of small cities in the interior of Spain that several decades ago invested in culture as a strategy to maintain their populations and increase the quality of life of their inhabitants. These are case studies of differentiated characteristics in which the analysis of their evolution offers important keys for developing cultural policies in any small city in the world. The examples of Allariz, Almagro, Astorga, Puigcerdá and Trujillo allow for the corroboration of how betting on culture as a resilient and sustainable strategy generates positive results for their populations. Allariz, in the province of Ourense, is showing a cultural identity development that emerged as a movement to reject the pollution of the Arnoia River. In Almagro, in the La Mancha province of Ciudad Real, the recovery in 1955 of the only Corral de Comedias preserved since the 17th century allowed for the inauguration in 1979 of the first Almagro Classical Theatre Festival, and from then on, a whole series of restorations and new constructions related to theater and the performing arts, which turned a small town of less than 10,000 inhabitants into the national theater capital. Astorga is a small two-thousand-year-old city in the province of León, which is trying to recover as a living history museum to face the current reality of demographic and economic crises. Puigcerdá, in the province of Girona, the historic capital of Cerdanya, is another small town in which cultural management and production is much larger than it would be corresponding to its demographic size. Lastly, Trujillo, in the Extremadura province of Cáceres, a city of pre-Roman origin known in the 16th century as the birthplace of conquistadors in America such as Francisco Pizarro and Francisco de Orellana, is another small town of less than 10,000 inhabitants that is committed to creating and maintaining a rich cultural agenda with an important weight for the history and relationship between America and Spain and the recovery of the civil and religious heritage of this small monumental city. These are five enclaves, in summary, that have for years followed a clear strategy of betting on identity and culture to improve the well-being of their inhabitants and the local development of their economy, and which, as this research demonstrates, have made it possible to avoid the biggest problems of the impoverishment and abandonment of other nearby towns with similar characteristics. Full article

Girsu, the modern site of Tello (southern Iraq), represents one of the earliest known urban centres of the ancient world, along with Uruk, Eridu, and Ur. During the 3rd millennium BCE (3000–2000 BCE), Girsu was revered as the sanctuary of the Sumerian heroic deity Ningirsu, who fought with supernatural beasts and made possible the introduction of irrigation and agriculture in Sumer. While much is known about the gods, their roles, and rituals inside the temples, there is little textual or archaeological evidence concerning the rituals that took place in the large open-air plazas adjacent to the temples. These areas within the sacred precinct were where the general population would gather to participate in festivals and ceremonies to honour the gods. To better understand the ancient cultic realm in southern Mesopotamia, an in-depth investigation of a favissa (ritual pit) discovered within the sacred precinct at Girsu was undertaken. The excavations recovered a large quantity of ceramics and animal remains that had been used for ritual purposes. Through the study of archaeological remains of cultic spaces at Girsu, information on ritual behaviour such as sacrificial animal slaughtering and consumption for the purpose of feasting, the types of libations provided to quench the thirst of the gods, and the distance travelled to take part in the annual festivals to pay homage to the patron god of their sacred city were explored. Analysis of the associated ceramics, cuneiform texts, and zooarchaeological remains (including stable isotope data), allowed a multi-faceted and integrative approach to better understand ceremonial behaviour and ritual feasting in this sacred city. New insights into communal and performative participation in ceremonies, especially by non-elite individuals, are generated. These data increase our knowledge not only of how Girsu’s citizens organised their sacred spaces and religious festivals, but also of how they behaved in order to satisfy the ever-demanding needs of their gods. Full article

This study delves into the profound impact and significance of religious culture on the urban spatial configuration and local cultural essence of Macau amidst contemporary societal transformations. Emphasis is placed on how religious sites undergo functional reshaping and role redefinition within the urban fabric, thereby influencing residents’ quality of life, cityscape, and cultural identity. Adopting a spatial anthropological lens, this research employs a multitude of methodologies including city walking, participatory observation, and historical analysis to investigate the spatial configurations and developmental trajectories of Macau’s diverse religious sites and their immediate environments. The aim is to unearth the historical drivers behind the formation and dissemination of religious culture in Macau and to elucidate its intricate interactions with urban space. The findings reveal that religious sites in Macau not only physically delineate unique urban spatial patterns but also serve as vital hubs for fostering local cultural cohesion and weaving social networks through routine religious practices, community engagements, and a plethora of festive and ritualistic events. The pervasive influence of these sites extends across multiple domains of society, culture, and economy, playing a pivotal role in maintaining regional stability and harmony, enriching cultural diversity, and propelling socioeconomic transformation. Full article

This review describes the production systems and products pertaining to goats and sheep (GS) in Indonesia. These small ruminant species are found across 38 provinces in Indonesia. Almost 99% of the GS are farmed by smallholders, with the animals either being housed in an enclosure (small shed near the farmer’s house) or in a mix of both grazing and confinement. The livestock are typically fed natural and/or artificial feed. Two sheep types, thin-tailed and fat-tailed are the most popular with smallholder producers, while Bali, Etawah, Boerawa, Jawa Randu Kosta, and Gembrong are the dominant goat breeds. As one of the biggest Muslim countries in the world, Indonesian production and consumption of GS is influenced by culture and religious systems. The Halal slaughter method applied is described, as are the religious/cultural festivals in Indonesia, which have a significant relationship on the GS demand and consumption, such as Eid al-Adha and Aqiqah. The preparation, processing, and consumption of GS meat in Indonesia are strongly influenced by the use of spices, being part of the Moluccas archipelago, also known as the “Spice islands” with over 30,000 species of spices grown. Some traditional meats and meat processing technologies in Indonesia are presented to provide insight into how GS meat is processed. The main challenges in the processing of GS meat in Indonesia and some current research on the development of GS production are presented in this paper. Implications: Goat and sheep belong to the most widely consumed meats in the world after pork, poultry, and beef. There are some reasons why GS meat has become one of the more popular protein choices for many families, of which its low-fat levels are one. GS meat is also considered one of the only meats with minimal religious taboos in the world. For these reasons, GS meat is also favored by Indonesian people in the most populous Muslim-majority country. However, information regarding goat and sheep in Indonesia is still lacking. This review aims to provide information on the distribution of GS in Indonesia over 38 provinces, the breed types that grow there, their production, and Indonesian consumption behavior, highlighting the religious festivals that cause the highest demand for these meats. This review provides information to the stakeholders of goat and sheep production chains. Full article