| 1. |
- Oestigaard, Terje, 1973-
(författare)
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Holy water : the works of water indefining and understanding holiness
- 2017
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Ingår i: WIREs Water. - : Wiley. - 2049-1948. ; 4:3, s. 1-12
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Holy water has a central role in shaping the understanding and beliefs of holiness in general, but how does holy water work, and what defines holy water? By analyzing holy water in three different religious traditions—Christianity in Northern Europe, Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity, and Hinduism—the aim is to discuss the metaphysical essence of water in human understanding and ideas of holiness embodied in water. On the one hand, holy water represents purity and has to be protected from defilement, but on the other hand, many holy rivers are severely polluted. This seeming paradox will be analyzed by focusing on actual beliefs and uses of holy water in ritual and religious practices. Holy water transmits purity and holiness, but it also transfers, transports, and transforms impurities. In the process of obtaining spiritual purity, devotees may pollute the holy because holy water is believed to have a divine agency. By comparing ritual practices and beliefs in three distinct religious traditions in Europe, Africa, and Asia, it is possible to enhance the understanding of the ways holiness and holy water are perceived to work in cultural-specific religious worldviews based on essential capacities of water cross-culturally. This directs the attention to the structuring mechanisms at work because water is conceptualized and used as holy in remarkably similar ways in many religions.
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| 2. |
- Edfeldt, Chatarina, 1963-, et al.
(författare)
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Northern Crossings : Translation, Circulation and the Literary Semi-periphery
- 2022
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Bok (refereegranskat)abstract
- This open access book uses Swedish literature and the Swedish publishing field as recurring examples to describe and analyse the role of the literary semi-peripheral position in world literature from various perspectives and on meso, micro and macro levels, using both quantitative and qualitative methods. This includes the role of translation in the semi-periphery and the conditions under which literature travels to and from that position. The focus is not on Sweden, as such, but rather on the semi-peripheral transitional space as exemplified by the Swedish case.Consisting of three co-written chapters, this study sheds light on what might be called the semi-peripheral condition or the semi-periphery as an area of transition. As part of the Cosmopolitan and Vernacular Dynamics in World Literatures series, it makes continuous use of the concepts of 'cosmopolitan' and 'vernacular' – or rather, the processual terms, cosmopolitanization and vernacularization – which provide an overall structure to the analysis of literature and literary phenomena. In this way, the authors show that the semi-periphery is an ideal point of departure to further the understanding of world literature, because it is a place where the cosmopolitan (the literary universal) and the vernacular (the rootedness in a particular culture or place) interact in ways that have not yet been thoroughly explored.
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| 3. |
- Kaliff, Anders, et al.
(författare)
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Kremation och kosmologi : en komparativ arkeologisk introduktion
- 2013
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Bok (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Cremation and Cosmology – A Comparative Archaeological Introduction aims to synthesise in an easily accessible style the current state of cremation research and some of the recent interpretations providing new understandings of the past. Since cremation is a highly complicated technological and cosmological process and ritual, part 1 emphasises what has shaped and restricted most of the Western perceptions of cremation. The Christian hell and its torturing fires, Hindu cremations along holy rivers in Nepal and India, and the ancient Vedic traditions have all to various degrees constructed images of what a cremation is, including our understanding of cremation in the past. This comparative part is stressed not only because it is important knowledge in itself, but also because it is a good point of departure for approaching the past and exploring new interpretations of funerals in general and cremations in particular, which have no ethnographic parallels. With mainly examples from Scandinavian Bronze- and Iron Age, in part 2 a wide range of cremation contexts are analysed from different perspectives highlighting new approaches to the materiality of death. A central theme throughout the book is that cremation is not one, but many funeral practices. By stressing this unique character of cremation compared to other burial practices, cremation as a ritual opens up a wide range of opportunities within the sphere of death, which can be studied archaeologically. As such, this book is intended to be an introductory and coarse book for archaeological students studying death and cremation, but hopefully it may also have interest and relevance beyond the archaeological circles.
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| 4. |
- Oestigaard, Terje, 1973-, et al.
(författare)
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Cremation, Corpses and Cannibalism : Comparative Cosmologies and Centuries of Cosmic Consumption
- 2017
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Bok (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Death matters and the matters of death are initially, and to a large extent, the decaying flesh of the corpse. Cremation as a ritual practice is the fastest and most optimal way of dissolving the corpse’s flesh, either by annihilation or purification, or a combination. Still, cremation was not the final rite, and the archaeological record testifies that the dead represented a means to other ends – the flesh, and not the least the bones – have been incorporated in a wide range of other ritual contexts. While human sacrifices and cannibalism as ritual phenomena are much discussed in anthropology, archaeology has an advantage, since the actual bone material leaves traces of ritual practices that are unseen and unheard of in the contemporary world. As such, this book fleshes out a broader and more coherent understanding of prehistoric religions and funeral practices in Scandinavia by focusing on cremation, corpses and cannibalism.
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| 5. |
- Trovalla, Ulrika, 1972-, et al.
(författare)
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Movement as Mediation : Envisioning a Divided Nigerian City
- 2014
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Ingår i: Nordic Journal of African Studies. - Helsinki : Nordic Association of African Studies. - 1235-4481 .- 1459-9465. ; 23:2, s. 66-82
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Since its establishment in the beginning of the twentieth century, the inhabitants of the ethnically and religiously diverse Nigerian city of Jos have inhabited very different places and travelled along opposite trails – patterns that in recent years, with an escalation of violence, have gained new dimensions. By bringing people’s movements into focus, this article highlights how movement comes in different ways to mediate between people and a city in flux. Brought to light is how movement in several different modalities – fast, slow, in total arrest; clothed in Christian or Muslim attires; by car, on foot, or on horseback; assertive or explorative, in triumph as well as in fear – by mediating between people and the city, brings forth a metaphysical landscape that otherwise is hard to get hold of. In this vein, movement as a medium has become a form of ‘social envisioning’ – a tool for understanding and foretelling the city.
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| 6. |
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| 7. |
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| 8. |
- Themnér, Anders, et al.
(författare)
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Governance through Brokerage : Informal Governance in Post-Civil War Societies
- 2016
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Ingår i: Civil Wars. - : Informa UK Limited. - 1369-8249 .- 1743-968X. ; 18:3, s. 255-280
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- There is currently a lack of knowledge about how elites rule post-civil war societies without strong state institutions. This paper argues that elites oftentimes overcome such institutional deficiencies by engaging in governance through brokerage. According to this perspective, elites outsource central state functions to influential broker figures. This is particularly true when dealing with war-affected groups that possess much violent agency. By functioning as social membranes, brokers can help elites and war-affected groups to redefine a new social contract. Liberia is employed as an example to illustrate the paper’s central arguments.
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| 9. |
- Trovalla, Ulrika, 1972-
(författare)
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Predicting an Uncertain Infrastructure
- 2013
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Ingår i: Embassy Newsletter – Economic and Promotional News from West Africa. - Abuja : Embassy of Sweden Abuja. ; winter
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Tidskriftsartikel (populärvet., debatt m.m.)abstract
- Recently, our research project ‘Infrastructure as Divination: Urban Life in the Postcolony’ received funding from the Swedish Research Council. This three-year project explores the often overlooked qualitative aspects of infrastructure, and focuses on how the inhabitants in the Nigerian city of Jos try to predict the comings and goings of the infrastructure, as well as how they, through the infrastructure itself, try to predict the future of the city and the nation. Hence the word ‘divination’ in the title, which means ‘prediction,’ ‘prophecy,’ or ‘forecast.’
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| 10. |
- Trovalla, Ulrika, 1972-, et al.
(författare)
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Suprastructure : A photo exhibition
- 2013
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Bok (populärvet., debatt m.m.)abstract
- The photo exhibition ’Suprastructure’ was first displayed at Museum Gustavianum in Uppsala between 17 November 2012 and 5 March 2013. It was digitally published in March 2013 as part of a research project entitled ‘Infrastructure as Divination: Urban Life in the Postcolony,’ financed by the Swedish Research Council. The scholars behind the exhibition, Ulrika and Erik Trovalla, are researchers in cultural anthropology and ethnology. They are based at the Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala, and Uppsala University. Drawing on their photographs from the million city Jos in central Nigeria, they here give a glimpse of their research into the meanings of infrastructure in everyday life.
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