Browsing by Subject "Syncretism"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4

Consuming the Maya : an ethnography of eating and being in the land of the Caste Wars
(2014-05) O'Connor, Amber Marie; Stross, Brian
This dissertation is an ethnographic work describing how foodways have become central to identity negotiation in a Maya village that has recently been impacted by evangelical conversion and tourism. This village is in the region of Quintana Roo, Mexico best known for its involvement in the Caste Wars of Yucatán and historic resistance to assimilation to Mexican identity. However, in recent years, the demand for inexpensive labor in the hotel zone of the Caribbean coast of Quintana Roo has led to improved infrastructure and transportation to these villages. With this improved infrastructure has come increased outside interaction including the establishment of evangelical churches and day labor buses. These combined influences of religion and labor changes have led to new ways of negotiating identity that had not previously existed in village life here. Because life in this village had always centered on subsistence farming and its associated food getting and food making tasks, the option for wage labor and evangelical religion have provided a support system for those unable or unwilling to participate in traditional forms of subsistence. The new social structures are often negotiated using food and foodways as a declaration of belonging or resistance. My work provides vignettes describing these processes of identity negotiation at the national, regional and familial levels.
Remixing Religion: An Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference
(2014-04-04) Weisenfeld, Judith; Muir, Scott; Sienna, Noam; Tepera, Courtney; Hazard, Sonia; Mundra, Anil; Ceriello, Linda; Adelakun, Abimbola; Kane, Ross; Loar, Jonathan; Maldonado, Alyssa; Frankfurter, David; Comerford, Bennett DiDente; Mazhjoo, Nina; Tobolowsky, Andrew; Greenlee, Robert; Hernandez, E. J.; Kerby, Lauren; MacCormack, Ian
Religions mix. Scholars of religion have employed a variety of terms to describe the processes and results of religious mixing, including syncretism, hybridity, creolization, bricolage, transculturation, and blending. Although some of these terms are useful conceptual tools, at root they replicate problematic binaries or reduce religious mixing to contagion. Many of these terms have scurrilous histories of application, often to silence marginalized voices, impose unity, and fortify institutional power. The debate over terminology—even when used “neutrally”—detracts from the creation of more nuanced models of religious synthesis. A new approach is needed. In order to overcome this terminological impasse, we suggest adopting a placeholder term—such as ‘mixing’ or ‘synthesis’—for the dynamic process of religious interchange. We are interested in models of religious mixing that attend to diversity without replicating troublesome binaries. Pure forms—if they ever existed—are relegated to the mists of early pre-history. Religions are heterogeneous constellations of historically contingent components from the start. Such an approach can attend to the agency of individual religious authorities and practitioners, the power-laden discourses that belie and constitute the process of mixing, and the competition between these discourses.
Santa Muerte and the politics of malleability : the angel of Death in Mexico City
(2016-05) McDonald, Kathryn Louis; Guidotti-Hernández, Nicole Marie; Gonzalez-Martin, Rachel
This thesis explores and critiques mainstream narratives of Santa Muerte, a marginalized Mexican spiritual figure, through ethnographic data collected in spaces of Santa Muerte spiritual commerce and devotion in Mexico City during the summer of 2015, with an emphasis on Barrio Tepito, Colonia Morelos and Mercado de Sonora. This thesis will argue that Santa Muerte’s malleability, particularly with regards to gender; the embrace of physicality, and its followers’ attitude towards death, demonstrate Santa Muerte’s appeal as a spiritual tool, particularly for marginalized segments of Mexican society.
Walking with the dead : transit, transfer, and transformation in São Paulo's devotion to souls
(2024-02-05) Amoruso, Michael Benjamin; Garrard, Virginia, 1957-; Tweed, Thomas; Graber, Jennifer; Butler, Matthew; Burdick, John
On Mondays—widely known as “the day of the souls” in Brazil—devotees across São Paulo visit cemeteries and Catholic churches to pray to the souls of the dead. But not all practitioners are Catholic, and some are Catholic and something else too. For this reason, observers call the devotion to souls syncretic. While some scholars have criticized the term for positing essential religious forms degraded through mixture, in Brazil, it is part of the vernacular. There it is wedded to a national racial ideology that characterizes Brazilians as a mixture of Portuguese, African, and indigenous peoples. According to this logic, Brazilians mix religions because they themselves are racially mixed. This dissertation considers this devotion to souls as a vector for religious movement. Turning syncretism on its head, it attends to how souls, living and departed, move and mingle. It argues that the devotion to souls is a point of transit and transfer between realms—that is, it connects devotees to departed kin and other souls in the spiritual world—and between religious theologies, identities, and institutions. Put more plainly, it suggests that devotees move across religious boundaries, and that movement changes religious spaces.