Changing Lived Worlds of Contemporary Amazonian Native Young People : Manchineri Youths in the Reserve and the City, Brazil-Acre

This thesis discusses the contemporary construction of the lived worlds of indigenous Amazonian youths. Today’s native peoples are considerably affected by the processes of globalization and urbanization, which have led to new ways of relating to their cultural traditions. This work presents a case study of Manchineri youngsters aged between 14 and 24 years old living in Acre state in Brazilian Amazonia. The Arawak-speaking Manchineri number some 1,000 people; their legally demarcated reserve is situated next to the River Yaco. The research is based on ethnographic material collected in the Mamoadate reserve and in the state capital, Rio Branco. By comparing the youth in different physical and social environments (the reserve and the city), my attempt has been to search for the most typical elements maintained, altered and created in the current lived worlds of Manchineri youths. Fieldwork methods included interviews, participant observation, photographs, video recordings, and drawings. The material was analyzed within the multidisciplinary framework of the social and cultural construction of knowledge. The study applies the concepts of social field, symbolic capital, and habitus as they have been used by Pierre Bourdieu; perspective as developed recently in Amazonian ethnology; the sacred as a cultural category as understood in the study of religion; and individual and person as concepts central to anthropology and sociology. Additionally, the study can be contextualized within youth studies, Latin American studies, and urban studies. The results of the study show that the everyday lives of young Amazonian native people are formed by a complex mixture of ‘modernity’ and ‘tradition’, fragmentation, and transitions between different conceptual frameworks. Part II discusses the ethnographic material in depth and shows that indigenous adolescents act from a variety of social perspectives: the native youth’s own ethnic group, divided into sub-groups, especially into urban residents and those living in the reserve; ancestors, super-human agents and spirits; other indigenous groups and non-natives. Consequently, besides the traditional initiation ritual, we find various contemporary rites of passage to adulthood: state-education, learning traditional practices, shamanism, matrimony, and transitions between the reserve and urban areas. According to these results, new social roles, political organization, responsibilities, and in general the desire to be respected, require both ‘modern’ and ‘traditional’ abilities. In Part III, the study shows that the current power relations constituted by new social contacts, ethnic recognition, and cooperation with different institutions have resulted in the formation of new social fields: youth cultures, the ethnic group, shamanic practices, the ethnopolitical movement, and indigenous students. The capacity of young Amazonian Indians to act in contemporary social fields produces them as full persons. The study also argues that the elements of the lived worlds can be divided into these social fields. When focusing on these fields, it became evident that these comprise the strategies adopted by young Indians to break through social and cultural barriers.

Audience members watching the opening ceremonies of the Heidelberg festival, with opening speech given by Thomas Mann.

Typed caption: Festakt in der Stadthalle zur Eroeffnung der Heidelberger Festpiele 1929. Thomas Mann hielt die Festrede. Unsere Aufnahme zeigt einen Ausschnitt aus der Festversammlung, an der die geistige Prominenz Heidelbergs und zahlreiche bedeutende Persoenlichkeiten des deutschen Kulturlebends teilnahmen. Von links nach rechts in der 1. Reihe: Rene Schickele, Rudolf Rittner, Gustav Hargung, Prof. Dr. Martin Dibelius, Gerhart Hauptmann, Dr. Rudolf H. Goldschmidt, Oberbuergermeister Dr. Neinhaus, Thomas Mann und Frau, Kultusminister Leers, Rudolf G. Binding; In der 3. Reihe: Oberbaurat L. Schmieder, Nobelpreistraeger Dr. F. Bergius, Bankdirektor Fremerey, Prof. Hellpach, Prof. Radbruch

Leo Baeck (sitting second from left) on stage at Dropsie College in Philadelphia to receive honorary Doctorate of Hebrew Letters Ceremonies; Commemorative

Page 14 of the "American Jewish Cavalcade" scrapbook of Leo Baeck in New York found in ROS 10 Folder 3

Traditionally Protected Forests and Sacred Forests of Zigua and Gweno Ethnic Groups in Tanzania

In Tanzania, indigenous forests can still be found whose existence is based on the management systems of precolonial society. This study covers material from over 900 forests. There are similar types of forests elsewhere in Africa, and similar forests can also be found in indigenous cultures on every continent. In this study they are called traditionally protected forests (TPFs). They have a high level of endemism and a rich biodiversity. The field study was carried out during the years 1997-2003 using participatory methods. An active debate is going on concerning the capacity of local communities to manage their environment. The role of indigenous people and their institutions in the development of the physical environment is a central issue in the debate. This study discusses the opportunities that the local people have had to decide on how to conserve, maintain, utilise, and manage their environment during different political periods. The study explains what kinds of changes have taken place in these forests and institutions in northeastern Tanzania among the matrilinear Zigua and patrilinear Gweno ethnic groups. About 2% of the land area of the communities was still protected by the precolonial structures. The communities have established their protection systems for different reasons, not only because of their beliefs but also because of different secular and clearly environmentally motivated reasons. There are different TPF types. Less than half of them are directly related to spirituality, and more than half are not. In earlier research elsewhere, it has been commonly understood that spiritual reasons played the main role in the protection of these environments. This study is also part of the postcolonial geographical discussion on the precolonial landscape and environmental management which was started by Carl Sauer. In the Zigua case study villages, only two out of five first comer clans have performed rain rituals in the past 30 years. Many of the most respected sacred sites do not have a ritual maker or even a person who knows how to perform rituals any longer. The same is happening with male initiation rites. In all case study villages there have been illegal cuts in the TPFs, but variations can be seen between the communities. The number of those who neither respect indigenous regulations nor accept indigenous penalties is growing. Positive developments have also taken place. Nowadays, the Forest Act of 2002 is in effect, which works as a cornerstone of community-based land ownership and also allows elders to protect TPFs, and by-laws are created with the support of different projects. Moreover, during the field study it was found that many young people are ignorant about their village's TPF sites, but interested in learning about their history and values.

Resolution prohibiting the performing of ceremonies at funerals of persons intermarried with Christians

Digital image

Letter to Jacques Judah Lyons from trustees, not permitting him to officiate at funeral of Bernheimer child

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Ketubah of Sabato Morais and Esther Weil

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Death, Ancestors, and HIV/AIDS among the Akan of Ghana

This is a study of crises caused by HIV/AIDS among the Akan of Ghana. It creates more awareness about the epidemic and has indicated other possible paths for campaign strategies. The pandemic has many devastating consequences; yet new infections are recorded daily despite campaigns against the disease. The search for therapy often sees the use of multiple outlets, which expresses Ghana's pluralistic medical system based on Kleinman's sector analytical model involving Western medicine, self-therapy, and folk healing. But it also leaves individuals and kin members in financial quandary. The fieldwork for this study is mainly through participant observation lasting 13 months (February 2003 to March 2004) among the Akan; in addition, some archival materials have been used. The Akan people live in the coastal south and forest zone of Ghana. Every Akan village or town is made up of corporate lineages, and social organisation is based on matrilineal descent. The society is holistic because the matrilineages seek the welfare of all their members. Meyer Fortes, R. S. Rattray and others on the Akan noticed this encompassing nature in the lineage organisation; but they did not make it salient (or failed to notice it) during illness, efforts for healing, and the care of the sick member. HIV/AIDS is an illness which shows the encompassing nature of the Akan matrilineage. It also reveals many contradictions in the group, viz. stigmatisation, abandonment, and attitudes that do not express altruism in a group expected to be closely-knit based on members' belief that they are of the 'same blood'. The crises have been analyzed in the total social system because the disease creates breaches at various levels of social interaction. An analysis of crises in a group is not far-fetched; Victor Turner has shown the way among the Ndembu and has revealed the contraditions in the seemingly uneventful life in the group. This study has identified that in dealing with HIV/AIDS patients and crises about the disease we are dealing with 'holistic' patients. Their cases produce many changes in the matrilineal structure--many orphans are being created and the care of patients is increasingly falling on the elderly. HIV/AIDS also challenges Akan cosmology because, for example, an AIDS death in local notions is a 'bad' demise which fails to produce ancestors who reproduce the society through reincarnation. Campaigns could emphasize this notion. The study begins with a description of the holistic nature of Akan matriliny, and the patients have been described as 'holistic' because their crises affect other people in the holistic society. Chapter 2 discusses the importance of ancestors as the starting points for social order who are constantly revered (in rites invoving the chief, Chapter 4). Chapter 3 focuses on funerals as an important social performance for the welfare of the dead and the living. Chapter 5 concentrates on HIV/AIDS as an illness threat marked by dominant discourses such as poverty, sexuality, migration, and condom use. Chapter 6 analyzes the attempts for therapy, and traditional healers' claims to have a cure. The efforts for therapy continues with spiritual church healing in Chapter 7, and chapter 8 is devoted to care of the patients and its inherent crises. Chapter 9 analyzes the effects of HIV/AIDS afflictions and AIDS deaths on the matrilineal group and in society. The study ends with a short part, devoted to Recommendations based on the findings in this investigation.

Cultural Trauma and Life Stories

The purpose of this work is to use the concepts of human time and cultural trauma in a biographical study of the turning points in the recent history of Estonia. This research is primarily based on 148 in-depth biographical interviews conducted in Estonia and Sweden in 1995-2005, supplemented by excerpts from 5 collections and 10 individually published autobiographies. The main body of the thesis consists of six published and of two forthcoming separate refereed articles, summarised in the theoretical introduction, and Appendix of the full texts of three particular life stories. The topic of the first article is the generational composition and the collective action frames of anti-Soviet social mobilisation in Estonia in 1940-1990. The second article details the differentiation of the rites of passage and the calendar traditions as a strategy to adapt to the rapidly changed political realities, comparatively in Soviet Estonia and among the boat-refugees in Sweden. The third article investigates the life stories of the double-minded strategic generation of the Estonian-inclined Communists, who attempted to work within the Soviet system while professing to uphold the ideals of pre-war Estonia. The fourth article is concentrated on the problems of double mental standards as a coping strategy in a contradictory social reality. The fifth article implements the theory of cultural trauma for the social practice of singing nationalism in Estonia. The sixth article bridges the ideas of Russian theoreticians concerning cultural dialogue and the Western paradigm of cultural trauma, with examples from Estonian Russian life stories. The seventh article takes a biographical look at the logic of the unraveling of cultural trauma through four Soviet decades. The eighth article explores the re-shaping of citizen activities as a strategy of coping with the loss of the independent nation state, comparatively in Soviet Estonia and among Swedish Estonians. Cultural trauma is interpreted as the re-ordering of the society s value-normative constellation due to sharp, violent, usually political events. The first one under consideration was caused by the occupations of the Republic of Estonia by the Soviet army in 1940-45. After half a century of suppression the memories of these events resurfaced as different stories describing the long-term, often inter-generational strategies of coping with the value collapse. The second cultural trauma is revealed together with the collapse of the Soviet power and ideology in Estonia in 1991. According to empirical data, the following three trauma discourses have been reconstructed: - the forced adaptation to Soviet order of the homeland Estonians; - the difficulty of preserving Estonian identity in exile (Sweden); - the identity crisis of the Russian population of Estonia. Comparative analyses of these discourses have shown that opposing experiences and worldviews cause conflicting interpretations of the past. Different social and ethnic groups consider coping with cultural trauma as a matter of self-defence and create appropriate usable pasts to identify with. Keywords: human time, cultural trauma, frame analysis, discourse, life stories

Trauma and the Memory of Politics

Edkins, Jenny, Trauma and the Memory of Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp.xvii+265 RAE2008

A Funeral Sermon on the death of Noah Levings

Funeral Sermon

An Address delivered in the Mercer Street Church at the funeral of the Hon. Benjamin Franklin Butler

Address

Funeral Services for Rev. F. D. Hemenway

The sermon is in printed pamphlet form.

A Catechumenate for the Korean Methodist Church: Ressourcement, Formation and a Response to Secularism and Korean Traditional Religions

Research by Korean sociologists of religion indicates that Korean Protestantism has lost much of the spiritual vitality of preceding generations and that it increasingly shows the influences of Korean shamanism, Neo-Confucianism, and Western secularism and consumerism. Suggestions in the areas of homiletics and Christian social ethics have been offered to help steer the Korean Protestant churches away from these worldviews toward a more biblically-based course. Drawing upon and expanding these earlier studies and proposals, the current work recommends another method for developing a biblically-based, spiritually-revitalized, baptismally-shaped and ministry-committed Protestantism in Korea: a pre-baptismal adult catechumenate, in this case one designed for the context of the Korean Methodist Church. In order to produce a renewed catechumenal structure for Korean Methodism, adult catechumenal processes as well as baptismal theologies and rites are examined and analyzed from three principal sources: the first five centuries of the Christian church, and especially the mystagogical literature of the fourth century; the Roman Catholic Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults developed after the Second Vatican Council; and the United Methodist Church in the United States, both texts officially authorized by the denomination's General Conference and unofficial materials, among them resources for an adult catechumenate in the Come to the Waters series. In addition, previous and current practices of preparation for baptism in the Korean Methodist Church are identified and critiqued. From these findings a set of principles is put forward that guide the proposed catechumenal structure.