Introduction
This brief editorial introduces the special double issue of Museum Anthropology Review titled Studies in Museum Ethnography in Honor of Daniel C. Swan.
Category: English
Exhibiting Heritage
This project report discusses the 2018 Centennial Commemoration of the Native American Church State of Oklahoma (NAC-OK). Chartered in 1918 the NAC-OK is an intertribal organization dedicated to the protection of the First Amendment rights of its membe…
“On behalf of the family”
This article examines themes of collaboration and stewardship, the importance of cultural protocols, and the intergenerational transmission of knowledge in the context of a Haida totem pole raising ceremony held at the Denver Art Museum in November 201…
A Survey of Contemporary Bai Craft Practices in the Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan, China
In this paper, the authors report on a survey of present-day craft practices found among Bai people in the Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture in China’s Yunnan province. This collaborative work was undertaken by a binational team drawn from five different …
This is Not a Costume
This reflective essay describes the research design for Dressing with Purpose: Belonging and Resistance in Scandinavia, an exhibition and publication for the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico. This essay outlines the theoretical,…
Reproductive Health Governance: Availability and Professional Use of Misoprostol in Benin and Burkina Faso
Misoprostol is effective not only for gastroenterology indications but also for reproductive health-related conditions and for the reduction of maternal mortality. The use of misoprostol is well documented in Latin America, where it is widely used for …
Things That Take from People’s Bodies: Rumours about Minimally Invasive Tissue Sampling and Evil Spirits in Ethiopia
In this paper we describe how the innovative technique of minimally invasive tissue sampling (MITS) and the researchers associated with it came to represent the fears, anger, and suspicions of a community in Eastern Ethiopia. MITS was developed to less…
The Necessity of Suspicion: Threading with Caution through a Nigerian Medical Landscape
The Covid-19 pandemic came to magnify issues that were already an intrinsic part of the Nigerian medical landscape. Growing out of historical processes, uncertainty, ambiguity, doubt, vigilance, and suspicion have become intensely manifest characterist…
Introduction to “Suspicious Medical Matters”
Nordic Journal of African Studies
A Comparative Study of Ideophones in Dagbani and Gurenԑ
Ideophones have been analysed in the linguistic literature as a class of words that depict sensory imagery; they are established in most natural languages, but particularly in African and Asian languages. They have gained popularity for their uniquenes…
The Gendered Ideologies of Naming Traditional Male Aphrodisiacs in Lesotho
This article examines the naming practices employed for traditional male Sesotho aphrodisiacs with the aim of unveiling the ideologies reflected and promoted by these names. It draws on a combined analytic approach of socio-onomastics and Feminist Crit…
The myth of the golden past: Critical perspectives on the paleo diet
The paper examines the Paleo Diet as a form of primitivism. After describing its constituents, it moves on to assess the evolutionary assumptions surrounding it through the lens of evolutionary mismatch theory. Evolutionary assumptions include t…
Patrimonios alimentarios en América Latina: recursos locales, actores y globalización
Rebaï N., Bilhaut A.-G., de Suremain C.-E., Katz E., Paredes M., (eds.), 2021. Patrimonios alimentarios en América Latina: recursos locales, actores y globalización, Lima, IFEA/IRD, 268 p.
El libro que a continuación comentamos, Patrimonio…
Book review of Fabio Parasecoli’s Gastronativism
Gastronativism : Food, Identity, Politics, Fabio Parasecoli; ISBN: 978-0-231-20207-7, Columbia University Press, New York, 2022.
Released at an extremely timely moment, Fabio Parasecoli’s Gastronativism: Food, Identity, Politics undertake…
Singing the Pain: Yezidi Oral Tradition and Sinjari Laments after ISIS1
Oral Tradition, 35/2 (2022):77-102 Our girls fell into the hands of the kafirThey sold our girls to strange countriesThis girl ran to the mountain to flee the kafir and she fellHadiya escaped the kafir, but she fell, she threw herselfIt is a Great Holiday,2 but those in the hands of the kafir have no oneThe […]
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On the Problems of Studying Modern Zoroastrianism
Oral Tradition, 35/2 (2022):61-76 Arguably, the problems of studying modern Zoroastrianism are not dissimilar to those associated with the study of Zoroastrianism in the ancient world. In both cases, the idea of orality and how to deal with it is an issue that demands attention. And in both cases, one of the problems concerns exegesis; […]
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On the Edge between Literacy and Orality
Oral Tradition, 35/2 (2022):21-60 1. Today’s Performance of the Long Liturgy The Long Liturgy (later LL) is the main Zoroastrian ritual. The central part1 consists of the recitation of the Gāϑās and the Yasna Haptaŋhāiti, a series of texts in Old Avestan, an Iranian language older than the one of the rest of the liturgy. […]
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Early Zoroastrianism and Orality
Oral Tradition, 35/2 (2022):9-20 Most readers of Oral Tradition may not be overly concerned with the oral transmission of premodern compositions. Those who study the religious texts of the ancient Zoroastrian religion, however, must now take the long period of oral transmission of these texts, and its implications for our understanding of its contents, very […]
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Editors’ Column
Oral Tradition, 35/2 (2022):1-2 The contribution that various branches of “Oral Studies” could make to the study of non Western scriptural religions is as yet largely unexplored. In the Iranian cultural sphere—where languages are spoken that belong to the Iranian branch of Indo-European, such as Persian and Kurdish—we find a number of religious traditions that […]
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The Religious Textual Heritage of the Yārsān (Ahl-e Haqq)
Oral Tradition, 35/2 (2022):141-50 The Yārsān This paper will discuss the complex “textual” heritage of the Yārsān of western Iran and northern Iraq, which is mainly transmitted orally but has partly been made available in writing in recent decades. The Yārsān (“Group of Friends”), also known as Ahl-e Haqq (“People of Truth”), and in Iraq […]
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The Village Chronotope in the Genre of Iraqi Yezidi Wedding Songs
Oral Tradition, 35/2 (2022):103-18 Introduction Among the world’s roughly one million Yezidis, adherents of a monotheistic faith that does not accept converts or allow marriage with outsiders, as many as half are living in exile, with the highest concentration of refugees outside the homeland living in Germany. Yezidis, originally from parts of Iraq, Turkey, Syria, […]
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The Yezidi Religious Music
Oral Tradition, 35/2 (2022):119-40 1. Introduction: Types of Performances and Learning Techniques While the Yezidi religious textual tradition, including its collection, translation, and analysis, has already become a separate subject of investigation in the field of Yezidi Studies,1 its religious music remains largely unstudied. Based on the analysis of Yezidi religious vocal performances, this contribution […]
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Religious Musical Knowledge and Modes of Transmission among the Kurdish Ahl-e Haqq of Gurān1
Introduction The great astronomer and social commentator Adam Frank says: “We are fundamentally storytellers . . . . Every society . . . has had a system of myths, a constellation of stories that provide a basic sense of meaning and context” (2018:8). So what is this constellation of stories for the Ahl-e Haqq (AH) […]
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Introduction
Oral Tradition, 35/2 (2022):3-8 Whilst the study of “oral verbal art” in the literary sphere is now receiving a certain amount of academic interest, much less attention has so far been paid to the dynamics of orality in the sphere of religion, not least in non-Western traditions.1 Many specialists in such fields as religious studies and […]
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Mîrza Mihemed / Mirza Pamat
Oral Tradition, 35/2 (2022):419-40 The field studies of Neo-Aramaic dialects that have proliferated recently have yielded many folklore texts.1 During the author’s fieldwork (together with Christina Benyaminova) with one speaker of Neo-Aramaic, the sophisticated plot of a folk story with a hero named Mirza Pamat attracted his attention. A comparison of this story with other […]
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