'Broken Voices' is the first English-language book on Korea’s rich folksong heritage, and the first major study of the effects of Japanese colonialism on the intangible heritage of its former colony. In 2009, many Koreans reacted with dismay when China officially recognized the folksong 'Arirang', commonly regarded as the national folksong in North and South Korea, as part of its national intangible cultural heritage. They were vindicated when versions from both sides of the DMZ were included in UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity a few years later. At least on a national level, folksongs thus carry significant political importance. Maliangkay describes how an elaborate system of heritage management was first established in modern Korea and raises an important issue of cultural preservation—traditions that fail to attract practitioners and audiences are unsustainable, so compromises may be unwelcome but imperative.
This book is made open access as part of the Knowledge Unlatched KU Select 2017: Front list Collection

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'Broken Voices' is the first English-language book on Korea’s rich folksong heritage, and the first major study of the effects of Japanese colonialism on the intangible heritage of its former colony. In 2009, many Koreans reacted with dismay when China officially recognized the folksong 'Arirang', commonly regarded as the national folksong in North and South Korea, as part of its national intangible cultural heritage. They were vindicated when versions from both sides of the DMZ were included in UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity a few years later. At least on a national level, folksongs thus carry significant political importance. Maliangkay describes how an elaborate system of heritage management was first established in modern Korea and raises an important issue of cultural preservation—traditions that fail to attract practitioners and audiences are unsustainable, so compromises may be unwelcome but imperative.
This book is made open access as part of the Knowledge Unlatched KU Select 2017: Front list Collection

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Why are Khanty shamans still active? What are the folklore collectives of Komi? Why are the rituals of Udmurts performed at cultural festivals? In their insightful ethnographic study Anna-Leena Siikala and Oleg Ulyashev attempt to answer such questions by analysing the recreation of religious traditions, myths, and songs in public and private performances. Their work is based on long term fieldwork undertaken during the 1990s and 2000s in three different places, the Northern Ob region in North West Siberia and in the Komi and Udmurt Republics. It sheds light on how different traditions are favoured and transformed in multicultural Russia today. Siikala and Ulyashev examine rituals, songs, and festivals that emphasize specificity and create feelings of belonging between members of families, kin groups, villages, ethnic groups, and nations, and interpret them from a perspective of area, state, and cultural policies. A closer look at post-Soviet Khanty, Komi and Udmurts shows that opportunities to perform ethnic culture vary significantly among Russian minorities with different histories and administrative organisation. Within this variation the dialogue between local and administrative needs is decisive.

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Why are Khanty shamans still active? What are the folklore collectives of Komi? Why are the rituals of Udmurts performed at cultural festivals? In their insightful ethnographic study Anna-Leena Siikala and Oleg Ulyashev attempt to answer such questions by analysing the recreation of religious traditions, myths, and songs in public and private performances. Their work is based on long term fieldwork undertaken during the 1990s and 2000s in three different places, the Northern Ob region in North West Siberia and in the Komi and Udmurt Republics. It sheds light on how different traditions are favoured and transformed in multicultural Russia today. Siikala and Ulyashev examine rituals, songs, and festivals that emphasize specificity and create feelings of belonging between members of families, kin groups, villages, ethnic groups, and nations, and interpret them from a perspective of area, state, and cultural policies. A closer look at post-Soviet Khanty, Komi and Udmurts shows that opportunities to perform ethnic culture vary significantly among Russian minorities with different histories and administrative organisation. Within this variation the dialogue between local and administrative needs is decisive.

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The multifarious and sometimes contested concept of “shamanism” has aroused intense popular and scholarly interest since its initial coinage by the Russian scholar V. M. Mikhailovsky in the late 19th century. In this book, three leading scholars, representing different branches of the humanities, dwell on the current status of shamanic practices and conceptions of the soul, both as ‘etic’ scholarly categories in historical research and as foci of spiritual revitalization among the indigenous populations of post-Soviet Siberia.

Framed by an introduction and a critical afterword by historian of religions Ulf Drobin, the three essays address issues crucial to the understanding of cultural history and the history of religions. Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer, Research Professor in CERES, and the Department of Anthropology at the University of Georgetown, Jan N. Bremmer, professor emeritus and former Chair of Religious Studies at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies of the University of Groningen and Carlo Ginzburg at Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa.

The editor Peter Jackson, is Professor at the Department of Ethnology, History of Religions and Gender Studies at Stockholm University.

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The multifarious and sometimes contested concept of “shamanism” has aroused intense popular and scholarly interest since its initial coinage by the Russian scholar V. M. Mikhailovsky in the late 19th century. In this book, three leading scholars, representing different branches of the humanities, dwell on the current status of shamanic practices and conceptions of the soul, both as ‘etic’ scholarly categories in historical research and as foci of spiritual revitalization among the indigenous populations of post-Soviet Siberia.

Framed by an introduction and a critical afterword by historian of religions Ulf Drobin, the three essays address issues crucial to the understanding of cultural history and the history of religions. Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer, Research Professor in CERES, and the Department of Anthropology at the University of Georgetown, Jan N. Bremmer, professor emeritus and former Chair of Religious Studies at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies of the University of Groningen and Carlo Ginzburg at Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa.

The editor Peter Jackson, is Professor at the Department of Ethnology, History of Religions and Gender Studies at Stockholm University.

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Mythic discourses in the present day show how vernacular heritage continues to function and be valuable through emergent interpretations and revaluations. At the same time, continuities in mythic images, motifs, myths and genres reveal the longue durée of mythologies and their transformations. The eighteen articles of Mythic Discourses address the many facets of myth in Uralic cultures, from the Finnish and Karelian world-creation to Nenets shamans, offering multidisciplinary perspectives from twenty eastern and western scholars.

The mythologies of Uralic peoples differ so considerably that mythology is approached here in a broad sense, including myths proper, religious beliefs and associated rituals. Traditions are addressed individually, typologically, and in historical perspective. The range and breadth of the articles, presenting diverse living mythologies, their histories and relationships to traditions of other cultures such as Germanic and Slavic, all come together to offer a far richer and more developed perspective on Uralic traditions than any one article could do alone.

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Mythic discourses in the present day show how vernacular heritage continues to function and be valuable through emergent interpretations and revaluations. At the same time, continuities in mythic images, motifs, myths and genres reveal the longue durée of mythologies and their transformations. The eighteen articles of Mythic Discourses address the many facets of myth in Uralic cultures, from the Finnish and Karelian world-creation to Nenets shamans, offering multidisciplinary perspectives from twenty eastern and western scholars.

The mythologies of Uralic peoples differ so considerably that mythology is approached here in a broad sense, including myths proper, religious beliefs and associated rituals. Traditions are addressed individually, typologically, and in historical perspective. The range and breadth of the articles, presenting diverse living mythologies, their histories and relationships to traditions of other cultures such as Germanic and Slavic, all come together to offer a far richer and more developed perspective on Uralic traditions than any one article could do alone.

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This edited volume offers a historical, textual and ethnoanthropological exploration of the meaning and value of religion and ritual and their form and function in relation to Chinese literature and theatre. The term ‘theatre’ is used here to refer broadly to various types of live performances—theatrical and non-theatrical; sacred and profane— presented in a religious setting, thus including ritual performance and oral performance. Likewise, literature in this volume broadly encompasses both written and oral literatures, including drama, poetry, hagiography, legend, mythology and prosimetric narrative or chantefable for telling and singing. The contributors to the issue draw on a wide range of materials from historical, philosophical and literary texts to field reports and archaeological finds to archived documents and local gazetteers to personal interviews and participant observations. While all the essays are collected under the theme of ‘Religion and Folk Belief in Chinese Literature and Theatre’, they differ from each other in subject matter, source material and research approach. Rich and varied as they are, these essays fall into two main categories, namely, a historical approach to religion and ritual recorded in (written and visual) texts and an integrated approach that combines historical inquiries into written and visual texts with ethnoanthropological fieldwork on religious rituals and associated performances.

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“Sámi Religion: Religious Identities, Practices, and Dynamics” explores expressions of ‘’Sámi religion’’ in contemporary cultures, the role it plays in identity politics and heritagization processes, and the ways the past and present are entangled. In recent years, attitudes towards ‘’Sámi religion’’ have changed both within religious, cultural, political, and educational contexts as a consequence of what can be called the ‘’Indigenous turn’’. Contemporary, indigenous religion is approached as a something that adds value by a range of diverse actors and for a variety of reasons. In this Special Issue, we take account of emic categories and connections, focusing on which notions of ‘’Sámi religion’’ are used today by religious entrepreneurs and others who share and promote these types of spiritual beliefs, and how Sámi religion is taking shape on a plenitude of arenas in contemporary society.

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This book is a unique attempt by historians, anthropologists and specialists of different religions and esoteric trends to investigate the mental and physical 'techniques' for obtaining an 'experience' of the Absolute or the Sacred. Cognitive techniques include prayers or litanies practised in different ways, through repetition (Sufi dhikr, Christian Hesychasm, yoga) or motion (Sufi dance), along with visualizations (in Kabbala, Sufism, Buddhism) or breathing exercises (in many trends), and in the invocation of names (Kabbala, Sufism). Such techniques may also be taught by spirits or immaterial entities (Daoism, shamanism). Physical techniques aim to establish the practical conditions for controlling the body and preventing it from becoming an obstacle on the ascetic path. They include body postures in yoga and, most particularly, seclusion, often performed in solitary places (a forty-day retreat in Sufism or the famous three-year seclusion in a cave or hermitage in the case of Tibetan Buddhism). Mental and physical techniques are obviously intimately associated, and this book underlines the similarities between their practice in most world religions, the main points in common being the exercises based on repetition, breathing techniques and seclusion. In addition, some authors emphasize the fact that certain mystic trends, like Christian Hesychasm ('prayer of Jesus'), Sufism and Kabbala have borrowed spiritual techniques from Buddhism, and especially from yoga, and that such loans have also taken place between Sufism and Kabbala, and Buddhism and Daoism.

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The Owners of Kinship investigates how kinship in Indigenous Amazonia is derived from the asymmetrical relation between an “owner” and his or her dependents. Through a comprehensive ethnography of the Kanamari, Luiz Costa shows how this relationship is centered around the bond created between the feeder and the fed.Building on anthropological studies of the acquisition, distribution, and consumption of food and its role in establishing relations of asymmetrical mutuality and kinship, this book breaks theoretical ground for studies in Amazonia and beyond. By investigating how the feeding relation traverses Kanamari society—from the relation between women and the pets they raise, shaman and familiar spirit, mother and child, chiefs and followers, to those between the Brazilian state and the Kanamari—The Owners of Kinship reveals how the mutuality of kinship is determined by the asymmetry of ownership.

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Whether it’s childhood make-believe, the theater, sports, or even market speculation, play is one of humanity’s seemingly purest activities: a form of entertainment and leisure and a chance to explore the world and its possibilities in an imagined environment or construct. But as Roberte Hamayon shows in this book, play has implications that go even further than that. Exploring play’s many dimensions, she offers an insightful look at why play has become so ubiquitous across human cultures. Hamayon explores facets of play such as learning, interaction, emotion, strategy, luck, and belief, and she emphasizes the crucial ambiguity between fiction and reality that is at the heart of play as a phenomenon. Revealing how consistent and coherent play is, she ultimately shows it as a unique modality of action that serves an invaluable role in the human experience.

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