AN    INTERNATIONAL     JOURNAL     OF
CULTURAL  AND SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Volume 44, no. 2 (Spring 2005)

SPIRITS OF THE HEREAFTER: DEATH, FUNERARY POSSESSION, AND THE AFTERLIFE IN CHUUK, MICRONESIA

Katherine Boris Dernbach
University of Iowa

In Chuuk, Micronesia, recently deceased kin often appear as spirit visitors and may possess female relatives in order to provide comfort and guidance, and to deliver important messages from beyond the grave. These spirits are fully sentient beings who retain social and emotional ties with their earthly homes and families, and occupy a liminal space between this world and the afterlife. During this liminal period, spirits must learn how to "be dead," while the living struggle to reconcile themselves to the corporeal death and new spiritual life of the departed. Spirit possession and other forms of spirit communication, including the popular use of ouija boards, help to facilitate the process of "becoming dead" on both sides of the cosmological divide. Traditional and contemporary mortuary rituals, death and the transformation of the soul into a spirit being, experiences of the afterlife, and inter-actions with the spirit world through funerary possession and spirit encounters are examined in order to understand death as a journey of becoming that is also marked by social rupture, ritual, and the problems of grief and attachment. (Spirit possession, death, cosmology, Christianity, Micronesia).

CHABAD IN COPENHAGEN: FUNDAMENTALISM AND MODERNITY IN JEWISH DENMARK

Andrew Buckser
Purdue University

After establishing its mission in Copenhagen, Denmark, over ten years ago, the Hasidic group, Chabad, has little success to show for its proselytizing efforts. Yet it is admired and welcomed by the religiously liberal Danish Jews for its stringent religiosity, cultural otherness, and commitment to social ethnicity. Despite the profound ideological differences between the two, relations between Chabad and the Jewish community have been markedly positive. Indeed, Chabad's organizational independence has allowed it to relieve internal strains that have increasingly troubled the established Jewish community. The anthropology of religious fundamentalism has largely focused on ideological conflicts between fundamentalist and liberal religious ideologies. This case suggests that closer attention to social processes can enrich an understanding of the complexities of social interaction and the possibilities for engagement between ideologically opposed religious groups. (Hasidism, liberalism, Danish Judaism).

MUMMERS AND MOSHERS: TWO RITUALS OF TRUST IN CHANGING SOCIAL ENVIRONMENTS

Craig T. Palmer
University of Missouri-Columbia

This article compares two seemingly disparate rituals: the disguised house-visiting in rural Newfoundland known as "mumming," and the aggressive dancing known as "moshing" that occurs at concerts of some popular music. Both are activities where participants place themselves at risk of harm at the hands of other participants, and both can be seen as rituals simultaneously demonstrating trust and trustworthiness. For such rituals to be successful in promoting trusting relationships, there must be a pre-existing trust among the participants, and the rituals must be closely governed by spoken or unspoken rules that maintain the fine line separating demonstrations of trust from a violence that can injure and destroy relationships. This hypothesis is examined by the effect of the absence of these conditions on the two rituals. (Risk, trust, Mumming, Moshing).

VIETNAMESE NEW YEAR RICE CAKES: ICONIC FESTIVE DISHES AND CONTESTED NATIONAL IDENTITY

Nir Avieli
National University of Singapore

Vietnamese banh Tet (New Year rice cakes) are the most prominent culinary icons of the most important Vietnamese festival. This article examines the sociocultural ideas of contemporary Vietnamese national identity expressed by these dishes, and explores the implicit and complex ways by which they take part in developing Vietnamese cultural identity and nationalism. In terms of the "Imagined Communities" analytical framework, this food item serves as an important means for practicing and "concretizing" national identity. (Vietnam, national identity, food symbolism, rice cakes).

THE AFTERLIFE OF ASABANO CORPSES: RELATIONSHIPS WITH THE DECEASED IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA

Roger Ivar Lohmann
Trent University

Before contact with the West, the Asabano of Papua New Guinea treated human remains differently depending on the type of relationship survivors planned to have with the deceased. Traditional methods included corpse exposure with curation or disposal of bones, disposal of corpses in rivers, and cannibalism. Following their conversion to Christianity, Asabano burned or buried their bone relics and commenced coffin inhumation in cemeteries. These practices left distinctive memories and physical records that served as means to alter, enhance, or terminate relations with the deceased who are biologically but not, according to the Asabano, socially dead. (Burial, funerals, death, mortuary, religion).