AN    INTERNATIONAL     JOURNAL     OF
CULTURAL  AND SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Volume 46, no. 3 (Summer 2007)

RE-FORMATIONS OF THE SACRED, THE SECULAR, AND MODERNITY: NUANCES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AMONG THE TUAREG (KEL TAMAJAQ)

Susan Rasmussen

This article endorses using the "sacred" and the "secular" as distinct yet interrelated perspectives, experiences, spaces, and practices, rather than as static categories, polar opposites, or mutually exclusive or sequential processes. The secular is not merely a space left over from, or neatly opposed to, the sacred or religious (Asad 2003 and Lambek 2003), and the sacred and religious are not exactly equivalent. Nor does the secular always emerge from social change as more modern than the sacred (Comaroff and Comaroff 1993). Yet, to demarcate a domain as sacred implies some distinctiveness from another domain (Parkin 1991). This article argues for detaching "sacred" and "secular" from their literalist frames and viewing them as experiences or perspectives. Doing so requires reformulating the sacred, albeit not in evolutionary, functionalist, or structuralist terms. The value of doing so is demonstrated in a case study of the Tamajaq concept of al hima, which denotes approximately sacred, enchanted, or protected land in Tamajaq-speaking Tuareg communities of northern Mali and Niger. (Religion, symbolism, ritual, modernity, Tuareg).

DAILY NEGOTIATION OF TRADITIONS IN A RUSSIAN ORTHODOX SUGPIAQ VILLAGE IN ALASKA

Medeia Csoba DeHass

This article explores the motivation behind incorporating Russian Orthodoxy into the Sugpiat cultural repertoire in the village of Nanwalek, on the southern coast of Alaska. The Sugpiaq people living in the Lower Kenai villages were exposed to missionary activity early in the Russian colonial period. Ever since then the village of Nanwalek has devotedly followed the Orthodox faith and resisted any other denomination's missionizing attempts. The reasons that made Orthodoxy highly desirable for the Sugpiat of this area include constant remembrance of the deceased, a highly stratified church organization, and sensitivity towards local life-styles. An additional aspect of the Orthodox tradition that grasped people's attention and fulfills a fundamental need is the concept of protection. How protection is employed and interpreted in the local context provides insight to the process of negotiating religious identities in a post-colonial context. (Alaska Native, Sugpiaq, Russian Orthodoxy, religious synthesis).

LOSS AND HEALING: A MARIAN PILGRIMAGE IN SECULAR DUTCH SOCIETY

Catrien Notermans

A pilgrimage to Lourdes, France, supported by health insurance, helps old and ailing Dutch people cope with the losses of growing old in secular Dutch society. Elderly people are very much in need of the churches that are disappearing, and with them the collective rituals and symbols that would help elderly people express and cope with pain. The pilgrimage is a ritual of remembrance and connection, linking past, present, and future, and the living with the dead. It offers a modern and deeply felt religious experience in which personal traumas and painful memories of lost relatives and dead children are elicited and articulated as narratives. Pilgrims' stories before, during, and after the journey are its most healing aspect and give insight into the process of healing and empowerment. (Pilgrimage, old age, storytelling, illness and healing).

ALTERNATIVE PASTS: RECONSTRUCTING PROTO-OCEANIC KINSHIP

James West Turner

Allen has outlined a world-historical theory of kinship in which the earliest kinship systems are assumed to have been tetradic. Such a system is defined by alternate generation, prescriptive, and classificatory equations and is characterized by bilateral cross cousin marriage. Over time these three types of genealogical equations have tended to breakdown in exactly this order. That is, generational equations tend to be the first to breakdown. While supporting some aspects of Allen's analysis, Hage has argued that the Dravidian systems of Oceania, such as those found in Fiji, challenge the assumption of this directionality in the transformation of kinship systems. Hage's argument was based on the assumption that Proto-Oceanic kinship reflected a rule of prescriptive asymmetric alliance, an interpretation based on Blust's linguistic reconstructions. This article examines a Dravidian system from Fiji and questions whether it is derived from an asymmetric ancestral system. It also provides an alternative view of Proto-Oceanic kinship and its regional transformations. (Kinship transformations, Dravidian kinship terminologies, Fiji, comparative Austronesian studies).