Ritual Retellings : : Luangan Healing Performances through Practice / / Isabell Herrman.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Berghahn Books Complete eBook-Package 2014-2015
• VerfasserIn: Herrman, Isabell,
• Place / Publishing House: New York; , Oxford : : Berghahn Books, , [2015]; ©2015
• Year of Publication: 2015
• Language: English
• Series: Epistemologies of Healing ; 16
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (304 p.)

Belian is an exceptionally lively tradition of shamanistic curing rituals performed by the Luangans, a politically marginalized population of Indonesian Borneo. This volume explores the significance of these rituals in practice and asks what belian rituals do – socially, politically, and existentially – for particular people in particular circumstances. Departing from the conception that rituals exist as ethereal, liminal or insulated traditional domains, this volume demonstrates the importance of understanding rituals as emergent within their specific historical and social settings. It offers an analysis of a number of concrete ritual performances, exemplifying a diversity of ritual genres, stylistic modalities and sensual ambiences, from low-key, habitual affairs to drawn-out, crowd-seizing community rituals and innovative, montage-like cultural experiments.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Figures -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Chapter One Luangan Lives The Order and Disorder of Improvisation and Practice -- Chapter Two Representing Unpredictability -- Chapter Three Making Tactile Ganti Diri Figures and the Magic of Concreteness -- Chapter Four The Uncertainty of Spirit Negotiation -- Chapter Five So that Steam Rises Ritual Bathing as Depersonalization -- Chapter Six It Comes Down to One Origin Reenacting Mythology and the Human-Spirit Relationship in Ritual -- Conclusion -- Glossary -- References -- Index