Matching Items (34)
Description
This study is based on a submission of anthropological, historical, and literary approaches. The ethnographic study of the Shi'a holy shrines between November 2011 and January 2012 is based on my visit to Iraq. The study lasted almost ten weeks, to include the two events under discussion: `Ashurā and Al-Arb`ain, in Karbala of that year. This thesis argues that the mourning rituals of `Ashurā and the Forty Day Visitation Zyarat Al-Arb`ain contribute to the social or individual life of Iraqi Shi'a. They also make significant contributions through creating a symbolic language to communicate for the community, as well as communicating with their essential symbolic structure. Second, the Forty Day Visitation Zyarat Al-Arb`ain is one of the most significant collective mourning rituals, one that expresses unity and solidarity of the Iraqi Shi'a community, and helps them to represent their collective power, and maintain their collective existence. This study uses two of Victor Turner's tripartite models. For `Ashurā the rite of passage rituals is used, which consists of the separation, margin, and re-aggregation phase. Through this process of entering and leaving time and social structure, it helps in changing the social status of the participants. The other model used for Al-Arb`ain is pilgrimage as a social process, which includes three levels of communitas: existential, normative, and ideological communitas. The Shi'a in Iraq are holding a position similar to Turner's notion of communitas since they are living within a society that is Muslim and yet even though they are a larger population of the society, they still become marginalized by the Sunni population socially, economically, and politically. Social relations and links play a significant role for Shi'a in `Ashurā and Al-Arb`ain as a reflection between their social status as an undefined communitas and the general structure of Iraqi society.
ContributorsHamdan, Faraj Hattab (Author) / Talebi, Shahla (Thesis advisor) / Ali, Souad T. (Thesis advisor) / Gallab, Abdullahi (Committee member) / Gereboff, Joel (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Conversion to Judaism has a long history, and changes in Jewish law for converts over the centuries have reflected changes in the relationship between the Jewish community and the larger societies within which Jews have lived. As American Jews now live in the most open society they have encountered, a split is developing between Orthodox and liberal Jewish rabbinic authorities in how they deal with potential converts. This split is evident in books written to advice potential converts and in conversion narratives by people who have converted to Judaism. For this project over 30 people who were in the process of converting to Judaism were interviewed. Their stories reflect the ways in which liberal Judaism has been affected by American ideals and values, including feminism and an emphasis on spiritual individuality.
ContributorsCohen, Mariam (Author) / Gereboff, Joel (Thesis advisor) / Woodward, Mark (Committee member) / Cohen, Adam (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
This thesis focuses on justice, human rights, and migration in Iraq. It explores the ideas of justice and human rights, and how they influence the migration of the Iraqi Assyrians and Chaldeans. Through the use of qualitative methodology, including a review of scholarly literature, personal experience, and semi-formal interviews with ten individuals, this research mainly focuses on the influence that justice and human rights had on migration during the U.S.-Iraq War, from 2003 until 2011. Justice, human rights, and migration before and after the War are examined. The study concludes that justice and human rights are factors that influence the migration of Iraq's Assyrian and Chaldean community throughout the U.S.-Iraq War; however justice and human rights are not the only factors.
ContributorsBiya, Diana (Author) / Romero, Mary (Thesis advisor) / Ali, Souad T. (Thesis advisor) / El Hamel, Chouki (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
In the countries of Eastern Europe, the recent history of the communist regimes creates a context rich in various and often times contradictory remembering practices. While normative discourses of memory enacted in official forms of memory such as museums, memorials, monuments, or commemorative rituals attempt to castigate the communism in definite terms, remembering practices enacted in everyday life are more ambiguous and more tolerant of various interpretations of the communist past. This study offers a case study of the ways in which people remember communism in everyday life in Romania. While various inquiries into Eastern Europe's and also Romania's official and intentional forms of memorializing communism abound, few works address remembering practices in their entanglements with everyday life. From a methodological point of view, this study integrates a grounded methodology approach with a rhetorical sensitivity to explore the discourses, objects, events, and practices of remembering communism in Bucharest, the capital city of Romania. In doing so, this inquiry attends not only to the aspects of the present that animate the remembering of communism, but also and more specifically to the set of practices by which the remembering process is performed. The qualitative analysis revealed a number of conceptual categories that clustered around three major themes that describe the entanglements of remembering activities with everyday life. Relating the present to the past, sustaining the past in the present, and pursuing the communist past constitute the ways in which people in Romania live their relationships with the communist past in a way that reveals the complex interplay between private and public forms of memory, but also between the political, social, and cultural aspects of the remembering process. These themes also facilitate a holistic understanding of the rhetorical environment of remembering communism in Romania.
ContributorsPaulesc, Marie-Louise (Author) / de la Garza, Sarah Amira (Thesis advisor) / Brouwer, Dan (Thesis advisor) / Gereboff, Joel (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
The ancient religious practices and beliefs of the indigenous people of Northern Scandinavia, known as the Sámi, have been misrepresented and misinterpreted by well meaning ethnographers and researchers who view such practices and beliefs through an Descartes-Cartesian, objective-subjective lens. This thesis develops a more accurate, intersubjective paradigm that is used to illuminate more clearly the religious workings of the 17th-18th Century Sámi. Drawing upon the intersubjective theories presented by A. Irving Hallowell, Tim Ingold and Kenneth Morrison, ethnographic examples from the writings of early Lutheran missionaries and priests demonstrate that the Sámi lived in a world that can be best understood by the employ of the categories of Person (ontology), Power (epistemology) and Gift (axiology).
ContributorsGoettl, Eric Daniel (Author) / Gereboff, Joel (Thesis advisor) / Swanson, Todd (Committee member) / Kristiansen, Roald E. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
This dissertation research analyzes the vernacular cosmopolitan praxis of Muslim women in transnational cyberspaces related to topical and collective action networks, in an effort to detangle cosmopolitanism from its Western biases and to move away from studies of online Muslim populations based on geographical locations or homogenous networks, linking individuals through their religious practices or consumption of religious knowledge. Through highlighting praxes rather than contexts, this dissertation disrupts the East/West binary and challenges stereotypes ascribed to Muslim women. One of the research questions related to the cosmopolitan praxis of Muslim women is the following: in what ways do Muslim women engage with "others" online and contribute to bridging dissimilar people? Findings suggest that the social media use of Muslim women contributes to their subtle resistance against communal norms and, although it can serve as an extension to their voices, some of their voices are more readily mediated than others. I employ a connective content analysis methodology to put various datasets associated with topics and collective actions related to Muslim women into conversation. The methodology not only highlights consistencies in the qualitative themes that were iteratively developed through the analyses of the datasets, but also more tangible connections related to social media users, topics, and content. Consequently, this thesis is as much concerned with recasting Western-oriented conceptualizations of cosmopolitanism as it is with how networks dynamics foster and constrain cosmopolitan praxis because digital networks have the extraordinary capacity to link dissimilar people beyond any other type of medium. One of the research questions related to the methodology is: how do network dynamics facilitate and constrain cosmopolitan praxis? The substantive chapters related to the datasets discuss various forms of cosmopolitan praxis that were identified in the analysis: social media use by Muslim women that expands the connective memory, which could contribute to dispelling stereotypes ascribed to them; activism that addresses universal concerns related to women's rights regardless of context; dialogically devising basic standards of social conduct and gender relations; and expressions of tolerance toward divergent views, including alternative interpretations of Islamic beliefs and practices.
ContributorsRobinson, Rebecca S (Author) / Lim, Merlyna (Thesis advisor) / Ali, Souad T. (Committee member) / Parmentier, Mary Jane C, (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
This dissertation explores the various online radicalization and recruitment practices of groups like al-Qaeda and Hezbollah, as well as Salafi Jihadists in general. I will also outline the inadequacies of the federal government's engagement with terrorist / Islamist ideologies and explore the ways in which early 20th century foundational Islamist theorists like Hasan al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb, and Abul ala Mawdudi have affected contemporary extremist Islamist groups, while exploring this myth of the ideal caliphate which persists in the ideology of contemporary extremist Islamist groups. In a larger sense, I am arguing that exploitation of the internet (particularly social networking platforms) in the radicalization of new communities of followers is much more dangerous than cyberterrorism (as in attacks on cyber networks within the government and the private sector), which is what is most often considered to be the primary threat that terrorists pose with their presence on the internet. Online radicalization should, I argue, be given more consideration when forming public policy because of the immediate danger that it poses, especially given the rise of microterrorism. Similarly, through the case studies that I am examining, I am bringing the humanities into the discussion of extremist (religious) rhetorics, an area of discourse that those scholars have largely ignored.
ContributorsSalihu, Flurije (Author) / Ali, Souad T. (Thesis advisor) / Miller, Keith (Thesis advisor) / Corman, Steven (Committee member) / Gee, James P (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
This work examines the spectrum of Christian attitudes toward yoga as demonstrative of contemporary religious imagination in recent United States history. With the booming commodification of yoga as exercise, the physical and mental elements of yoga practice are made safely secular by disassociation from their ostensible religious roots. Commonly deployed phrases, "Yoga is not a religion," or even, "Yoga is a science," open a broad invitation. But the very need for this clarification illustrates yoga's place in the United States as a borderline signifier for spirituality. Vocal concern by both Christians and Hindus demonstrates the tension between perceptions of yoga as a secular commodity and yoga as religiously beget. Alternatively embracing and rejecting yoga's religious history, Christian yoga practitioners reframe and rejoin yoga postures and breathing into their lives of faith. Some proponents name their practice Christian Yoga.
Christian Yoga flourishes as part of contemporary religious and spiritual discourse and practice in books, instructional DVDs, websites and studios throughout the United States. Christian Yoga proponents, professional and lay theologians alike, highlight the diversity of American attitudes toward and understanding of yoga and the heterogeneity of Christianity. For religious studies scholars, Christian Yoga advocates and detractors provide an opportune focal point for inquiry into the evolution of spiritual practice, the dynamics of tradition, experience and authority, and the dialectic nature of evolving cultural attitudes in a religiously plural and complex secular environment.
Christian Yoga flourishes as part of contemporary religious and spiritual discourse and practice in books, instructional DVDs, websites and studios throughout the United States. Christian Yoga proponents, professional and lay theologians alike, highlight the diversity of American attitudes toward and understanding of yoga and the heterogeneity of Christianity. For religious studies scholars, Christian Yoga advocates and detractors provide an opportune focal point for inquiry into the evolution of spiritual practice, the dynamics of tradition, experience and authority, and the dialectic nature of evolving cultural attitudes in a religiously plural and complex secular environment.
ContributorsWilken, Jennifer (Author) / Fessenden, Tracy (Thesis advisor) / Cady, Linell (Committee member) / Gereboff, Joel (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
Over the course of more than half a century, Rabbi Dr. Irving Greenberg has developed a distinctive theology of intra- and inter-group relations. Deeply influenced by his experiences in the Christian-Jewish dialogue movement, Greenberg's covenantal theology and image of God idea coalesce into what I refer to as Hybrid Judaism, a conceptualization that anticipated key aspects David Hollinger's notion of Postethnicity. As such, Greenberg's system of thought is mistakenly categorized (by himself, as well as others) as an expression of pluralism. The twentieth century arc of social theories of group life in America, from Melting Pot to Postethnicity by way of Cultural Pluralism, serves to highlight the fact that Greenberg is better located at the latter end of this arc (Postethnicity), rather than in the middle (Pluralism). Central to Greenberg's proto-postethnic theology is the recognition of the transformative power of encounter in an open society. Greenberg's ideas are themselves the product of such encounters. Understood fully, Hybrid Judaism has great relevance for American Jewish identity in the twenty-first century.
ContributorsKleinberg, Darren, 1976- (Author) / Gereboff, Joel (Thesis advisor) / Fessenden, Tracy (Committee member) / Moore, Moses (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
La Santa Muerte is a folk saint depicted as a female Grim Reaper in Mexico and the Southwestern United States. The Grim Reaper, as an iconic representation of death, was derived from the Angel of Death found in pseudepigrapha and apocalyptic writings of Jewish and early Christian writers. The Angel of Death arose from images and practices in pre-Christian Europe and throughout the Mediterranean region. Images taken from Revelation were used to console the survivors of the Black Death in Western Europe and produced a material culture that taught the Christian notion of dying well. The combination of the scythe (used in the eschatological harvest), the black cowl (worn by medieval priests and monks officiating at funerals), and the skeleton (as the physical body of the deceased) are a series of apocalyptic Christian referents that form a metonymical composite referred to as the Grim Reaper.
In medieval Iberian Dances of Death, the Grim Reaper was depicted as female, an unyielding social leveler, and an important participant in the Last Judgment. Personalized Death became associated with healing, renewal, magic, and binding, as apocalyptic Christianity blended with the Christian cult of the saints and the Virgin Mary during the Reconquista and the colonization of Mesoamerica. Utilizing secondary historical sources, metonymy, and iconology this Master of Arts thesis posits that the La Santa Muerte image resulted from a long historical interaction of Greek, Roman, Jewish, Visogothic, Islamic, and Christian death imagery leading up to the colonization of Mesoamerica.
In medieval Iberian Dances of Death, the Grim Reaper was depicted as female, an unyielding social leveler, and an important participant in the Last Judgment. Personalized Death became associated with healing, renewal, magic, and binding, as apocalyptic Christianity blended with the Christian cult of the saints and the Virgin Mary during the Reconquista and the colonization of Mesoamerica. Utilizing secondary historical sources, metonymy, and iconology this Master of Arts thesis posits that the La Santa Muerte image resulted from a long historical interaction of Greek, Roman, Jewish, Visogothic, Islamic, and Christian death imagery leading up to the colonization of Mesoamerica.
ContributorsBreault, Eric (Author) / Astor-Aguilera, Miguel A (Thesis advisor) / Gereboff, Joel (Committee member) / Maupin, Jonathan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014