Rituals in an Unstable World

The Editors: Alexander Henn is Associate Professor at the Department for Religious Studies and the School of Global Studies at Arizona State University in Phoenix (USA).Klaus-Peter Koepping is Emeritus Professor of the University Heidelberg and currently visiting professor at Goldsmith College, Center for Cultural Studies, at the University of London.

• Contents: Alexander Henn: Introduction. Beyond Norm, Text and Dialectics - Ritual as Social Praxis – Ulricke Stohrer: Keeping Stability in an Unstable World: Ritual, Performance and Identity in Yemen – Alito Siqueira: Performing Myths of Location: The Return of the Goddess of Saltura (India) – Mani Shekhar Singh: Tradition, Pictorial Convention, Personal Trait: Poetics of Composition in Maithil Painting (India) – Michael Rudolph: Improvisation, Contingency, and Ambiguity: The Efficacy of Contemporary Ritual Performances of Taiwan’s Aborigines – Terence Turner: Ritualized Politics and Politicized Ritual Among Ourselves and the Kayapo of Brazil – Monika Salzbrunn: Marginal Politics: Carnivals as a Mode of Expression in Migration (France/Germany) – Akira Nishimura: Symbiosis or Segregation? Dealing With the «Foreign» in Nagasaki – Betina Schmidt: Polyphonic Bricolage: Caribbean Religious Cultures in New York City – Alexander Henn: Ritual, History and Identity in Goa (India) – Beatrix Hauser: How to Fast for a Good Husband? Reflections on Ritual Imitation and Embodiment in Orissa (India) – Kirsten Endres: Serving the Shadows: Performative Aspects of Vietnamese Mediumship – Irit Averbuch: Embodying the Sacred in Kagura Performances: On the Non-Verbal Language of Divine Presence in Japanese Ritual Dance-Dramas – Klaus-Peter Koepping: Body - Text - Mask: Competing Ritual Strategies and the Fracturing of Collective Identity in Modern Japan – Vincent Crapanzano: On the Preclusive Dimension of Ritual Representation.