Ritual and ontogeny : life cycle rites in an eastern Indonesian society /
"Like many people, the Nagé of Flores Island recognize 'humans,' 'animals,' and 'spirits' as distinct kinds of being. The book explores how, in performing and interpreting life-cycle rituals, Nagé use these three categories in conceptualizing different stages in a...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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Durham, North Carolina :
Carolina Academic Press, LLC,
[2024]
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| Series: | Carolina Academic Press ritual studies monographs.
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| Summary: | "Like many people, the Nagé of Flores Island recognize 'humans,' 'animals,' and 'spirits' as distinct kinds of being. The book explores how, in performing and interpreting life-cycle rituals, Nagé use these three categories in conceptualizing different stages in a person's coming into being--beginning with fetal existence through entry into adulthood, marriage, and extending to death and beyond. Special attention is given to two unusual, now defunct, and previously non-obligatory ceremonies and how they relate to other life-cycle rites and enduring features of Nagé society, including marriage alliance and treatment of the dead. All these rituals reveal that, for Nagé, an unborn child exists in a largely animal state, becoming fully human only after birth. Funeral rites, by contrast, turn on a belief that the deceased becomes a malevolent spirit before transforming into a disembodied soul. Nevertheless, before this transformation is complete, Nagé also conceive of a person as participating in an animal-like condition. Based on 34 years of anthropological fieldwork (1984-2018), this book is the first general account of Nagé culture and indigenous ritual. Engaging with anthropology's "ontological turn"--a theoretical approach grounded in the idea that different societies differ fundamentally in the way they understand humans in relation to other beings--it is also the first to explore a society's worldview by focusing on the life cycle and particularly how component rituals express beliefs about the course of a human life. As such, the book will attract anyone interested in how a traditional non-Western community continues to view human existence"--Page 4 of cover. |
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| Physical Description: | xix, 254 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9781531027292 1531027296 |