Ultimate Ambiguities

Investigating Death and Liminality

Peter Berger, Justin Kroesen (Herausgeber)

Buch | Hardcover

290 Seiten

2015
Berghahn Books (Verlag)
978-1-78238-609-4 (ISBN)

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Although dying can be seen as the paradigm of liminality, because periods of transition are often associated with death, many volumes on death in the social sciences do not specifically address liminality. This book investigates these "ultimate ambiguities" as crucial periods of creativity, change, and emergent aspects of social and religious life.

Periods of transition are often symbolically associated with death, making the latter the paradigm of liminality. Yet, many volumes on death in the social sciences and humanities do not specifically address liminality. This book investigates these “ultimate ambiguities,” assuming they can pose a threat to social relationships because of the disintegrating forces of death, but they are also crucial periods of creativity, change, and emergent aspects of social and religious life. Contributors explore death and liminality from an interdisciplinary perspective and present a global range of historical and contemporary case studies outlining emotional, cognitive, artistic, social, and political implications.

Peter Berger is Associate Professor of Indian Religions and the Anthropology of Religion at the University of Groningen. His books include Feeding, Sharing and Devouring: Ritual and Society in Highland Odisha (de Gruyter, 2015), The Modern Anthropology of India (co-ed with Frank Heidemann, Routledge, 2013) and Godroads: Modalities of Conversion in India (co-ed with Sarbeswar Sahoo, Cambridge University Press, 2020).

List of Illustrations

Preface

Introduction

Peter Berger

PART I: RITUALS

Chapter 1. The Ambiguity of Mortal Remains, Substitute Bodies, and other Materializations of the Dead among the Garo of Northeast India

Erik de Maaker

Chapter 2. Structures and Processes of Liminality: The Shape of Mourning among the Sora of Tribal India

Piers Vitebsky

Chapter 3. Liminal Bodies, Liminal Food: Hindu and Tribal Death Rituals Compared

Peter Berger

Chapter 4. The Liminality of “Living Martyrdom”: Suicide Bombers’ Preparations for Paradise

Pieter G. T. Nanninga

PART II: CONCEPTS

Chapter 5. Disappearance and Liminality: Argentina’s Mourning of State Terror

Antonius C.G.M. Robben

Chapter 6. Three Dimensions of Liminality in the Context of Kyrgyz Death Rituals

Roland Hardenberg

Chapter 7. Death, Ritual, and Effervescence

Peter Berger

PART III: IMAGERIES

Chapter 8. Hungry Ghost or Divine Soul? Post-Mortem Initiation in Medieval Shaiva Tantric Death Rites

Nina Mirnig

Chapter 9. Between Death and Judgement: Sleep as the Image of Death in Early Modern Protestantism

Justin Kroesen and Jan R. Luth

Chapter 10. Body and Soul Between Death and Funeral in Archaic Greece

Jan N. Bremmer

Chapter 11. Death, Memory and Liminality. Rethinking Lampedusa’s Later Life as Author and Aristocrat

Yme B. Kuiper

Notes on Contributors

Verlagsort	Oxford
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	562 g
Themenwelt	Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie
Themenwelt	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Mikrosoziologie
ISBN-10	1-78238-609-2 / 1782386092
ISBN-13	978-1-78238-609-4 / 9781782386094
Zustand	Neuware