Ultimate Ambiguities

Investigating Death and Liminality
1. Auflage 2015
ISBN: 978-1-78238-609-4
Verlag: Berghahn Books

Buch, Englisch, 290 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 577 g

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.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Berger, Peter

Kroesen, Justin

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Religionsphilosophie, Philosophische Theologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religionsphilosophie, Philosophische Theologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Metaphysik, Ontologie
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften Interdisziplinär Thanatologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Ethnologie Religionsethnologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

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

Über Autor(innen)

Berger, Peter
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).

Kroesen, Justin
Justin Kroesen is Professor of Art History at the University of Bergen (Norway) and specializes in the Material Culture of Christianity. He publishes on the history of art and architecture in medieval and early modern Europe. His books include Staging the Liturgy. The Medieval Altarpiece in the Iberian Peninsula (Peeters, 2009), and The Interior of the Medieval Village Church (co-authored with Regnerus Steensma, Peeters, 2012).

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).