Gothenburg Studies in Social Anthropology
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://gupea-staging.ub.gu.se/handle/2077/26749
ISSN 0348-4076
Theses and other studies by members of the The School of Global Studies of The University of Gothenburg
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Item Bodies of vital matter : notions of life force and transcendence in traditional southern Italy(Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, 1999) Binde, PerThe aim of this study is to investigate beliefs and practices relating to vitality, illness and death in traditional Southern Italy. My prime argument is that many of these beliefs and practices relate to just a few interconnected sets of notions. A basic presumption for the analysis of the material is that vital force is construed as a quality or substance which can be lost as well as gained. A first set of notions concerns losses leading to weakness, illness or death, caused by another person’s appropriation of vitality. A second set includes ideas of how force of life might be gained from external sources, thereby reinvigorating the body. A third set concerns the inevitable situation in which physical life can no longer be sustained and death occurs. Transcendence beyond the carnal realm is symbolically achieved; a new and incorruptible body is created, or death is construed as giving new life. The study covers such topics as the occult transfer of mother’s milk, the evil eye, beliefs about menstruation and witches, the cult of saints, Easter celebrations, death rituals, burial customs and the celebration of All Souls Day.Item Next to nothing. A study of nanoscientists and their cosmology at a Swedish research laboratory(2008) Johansson, MikaelItem Personhood and human-spirit relations among the Yuracaré of the Bolivian Amazon(2007) Djup, AnnicaAbstract Personhood and human-spirit relations among the Yuracaré of the Bolivian Amazon. By Annica Djup. Doctoral dissertation 2008, Department of Social Anthropology, School of Global Studies, Göteborg University, Box 700, 405 30 Göteborg, Sweden. ISBN: 978-91- 7346-601-1. This anthropological dissertation is based on fieldwork carried out among Yuracaré people in the Bolivian Amazon. The study explores local conceptions of personhood and human-spirit relations by looking into Yuracaré life cycle practices and associated ideas, particularly in connection with birth, girls initiation (menarche), illness and death. I also consider forms through which men and women, in their daily life, take account of and interrelate with numerous spirit agencies that are thought to inhabit the surrounding environment. Principal among these are the various kinds of Owner spirits that live in the forest, the river, the ground, as well as in trees and certain other plants. Analytically, the study addresses ideas about soul, body, gender, and human-spirit interactions. It develops a particular perspective on human personhood which emphasises the corporal shaping of individuals effected through food and behavioural proscriptions and life cycle rituals for the insurance of health and for the endowment of the physical, social and moral qualities essential to attaining ideal male and female Yuracaré persons in adulthood. A corollary of this perspective is that gender differentiation to a significant extent is construed as actively created and constituted within the bodies of children. The study also explores the fact that this particular understanding of personhood is combined with a conception that individuals, especially children, are highly vulnerable to spirit predation, in the form of Owner spirits capturing and carrying away the souls of their victims. In the human world, such soul captures by spirits manifest themselves as illness and death. In the dissertation it is proposed that these two ideological features the importance given to body-shaping practices, and the constant concern for soul loss form part of a cosmology, widespread in Amazonia, which posits bodies and persons sociocosmological identities as intrinsically transformable and mutable. Key words: Anthropology, Amazonia, Bolivia, Yuracaré, personhood, soul, body, gender, human-spirit-relations, cosmology, animism.Item Swedish kinship : an exploration into cultural processes of belonging and continuity(1983) Boholm, Åsa, 1953-Item Family dynamics among the Kuria : agro-pastoralists in northern Tanzania(1986) Tobisson, Eva, 1950-Item Between the home and the institutions. The feminist movement in Madrid, Spain(1998) Sundman, KerstinItem The unknown Balinese : land, labour and inequality in Lombok(1982) Gerdin, Ingela, 1946-Item Palauan cosmology : dominance in a traditional Micronesian society(1987) Ferreira, Celio, 1944-Item The force of tradition : Turkish migrants at home and abroad(1978) Engelbrektsson, Ulla-Britt, 1944-Item The dilemmas of exile : Chilean refugees in the U.S.A.(1989) Eastmond, Marita, 1947-