Commoditizing the Vessels of Identity: Transnational Trade and the Reconstruction of Rarámuri Ethnicity

Levi, Jerome M.

doi:10.1525/mua.1992.16.3.7

Cited by 11 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…2 As explained by the Ralámuli I have worked with, korima is a way of sharing by giving food or other goods and by helping out when people find themselves in an emergency situation or when it is required (e.g., bad harvest, agricultural activities, building a fence, repairing a house, etc.). 3 For further information about this inter-regional trade see Levi (1992); Lumholtz (1902, 244); Bennett and Zingg (1935, 158). 4 Ralámuli people like Chacarito might migrate permanently or just for a season to urban Ralámuli settlements or agricultural farms, where they can find employment as peasants or for wage labor.…”

Section: E N D N O T E Smentioning

confidence: 99%

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Plant communication among the Ralámuli people: Dreams, songs, iconography, and the interconnected fabric

Aguilera¹

2023

Anthropol of Consciousness

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The northern Mexican Ralámuli people consider plants to be their kin. First‐ and secondhand ethnographies bring forth fundamental issues that convey the possibility of communicating with plants. For example, the notion of an interconnected world has to do with roots, with threads, and with thought or nátali (consciousness, remembrance, ancestral memory), all of which embrace the life path. This path also refers to that used by healers, who in their dreams and through their chants communicate with sacred plants. This article also deepens the understanding of textiles—originally made from vegetal fibers and considering that in Ralámuli origin stories the Earth was woven—and their iconography, which also appears in healing contexts, to see if there is a relationship between specific motifs and the information that, via dreams and chants, the plants are delivering.

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Section: E N D N O T E Smentioning

confidence: 99%

“… 3 3 For further information about this inter‐regional trade see Levi (1992); Lumholtz (1902, 244); Bennett and Zingg (1935, 158). …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Plant communication among the Ralámuli people: Dreams, songs, iconography, and the interconnected fabric

Aguilera¹

2023

Anthropol of Consciousness

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“…Since the publication of Appadurai's () seminal anthology about the social life of things, numerous studies have charted the migration of different types of local goods into global markets, galleries, and museums (Clifford ; Cole ; Errington ; Marcus and Myers , ; Myers ; O'Hanlon and Welsch ) and described the attendant transformations of production (Causey ; Forshee ; Phillips and Steiner ; Schildkrout and Keim ) and exchange relationships (Gosden and Knowles ; Levi ; Steiner ). Some of the objects of these studies, like the statues in the shop window, began their peregrinations as sacred or once‐sacred objects.…”

Section: The Social Life Of Sacred Objectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Tracking histories of commerce back to their sources is particularly challenging where antiquities and curio markets are built upon the trade secrets of dealers and the tiers of local runners and pickers who supply them (Steiner :151). Although anthropologists and others have documented the work of runners and intermediate traders (Forshee ; Freund ; Levi ; Steiner ), we know far less about the motivations of the local sources who relinquish their own heirlooms and sacred objects to the trade . Christopher Steiner's otherwise exemplary ethnography of African traders devotes little more than a paragraph to these primary transactions, repeating a commonsense notion that “much art is optioned during times of personal or regional crisis” (Steiner :64–65; also see Adams ).…”

Section: The Social Life Of Sacred Objectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The market for Catholic statues differs from markets in ethnic art and handicrafts in one significant respect: Catholic statues from Vietnam are marked and desired as “Catholic art” rather than as folk or ethnic products (cf. Errington ; Levi ; Steiner ). Vietnamese Catholic statues are valued for the high quality of carving that indicates their kinship to European prototypes .…”

Section: The Replication Of Saintsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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is it a sin to sell a statue? Catholic Statues and the Traffic in Antiquities in Vietnam

Kendall

Hà²,

Tam³

et al. 2013

Museum Anthropology

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Nguyễn V an Huy vietnam museum of ethnology, emeritusNguyễn Thị Hiền vietnam institute of culture and arts studies abstract When antique wooden saints were offered for sale in a Hanoi shop window, they provoked uncomfortable responses from Catholic observers living outside Vietnam who could not imagine their co-religionists voluntarily selling statues that had once been blessed. To explore this questionhow things considered too sacred for commerce came to be sold-we bring together two usually discrete domains of research on material culture: object biographies that trace their movement from local sites of production and use into global markets, and studies on material religion that address how embodied and sensate encounters with the material world are productive of religious experiences and understandings. The social life of things collides with material religion at the place where statues and other religious paraphernalia are first transacted into artifact, art, folk art, or native handicraft. The bridge between these two domains of inquiry is the recognition that object biographies are propelled in part by notions of object agency that assume particular protocols for interactions between people and things. [Vietnam, Catholicism, material religion, circulation of goods, sacred objects, statues]

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The Buddha Remains: Heritage Transactions in Taxila, Pakistan

Asif

Rico

2017

The Making of Islamic Heritage

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This chapter offers a perspective from ethnographic heritage research on the preservation of Buddhist artifacts in the Muslim community of Taxila, Pakistan. While this form of heritage preservation practice and art may be interpreted as paradoxical, we discuss social, institutional, and political factors that are responsible for the revival and continuation of these heritage practices. Through the examination of this case study, we discuss a unique mode of engaging with the negotiation of past and present spiritual identities that resists the assumption that this is a territory of heritage in conflict.

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Commoditizing the Vessels of Identity: Transnational Trade and the Reconstruction of Rarámuri Ethnicity

Cited by 11 publications

References 24 publications

Plant communication among the Ralámuli people: Dreams, songs, iconography, and the interconnected fabric

Plant communication among the Ralámuli people: Dreams, songs, iconography, and the interconnected fabric

is it a sin to sell a statue? Catholic Statues and the Traffic in Antiquities in Vietnam

The Buddha Remains: Heritage Transactions in Taxila, Pakistan

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