Tradition and Modernity

Presentation Location

David Student Union: Jefferson Room

Document Type

Event

Start Date

15-3-2024 1:30 PM

End Date

15-3-2024 3:30 PM

Description

(Matt Samson, Session Chair)

  • Anna Matias (Christopher Newport University) - Museum Reparations and Ownership of African Cultural Artifacts
    One of the most pressing matters in the current museum world is the debate over ownership of certain cultural objects from other nations, especially those that are as a result of colonialism. In 1897, the British advancement into Benin territory resulted in the theft of many objects from palaces and other places to be sold to museums, private collectors, and others through commercial dealers. Now, even this event is displayed in museums, regardless of the effect it has on the erasure and theft of African cultural history. With the Benin Bronzes and other similar artifacts stolen and taken as treasures of war, there has come to be a form of exoticism around art and artifacts from colonized nations, seen as more ‘primitive’ than art from the West. This brings into question the rightful ownership of these artifacts, what claims African countries have over objects of their own cultural history, and how reparations and restorative justice work from museums may come into play with making up for the effect they have had on their cultural landscape.
  • Kaiyan Wang (Davidson College) - Integrating Tradition and Modernity: The Tsachila People's Approach to Ethnomedicine and Ethnomedicine in a Globalized World
    This paper examines the intercultural health practices of the Tsachila people, an indigenous community residing in the Santo Domingo Province of Ecuador. I argue that the multifaceted interplay between Tsachila ethnomedicine and the Ecuadorian healthcare system is a reflection of a complex negotiation between urban modernization and socio-cultural identity, which encompasses TsachilaIndigenous heritage, rural life, and experiences of poverty. Using an ethnographic research approach based on participant observation and semi-structured interviews, I observe that the Tsachila people acknowledge the limitations of their ancestral healing practices and thus have willingly incorporated Western medicine as a complementary or alternative option. In the Tsachila community, the reliance on ethnomedicine includes respect for ancestral knowledge but is also driven by challenges. In the face of both the decreasing use of ethnomedicine within the community, as well as exterior pressure for development resulting from an unequal distribution of economic resources, Tsachila spiritual guides (pones in Tsafiki) and politicians transition from a conservative to a more pluralistic attitude in their encounters with with Mestizos and tourists. They encourage exterior investigation, application, and innovation grounded in ethnomedicine as a means to foster community development. The active promotion of their traditional practices in a globalized context not only revitalizes and sustains the traditional medicine in a new form in the context of globalization but also serves as a strategy for economic advancement.
  • C. Matthews Samson (Davidson College) - Revisiting Religious Change and Maya Social Organizing in Pluricultural Guatemala
    A major question when I began researching religious change and Maya identity in Guatemala nearly 30 years ago was whether Latin America would become “Protestant”—in some predictions by the turn of the millennium. Although this didn’t happen, at the end of the first quarter of the twenty-first century, at least one study suggests that Protestants (evangélicos) now outnumber Catholics in Guatemala. Coincidental with this sea change in religious practice following the final peace accord that ended a 36-year civil conflict in 1996, there has been a sustained Maya Movement to affirm the cultural rights of the Maya population that some argue makes up half of the population of the country. While this movement has not been as visible in recent decades, in the wake of the 2023 presidential elections won by center-left candidate Bernardo Arévalo, resistance from Indigenous organizations committed to respecting the electoral process contributed to the defeat of elite and government entity legal attempts to prevent Arévalo’s inauguration. This paper employs ethnographic and internet-based research to analyze the intersections and divergences between evangelical practice and Maya worldviews as markers of cultural and religious pluralism in the context of social tensions in contemporary Guatemala.
  • Maggie Kinton (Davidson College) - Todas Estamos Saliendo Adelante: Maya Women’s Search for a Different Future through Textile Groups and Religious Participation
    Cooperatives and other smallscale economic groups are found throughout Guatemala and other Mesoamerican towns. These cooperatives are often seen as a means for Maya women to bring about economic change for themselves and their communities, but women find other benefits in their participation as well. Informed by ethnographic observation and interviews in textile groups and evangelical churches, this paper examines how in these spaces, women imagine and articulate goals for a different present and future, one in which they can “have a better life” or “salir adelante” – get ahead – a term commonly used in the development spaces highlighted here. I argue that saliendo adelante refers not only to a successful economic life, but also to a life of mutuality and solidarity. These collectivist values form the path to and are an inherent element of the “better life.” Women also enact these values in evangelical environments. While churches can limit women’s behaviors and opportunities for leadership, Maya women use leadership positions and women’s groups to participate in community life, practice mutual support, and advocate for themselves and others. Observing the practices of both church-based and independent women’s groups reveals a feminism that is distinctly Maya and contributes to a fuller understanding of women’s agency and activism globally.
  • Logan Baggett (University of Mississippi) - Global Drag Culture and Pink Money: Examining Queer Manifestations of the Appadurian Cultural Economy in Latin America
    Recent scholars (notably Ampuja (2012) and Van der Bly (2005)) have argued that globalization studies, as pioneered by Arjun Appadurai and Manuel Castells in the late 20th century, have gone too far. They argue that it is not yet time to leave behind traditional historical materialist notions of capital as the primary driver of cultural generation. In this paper, however, I argue that the development of the international drag information economies in Latin America provide significant rebuttal to Ampuja (2012)’s critiques, closely following Appadurai’s conception of a “strikingly different” cultural landscape brought about by the Information Age. This paper reconciles divergent perspectives on cultural globalization, arguing that emergent drag scenes in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and Guadalajara, Mexico serve as natural laboratories in which anthropologists may validate heterogenous cultural landscapes as theorized by Appadurai. It is not, then, just capital, but the conjunction of the five imagined scapes of globalization that mold cultural generation processes in budding new communities, as is the case with drag scenes in the Global South.

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS
 
Mar 15th, 1:30 PM Mar 15th, 3:30 PM

Tradition and Modernity

David Student Union: Jefferson Room

(Matt Samson, Session Chair)

  • Anna Matias (Christopher Newport University) - Museum Reparations and Ownership of African Cultural Artifacts
    One of the most pressing matters in the current museum world is the debate over ownership of certain cultural objects from other nations, especially those that are as a result of colonialism. In 1897, the British advancement into Benin territory resulted in the theft of many objects from palaces and other places to be sold to museums, private collectors, and others through commercial dealers. Now, even this event is displayed in museums, regardless of the effect it has on the erasure and theft of African cultural history. With the Benin Bronzes and other similar artifacts stolen and taken as treasures of war, there has come to be a form of exoticism around art and artifacts from colonized nations, seen as more ‘primitive’ than art from the West. This brings into question the rightful ownership of these artifacts, what claims African countries have over objects of their own cultural history, and how reparations and restorative justice work from museums may come into play with making up for the effect they have had on their cultural landscape.
  • Kaiyan Wang (Davidson College) - Integrating Tradition and Modernity: The Tsachila People's Approach to Ethnomedicine and Ethnomedicine in a Globalized World
    This paper examines the intercultural health practices of the Tsachila people, an indigenous community residing in the Santo Domingo Province of Ecuador. I argue that the multifaceted interplay between Tsachila ethnomedicine and the Ecuadorian healthcare system is a reflection of a complex negotiation between urban modernization and socio-cultural identity, which encompasses TsachilaIndigenous heritage, rural life, and experiences of poverty. Using an ethnographic research approach based on participant observation and semi-structured interviews, I observe that the Tsachila people acknowledge the limitations of their ancestral healing practices and thus have willingly incorporated Western medicine as a complementary or alternative option. In the Tsachila community, the reliance on ethnomedicine includes respect for ancestral knowledge but is also driven by challenges. In the face of both the decreasing use of ethnomedicine within the community, as well as exterior pressure for development resulting from an unequal distribution of economic resources, Tsachila spiritual guides (pones in Tsafiki) and politicians transition from a conservative to a more pluralistic attitude in their encounters with with Mestizos and tourists. They encourage exterior investigation, application, and innovation grounded in ethnomedicine as a means to foster community development. The active promotion of their traditional practices in a globalized context not only revitalizes and sustains the traditional medicine in a new form in the context of globalization but also serves as a strategy for economic advancement.
  • C. Matthews Samson (Davidson College) - Revisiting Religious Change and Maya Social Organizing in Pluricultural Guatemala
    A major question when I began researching religious change and Maya identity in Guatemala nearly 30 years ago was whether Latin America would become “Protestant”—in some predictions by the turn of the millennium. Although this didn’t happen, at the end of the first quarter of the twenty-first century, at least one study suggests that Protestants (evangélicos) now outnumber Catholics in Guatemala. Coincidental with this sea change in religious practice following the final peace accord that ended a 36-year civil conflict in 1996, there has been a sustained Maya Movement to affirm the cultural rights of the Maya population that some argue makes up half of the population of the country. While this movement has not been as visible in recent decades, in the wake of the 2023 presidential elections won by center-left candidate Bernardo Arévalo, resistance from Indigenous organizations committed to respecting the electoral process contributed to the defeat of elite and government entity legal attempts to prevent Arévalo’s inauguration. This paper employs ethnographic and internet-based research to analyze the intersections and divergences between evangelical practice and Maya worldviews as markers of cultural and religious pluralism in the context of social tensions in contemporary Guatemala.
  • Maggie Kinton (Davidson College) - Todas Estamos Saliendo Adelante: Maya Women’s Search for a Different Future through Textile Groups and Religious Participation
    Cooperatives and other smallscale economic groups are found throughout Guatemala and other Mesoamerican towns. These cooperatives are often seen as a means for Maya women to bring about economic change for themselves and their communities, but women find other benefits in their participation as well. Informed by ethnographic observation and interviews in textile groups and evangelical churches, this paper examines how in these spaces, women imagine and articulate goals for a different present and future, one in which they can “have a better life” or “salir adelante” – get ahead – a term commonly used in the development spaces highlighted here. I argue that saliendo adelante refers not only to a successful economic life, but also to a life of mutuality and solidarity. These collectivist values form the path to and are an inherent element of the “better life.” Women also enact these values in evangelical environments. While churches can limit women’s behaviors and opportunities for leadership, Maya women use leadership positions and women’s groups to participate in community life, practice mutual support, and advocate for themselves and others. Observing the practices of both church-based and independent women’s groups reveals a feminism that is distinctly Maya and contributes to a fuller understanding of women’s agency and activism globally.
  • Logan Baggett (University of Mississippi) - Global Drag Culture and Pink Money: Examining Queer Manifestations of the Appadurian Cultural Economy in Latin America
    Recent scholars (notably Ampuja (2012) and Van der Bly (2005)) have argued that globalization studies, as pioneered by Arjun Appadurai and Manuel Castells in the late 20th century, have gone too far. They argue that it is not yet time to leave behind traditional historical materialist notions of capital as the primary driver of cultural generation. In this paper, however, I argue that the development of the international drag information economies in Latin America provide significant rebuttal to Ampuja (2012)’s critiques, closely following Appadurai’s conception of a “strikingly different” cultural landscape brought about by the Information Age. This paper reconciles divergent perspectives on cultural globalization, arguing that emergent drag scenes in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and Guadalajara, Mexico serve as natural laboratories in which anthropologists may validate heterogenous cultural landscapes as theorized by Appadurai. It is not, then, just capital, but the conjunction of the five imagined scapes of globalization that mold cultural generation processes in budding new communities, as is the case with drag scenes in the Global South.