The Commitment to the Delicate World: Maya Sacrificial Giving and Existential Animism
In: Ethnos: journal of anthropology, Band 89, Heft 2, S. 323-342
ISSN: 1469-588X
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In: Ethnos: journal of anthropology, Band 89, Heft 2, S. 323-342
ISSN: 1469-588X
In this paper, I present a Maya legend of travelling saints and people searching for their home. The story shows the ways in which a sense of belonging is contested, recreated and sustained within the context of place and pilgrimage. I argue that to understand such a narrative, a phenomenal and existential experience associated to particular collective memories and performances must be taken into consideration in addition to historical, political and cultural backgrounds. *** V članku je predstavljena majevska legenda o potujočih svetnikih in ljudeh, ki iščejo dom. Pripoved kaže na načine, kako konteksta kraja in romanja preprašujeta, prenavljata in krepita občutje pripadnosti. Da bi razumeli takšno pripoved, je potrebno poleg zgodovinskega, političnega in kulturnega ozadja upoštevati pojavno in bivanjsko izkušnjo, ki je povezana s posebnimi kolektivnimi spomini in dogodki.
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In: Anthropos: internationale Zeitschrift für Völker- und Sprachenkunde : international review of anthropology and linguistics : revue internationale d'ethnologie et de linguistique, Band 111, Heft 1, S. 83-98
ISSN: 2942-3139
In: Historická sociologie: časopis pro historické sociální vědy = Historical sociology : a journal of historical social sciences, Heft 1, S. 89-102
ISSN: 2336-3525
The study deals with pilgrimages to Esquipulas, Guatemala, and patterns of miracle in terms of their perception by the pilgrims reaching this prominent religious hub of Central America. Two key pilgrimage discourses are distinguished: traditional Maya pilgrimage, based on regular, calendar customs, and conventional Catholic pilgrimage, founded on occasional journeys to fulfil a vow. The Western understanding of miracle as a transgression of "natural laws" or "common course of nature" is relativized and contested arguing that the ethnographic evidence of Esquipulas shows not only different, but also opposite conceptions. Then, the study presents a spectrum of miracle ideas drawing from the Maya as well as European - the case of Lourdes is exemplary here - traditions in terms of the degree of their uncommonness. It is concluded that anthropology has to comprehend miracles as marvels in its cultural context; nevertheless, there is a widespread idea among many cultures that miracle is something wonderful, related to the awareness of non-obviousness of certain things and phenomena. Miracles find its content and meaning within particular cosmology, but, anchored in the psychological characteristics of the astonishment and the difference between usual and unusual or ordinary and extraordinary, they refer to features of human mind in a more general way.