Publisher:

Instytut Archeologii i Etnologii Polskiej Akademii Nauk

Place of publishing:

Kraków

Description:

24 cm

Type of object:

Journal/Article

Abstract:

In the period of heritagisation and tourism, India witnesses changes not only in the centres on the UN-ESCO World Heritage list, but also the small, local, previously little known sites of religious practices. Small-scale lists of places worth visiting in a given region are compiled, adding to the lists of the wonders of the world or informative lists (tentative lists) of places to visit. This article explores the transformation of an annual ritual performed by the Rabari pastoralist community in the Kutch region of India, ana-lysing it through the lens of heritagisation and spectacularisation. The ritual in honour of the goddess Bhad Mata, once deeply rooted in religious practice and pastoral cosmology, is increasingly reframed as a cultural heritage performance, consumed by tourists, researchers and institutional observers. The author demonstrates how spiritual embodiment and trance, particularly through the figure of the bhopa(ritual medium), become not only expressions of devotion, but also sites of meaning production within a changing cultural economy. The paper distinguishes between the emic meanings ascribed to the ritual by its participants and the etic frameworks imposed by external agents, including heritage institutions. It argues that heritage is not a neutral legacy of the past but a dynamic, contested space where identity, memory and agency are continuously negotiated. The case of the Rabari illustrates how heritage remains a living, affective, and politically charged process situated at the crossroads of the sacred, the market, and cultural policy.

References:

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Relation:

Journal of Urban Ethnology

Volume:

23

Start page:

159

End page:

173

Detailed Resource Type:

Article

Format:

application/octet-stream

Resource Identifier:

oai:rcin.org.pl:257767 ; 1429-0618 ; e-ISSN 2719-6526 ; doi:10.23858/JUE23.2025.009

Source:

IAiE PAN, call no. P 714 ; IAiE PAN, call no. P 1505 ; click here to follow the link

Language:

pol

Rights:

Creative Commons Attribution BY 4.0 license

Terms of use:

Copyright-protected material. [CC BY 4.0] May be used within the scope specified in Creative Commons Attribution BY 4.0 license, full text available at: ; -

Digitizing institution:

Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology of the Polish Academy of Sciences

Original in:

Library of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology of the Polish Academy of Sciences

Access:

Open