Stephanie C. Kane and Harriet E. Manelis Klein
pp. 3–27
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Abstract
The polysemic term “gringo” inevitably mediates the negotiation of cultural identity for anthropologists carrying out fieldwork in Latin America. Drawing on experiences from the authors’ interactions in pursuit of professional goals, this analysis shows how nation, religion, gender, race, and the histories of colonization, migration, and alliance emerge and recede in kaleidoscopic encounters between hemispheric stereotypes and cross-cultural travelers. The intertwined personal experience narratives of ‘gringo-hood’ we present reveal the fractal character of knowledge and experience. This article, therefore, shows how linguistic, cultural, and especially folkloric interactions mediate the various dimensions of our socially situated experiences and the different forms of talk we encountered.
Jocelyn Gadbois
pp. 29–49
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Abstract
This paper proposes a historiographical outlook on the training on Marius Barbeau with the British evolutionists and the French intellectuals between 1907 and 1914. This biographical episode has apparently brought discomfort for several ethnologists from the Folklore Archives school at Laval University, as if they were struggling to fully accept the history of their discipline. To unveil the mysteries surrounding this episode, the author proposes to analyze the teaching that Barbeau received at Oxford and the links he had with Marcel Mauss, thanks to the memoirs of his supervisor Robert Ranulph Marett, and those of his colleague Wilson Dallam Wallis. This reflexive exercise allows the author to identify elements for the understanding of Barbeau’s influences and, by extension, of the school of the Folklore Archives school, as well as for a reflection on their common interpretive project: a distancing from Christian faith in order to better understand the local.
Jérémie Voirol
pp. 51–74
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This article constitutes an endeavour of ethnographic narrative, which hopes to render the lived experience of the festival San Juan/Inti Raymi in the Otavalo region (Ecuadorian Andes) of various social actors and of the anthropologist. The author tries his hand at a meticulous description in order to show, from a pragmatic approach, the development of actions in space and time, allowing him to highlight, on the one hand, the practical knowledge and the creativity of his interlocutors, and, on the other, the indeterminacy dimension of situations. Therefore, no underlying, neither hidden explication is sought; the meaning is in the festive practice itself. The abundance of details also enables the reader to co-experience the situations and to become aware of their complex and situated dimension.
Luc Charles-Dominique
pp. 75–101
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Abstract
The concept of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH), which has been recently formalized under the auspices of UNESCO (2003), represents the outcome of two centuries of national policies on cultural heritage. This concept spawned from desire of cultural preservation and also the European context of the creation of national identities during the nineteenth century. It thus comes in complete correlation with social and political institutions (including the State), the gradual establishment of a national collective memory, and the protean notions identity, from national identities to the various forms of local and micro-local identities. While ICH thouroughly espouses the many forms of cultural and political territorialization, as well as the many claims related to it, cultural heritage is nowadays both a quickly growing phenomenon and a fruitful object of investigation for the social sciences and humanities. These studies explore the individual or institutional “emotions of heritage” that lay the foundation of the heritage process, or the establishment of a “heritage machine,” which consists in the entire “heritage chain,” its successive phases and its actors. This whole phenomenon is however so widespread nowadays, that some do not hesitate to speak of “patrimonial totalitarianism” while warning against the risks of cultural reification and museumification. While in France at least, the voluntary sector of traditional music and dance is generally categorized under this new banner of PCI, this article attempts to propose synthetically an anthropology of this problematic notion.
Samuel Régulus
pp. 103–123
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Abstract
Because of several factors (migration , political context, theological dispositions) voodoo, as an open system, is evolving at both the practical and discursive levels. Ethnographic data shows that new voodoo practices unfold following a logic of intersection between a need for change and an exigency of loyalty to the memory of the ancestors. Voodoo has been criticized for its childishness and its backwardness. Usually it remained without paper traces, confined in slums, and unable to defend itself against competing narratives. Nowadays it is found more and more in public spaces: squares, carnival routes, radio, television and the internet. Insiders are grouped in associations and they articulate political demands. Its adherents now use written documents in their prayer meetings and meditation texts. Faced with such new practices, some observers advocate a “call to order.” They regret that voodoo lost its identity and its authenticity. But for the “new” voodoo actors, it remains attached to their roots and it implies being able to freely honor the Lwa, which means: throwing water , tracing the vèvè, lighting candles, playing drums, singing and dancing the Lwa, practicing their sacred medicine, keeping their harmonious relationships with trees, and perpetuating the social function of voodoo. On this, they do not want to let go. Moreover, they do not want to continue to be a mere object of curiosity, for the “civilized” to revisit their archaeological past.
Jean-François Plante
pp. 125–144
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Abstract
During the last ten years, researches on New France music shed new light on some aspects of this practice, be it traditional, native or art music. But it seems that a study of the sound environment where people lived in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries would permit to learn more about the effetcs of sounds, from noise to music, on individual behavior. The concept of soundscape by Murray Schafer appeared to be the best tool for the building of a new approach that will enable us to read in a new way the sources of New France.
Joseph Ronald Dautruche
pp. 145–161
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Abstract
This article highlights the dynamics of valuing the intangible cultural heritage in Haiti in a touristic context. To do this, it mobilizes a body of documentation composed of historical and ethnographic texts, travelogues , project documents , and documentary films. It also relies on direct observations and interviews conducted in Leogane and Souvenance ( Gonaïves ). The analysis suggests that far from attempting to build “authenticities” or mobilize elements of theHaitian cultural heritage that would be perceived as authentic, the various actors involved in this process preferably rely on cultural elements that were aestheticized or are in a process of aestheticization . By becoming aware of the contexts in which cultural objects or the cultural heritage of Haiti were constructed, acknowledged and valued , these actors are rearticulating heritage in a different way through new stories , new movies , new museum exhibits, theatrical performances, festivals and university activities. In other words, some of these objects are being remodeled with new discourses, or are even mobilized on a performative mode. This implies the emergence of a very dynamic change in the apprehension of the culture and heritage of Haiti, as new actors try to put them up to date. What emerges from this reading is the notion of a “remodeled heritage.”