Articulating Journeys: Festivals, Memorials, and Homecomings – serie

Waiting for Elijah is an intimate portrait of time-reckoning, syncretism, and proximity in one of the world’s most polarized landscapes, the Bosnian Field of Gacko. Centered on the shared harvest feast of Elijah’s Day, the once eagerly awaited pinnacle of the annual cycle, the book shows how the fractured postwar landscape beckoned the return of communal life that entails such waiting. This seemingly paradoxical situation—waiting to wait—becomes a starting point for a broader discussion on the complexity of time set between cosmology, nationalism, and embodied memories of proximity.

As we grapple with a growing refugee crisis, a hardening of anti-immigration sentiment, and deepening communal segregation in many parts of the developed world, questions of the nature of home and homemaking are increasingly critical. This collection brings ethnographic insight into the practices of homemaking, exploring a diverse range of contexts ranging from economic migrants to new Chinese industrial cities, Jewish returnees from Israel to Ukraine, and young gay South Asians in London. While negotiating widely varying social-political contexts, these studies suggest an unavoidably multiple understanding of home, while provoking new understandings of the material and symbolic process of making oneself “at home.”

The Iranian city experienced a major transformation when the Pahlavi Dynasty initiated a project of modernization in the 1920s. The Rite of Urban Passage investigates this process by focusing on the spatial dynamics of Muharram processions, a ritual that commemorates the tragic massacre of Hussein and his companions in 680 CE. In doing so, this volume offers not only an alternative approach to understanding the process of urban transformation, but also a spatial genealogy of Muharram rituals that provides a platform for developing a fresh spatial approach to ritual studies.

Waiting for Elijah is an intimate portrait of time-reckoning, syncretism, and proximity in one of the world’s most polarized landscapes, the Bosnian Field of Gacko. Centered on the shared harvest feast of Elijah’s Day, the once eagerly awaited pinnacle of the annual cycle, the book shows how the fractured postwar landscape beckoned the return of communal life that entails such waiting. This seemingly paradoxical situation—waiting to wait—becomes a starting point for a broader discussion on the complexity of time set between cosmology, nationalism, and embodied memories of proximity.

The Iranian city experienced a major transformation when the Pahlavi Dynasty initiated a project of modernization in the 1920s. The Rite of Urban Passage investigates this process by focusing on the spatial dynamics of Muharram processions, a ritual that commemorates the tragic massacre of Hussein and his companions in 680 CE. In doing so, this volume offers not only an alternative approach to understanding the process of urban transformation, but also a spatial genealogy of Muharram rituals that provides a platform for developing a fresh spatial approach to ritual studies.

This collection brings ethnographic insight into the ever more topical question of homemaking, exploring a diverse range of socio-political contexts worldwide (from Jewish returnees from Israel to Ukraine to young gay South Asians in London) and provoking new understandings of the material and symbolic process of making oneself “at home.”

Exploring the intersections between migration and tourism in the Mediterranean, this book is the result of extensive ethnographic research carried out over a decade in the Mediterranean regions. It focuses on three interrelated themes: the experiences of homecoming migrants who visit their country of origin for holidays; the inequalities surrounding the encounters between local people, tourists and migrants in borderlands; and how migration and tourism affect cultural heritage in European cities. The book shows how interconnected mobilities play a crucial role in boosting the global dynamics of cultural, social, economic and political transformation in the Mediterranean.

Over two decades ago, Kosovo Serbs faced displacement due to ethnic conflict and tensions. Using their rich biographical narratives and intersectional analysis, this book provides insight into the nuanced ways individuals navigate their sense of place, sense of loss and belonging during times of upheaval and the rise of nationalism, with connections to territoriality of homeland as central to identity. This book examines the intricate dynamics of gender, national affiliation and belonging in the context of internal displacement and territorial disputes faced by Kosovo Serbs. It presents the multifaceted realities of prolonged displacement and the uncertainties of return, both in spatial and temporal terms.