Explore the vast range of titles available.

This article explores transformations in the worship of popular goddess Mazu as a result of (religious) tourism. In particular, it focuses on the role of transnational tourism in the invention of tradition, folklorization, and commodification of the Mazu cult. Support from the central and local governments and the impact of economic globalization have transformed a traditional pilgrimage site that initially had a local and then national scope into a transnational tourist attraction. More specifically, the ancestral temple of Mazu at Meizhou Island, which was established as the uncontested origin of Mazu’s cult during the Song dynasty (960 to 1276), has been reconfigured architecturally and liturgically to function as both a sacred site and a tourist attraction. This reconfiguration has involved the reconstruction of traditional rituals and religious performances for religious tourism to promote the temple as the unadulterated expression of an intangible cultural heritage. The strategic combination of traditional rituals such as “dividing incense” and an innovative ceremony enjoining all devotees of “Mazu all over the world [to] return to mother’s home” to worship her have not only consolidated the goddess as a symbol of common cultural identity in mainland China, but also for the preservation of Chinese identity in diaspora. Indeed, Chinese migrants and their descendants are among the increasing numbers of pilgrims/tourists who come to Mazu’s ancestral temple seeking to reconnect with their heritage by partaking in authentic traditions. This article examines the spatial and ritual transformations that have re-signified this temple, and by extension, the cult of Mazu, as well as the media through which these transformations have spread transnationally. We will see that (transnational) religious tourism is a key medium.

This study stands at the crossroads of folklorization, ethnicity, and curriculum. It seeks to criticize how the institutionalized production of knowledge about Amazigh folklore in Morocco has contributed to the creation and maintenance of a closed system of linguistic options for representing Amazigh ethnic groups through \"folklorizing\" their festivals, traditions, music, space, and marriage rituals. To investigate the micropolitics of folklorization in officially produced EFL textbooks in Morocco (1980-present), an integrated critical discourse analysis approach that oscillates between linguistic analysis and sociological analysis has been used. Results show that Amazighs have been mostly activated in relation to behavioral and relational processes and are therefore depicted as passive, deprived of sociological agency, with no effect(s) on others, or on the world. Excessive folklorization, results also indicate, commodifies Amazighs by reducing them to \"exotic\" commodities to be gazed upon. Amazigh females are caught in the realm of the \"physical\" and the \"sensual\" and are, hence, deprived of being represented as \"thinkers\" and \"sayers\" in mental and verbal processes. Non-Amazigh festivals and forms of folklore, on the other hand, are encoded primarily in material and transactive processes. Folklorization skews aspects of Amazigh identity to a flat set of criteria, such as \"entertainment\" and \"exoticism\", which would give students a partial view of who Amazighs are mainly by iconizing them in a \"celebratory\" way which lacks analytical depth, bypassing, thus, significant concepts and topics related to the discrimination and subjugation of minority groups and their symbolic fights for power and social equality.

In this article we highlight the leading role that a “costeño” intellectual had between 1940 and 1950 in the formation of a regional identity based on folklorization of local artistic expressions (music and dance), and his attempt to articulate a national identity in Colombia. Based on the few writings of this intellectual we intend to show that the construction of a regional identity experienced tensions and negotiations, given the cultural affinities of the author and, above all, the need of the liberal governments and the Colombian state to construct a broader idea of nation. En el presente artículo queremos resaltar el rol protagónico que entre 1940 y 1950 tuvo un intelectual costeño en la formación de una identidad regional a partir de la folclorización de expresiones artísticas (música y danza) locales y su intento por articularlas a una identidad nacional en Colombia. Basados en los pocos escritos de este personaje, pretendemos mostrar que la construcción de una identidad regional pasó por tensiones y negociaciones, por las afinidades culturales del autor y, sobre todo, por la necesidad que tenían los gobiernos liberales y el Estado colombiano de construir una idea más amplia de nación. No presente artigo, queremos ressaltar o papel protagônico que, entre 1940 e 1950, teve um intelectual “costenho” (assim chamados os habitantes do litoral colombiano) na formação de uma identidade regional a partir da folclorização de expressões artísticas (música e dança) locais e sua tentativa por articulá-las a uma identidade nacional na Colômbia. Baseados nos poucos escritos desse personagem, pretendemos mostrar que a construção de uma identidade regional passou por tensões e negociações, pelas afinidades culturais do autor e, principalmente, pela necessidade que tinham os governos liberais e o Estado colombiano de construir uma ideia ampla de nação.

In China, \"world religions\" (or institutionalized religions)—Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism—as well as the Chinese indigenous Daoism are recognized by the government as \"religions.\" As long as these religions are practiced within the acceptable range of rules set by the government, the government will view them as legitimate religions and will protect them. However, there are many folk beliefs in a great variety of locales in China that are not officially recognized or treated as religions. The question of their legitimacy has been a long-standing problem that has perplexed Chinese society. This paper focuses on the issue of the legitimacy of folk beliefs and argues that three paths have been followed to legitimize folk beliefs in contemporary China: folklorization, religionization, and cultural heritage. It then examines the ways that the Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) movement has transformed folk beliefs into \"cultural heritage.\"

Growing recognition of the contested nature of heritage has prompted critical reassessments of official heritage discourses and the demand for more inclusive heritage processes. Field research in Surin, Thailand, reveals the challenges of implementing participatory approaches in a context in which the concept of cultural heritage is employed to domesticate the nation's ethnic Others. The history of state-sponsored, folklorized performances of the ethnic Khmer genre of kantruem demonstrates the ways in which the recent listing of kantruem on Thailand's national registry of \"intangible culture\" elides histories of cross-border linkage with Cambodia and meanings of kantruem as a site of memory and affect.

This article examines three Sufi devotional songs (māla pāṭṭŭs), from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, from the Mappila Muslim poetic corpus (māppiḷa pāṭṭŭ) of Kerala, India. Close examination of the Mappila song literature provides information and historical detail about a community for which there are limited noncolonial sources. More specifically, an examination of the content, poetic features, and changing mediums and performative contexts of these particular māla pāṭṭŭs foregrounds the Mappila community’s multivocal and complex religious development and history. The article also highlights the ways in which the process of folklorization is both transforming Mappila songs into commodities and simultaneously keeping the māla songs available via the internet, thus preserving these practices as cultural heritage and a living practice.

In recent decades, Wangala dancing has gained prominence as an important cultural expression of the Northeast Indian Garo community. In 2008, a Wangala performance was included in the annual Republic Day parade. Photographs of Wangala dancing have come to play an important role on posters circulated by politicians and on calendars produced by organizations that call for greater political assertion of the Garo community. Beyond these relatively new uses, for adherents of the traditional Garo religion, Wangala dancing continues to be linked to the most important post-harvest festival. In exploring how Wangala dancing has developed into a powerful mediatized expression of the Garo community, this article examines how national- and state-level performances continue to be linked to village-level celebrations.

Inscrits dans la culture ouvrière des quartiers populaires, les premiers restaurants grecs et turcs de Bruxelles ont fondé leur mode de présentation sur une notion d’authenticité qui peut parfois glisser vers la folklorisation. Cet article étudie leurs transformations contemporaines car à ces espaces commerciaux, qui ont contribué à faire évoluer le goût de leurs clients, ont succédé des établissements qui s’orientent vers des choix et des discours plus sophistiqués et qui jouent un rôle dans la construction de la stratification sociale. Greek and Turkish Restaurants in Brussels. Competition or emulation?Being inscribed in the working‑class neighbourhoods of Brussels and their culture, the first Greek and Turkish restaurants used the argument of authenticity to attract their clients, sometimes slipping into folklorization. This paper studies their evolution as these commercial places, which contributed to develop the taste of their clientele, were followed by establishments characterized by more elaborated menus and discourses, that play an important role in the construction of social stratification.

\"Folklorization\" highlights the processing of local artistic production into mediated displays of culture. Here I challenge the built-in assumption that folklorization necessarily corrupts, arguing instead for the multivocality of cultural production in expressive contact zones, that is, zones where the local meets the global. In Quichua storytelling and in the making of musical CDs among the indigenous people of northern Ecuador, there is strong potential for revitalization of vernacular codes even in highly-mediated performance settings.

O artigo procura fornecer elementos para uma leitura positiva do atual fenômeno de folclorização do religioso. A folclorização evocaria uma dupla laicidade, que se coloca dialeticamente quanto à institucionalidade religiosa e independente no tocante à verticalidade dos saberes especializados e seus procedimentos metodológicos, numa perspectiva que se pretende pós-metafísica e democrática.  Faz-se, de início, uma síntese atual sobre a relação entre secularização e religiosidade para ilustrá-la com o relato de experiências religiosas específicas, todas anglicanas e localizadas na sociedade estadunidense; além de um estudo sobre a recepção estadunidense ao filme \"A Última Tentação de Cristo\". Depois, a partir de algumas observações de Althaus-Reid sobre a Teologia da Libertação, o artigo analisa o conceito de \"inculturação\". Graças à sua volatilidade, o conceito antropológico de \"folclorização\", enfim, é proposto como uma maneira ampla e flexível de se abordar o pluralismo religioso em contexto (pós) secular ante uma crescente e inexorável influência da \"indústria cultural\". Palavras-chave: Folclorização; Pós-metafísica; Democracia; (Pós) secularização; Pluralismo Religioso  Abstract The attempts searched to provide elements for a positive reading of the current phenomenon of religious folklorization. Folklorization would suggest a double laity, which arises dialectically by religious institutionalism and independent from verticality of specialized knowledge and its methodological procedures, which would be a post-metaphysics and democratic perspective. First of all, it creates a synthesis upon the relationship between secularization and religion to illustrate it with a retake of specific religious experiences, every one Episcopalian and located in American society, including a study of the U. S. reception of the film, \"The Last Temptation of Christ\". Next, from some observations by Althaus-Reid on Liberation Theology, the paper analyzes the concept of \"inculturation\". Because of its volatility, the anthropological concept of \"folklorization\", finally, is proposed as an extended and flexible way to focus religious plurality in a (post)secular context in an increasing and inexorable influence of \"cultural industries\". Key words: Folklorization; Post-metaphysics; Democracy, (Post) secularization; Religious Pluralism