CFP: "The Art of Requesting: Anthropological Studies of Supplications and Poverties"

[Sabrina Gavigan]

Call for papers for an edited volume: 
"The Art of Requesting: Anthropological Studies of Supplications and
 Poverties"
 

 Edited volume: EDUVIM (National University of Villa María Press).
 Publication date: November 2014. 
 http://askingrituals.wordpress.com

 
 We invite submissions for a peer-reviewed, edited volume of works that
 explore supplications or asking rituals in specific ethnographic cases. Of
 particular interest is how prayers or asking rituals produce hope and
 constantly redefine notions of pity, poverty, and deprivation in the
 American continent, from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. Contributions might
 examine various acts of prayer and oral rites and how, through them, the
 indigenous poor contradict state and transnational definitions of poverty
 and account for natural resources according to particular property regimes.
 We are interested in works that approach this line of query from various
 directions, however, and encourage submissions that address requesting,
 oral rites and poverty in invigorating ways.
 
 Potential questions/topics to be addressed include, but are not limited to,
 the following:
 
    - Rogation prayers and asking rituals
    - The particular use of oral rites in defining factors of poverty
    - The significance of favor and compassion in particular indigenous
    ideologies
    - Asking for money, development and representation from governments
    - The conceptualization of new subjectivities through requesting
    performances and, in turn, the potential of the indigenous poor in national
    politics
    - How individual prayers and community rites address masters and forces
    of nature
 
 
 *Dates*
 
 Interested contributors are invited to send an abstract of 250 words and a
 brief biographical sketch by March 30, 2014 to askingrituals at gmail.com.
 
 Contributions should be roughly 6,000 words (prepared according to the
 latest version of the MLA style) and submitted by May 30, 2014.
 
 Submissions may be written in Portuguese, Spanish, English, or French.
 
 
 
 *Description*:
 
 In many American indigenous contexts, rites, prayers and invocations to
 spiritual "guardians", "masters" or "owners" of the land, the forest,
 water, and various species of plants and animals are used to reverse cycles
 of famine, poverty and lack of food, rain and health. As the protectors and
 owners of natural resources--including plants, animals, territories, and
 other entities (Seeger 1981: 181)--these spirits seem to extend a
 metaphorical link between fatherhood and motherhood and numerous contexts
 in everyday life (Viveiros de Castro 2002: 82; Fausto 2008). The social
 life of humans has been depicted as an outcome of diverse social
 relationships with these non-human "masters" and "owners" of animals,
 plants, and other kinds of persons (yoqta siyaxaua or "true persons") (Tola
 2005: 121) with whom humans negotiate permanently. Through offerings and
 oral rites, including prayers and invocations, people practice gratitude
 and request abundant crops, hunting and fishing. Expressed differently
 according to local languages, these ritual practices are referred to in
 specific terms (Testart 1994: 58) ranging from "thank", "lease or ask a
 favor" (Boas 1966 :170) to "exchange" or "purchase life" and "rain" (Terán
 and Rasmussen 2008, Dapuez 2011) and are generically identified as asking
 rituals (Benedict 1922, 1923) or supplications (Fassin 2000).
 


 *Editors*:
 
 Andrés Dapuez is researcher of CONICET, Argentina, at the Research Center
 of Entre Ríos (CITER). He holds a PhD in Socio-cultural Anthropology from
 Johns Hopkins University. In much of his work Andrés has depicted the
 importance of asking rituals and promises as fundamental stages for gift
 exchange, economic development and political negotiations in a
 Mayan-speaking village of Eastern Yucatan, Mexico.
 

 Florencia Tola is researcher of CONICET, Argentina and an associated member
 of the Centre for the Enseignement et Recherche en Ethnologie Amérindienne
 (EREA, CNRS) Paris, France. She holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the
 consortium of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, París and
 the National University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. In her papers and books
 Florencia has stressed the political importance of human and non-human
 compassion and interaction for the formation of personhood in the
 Argentinean Chaco.