<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p> ‘Landscape’ and ‘ritual’ have been largely discussed in the social and human sciences, although their inter-relatedness has gained little scholarly attention. Drawing on earlier studies of ritual and landscape, as well as the authors′ own ethnographic works, ‘ritual landscape’ is suggested here as a useful analytical tool with which to understand how landscapes are produced, and how they, in their turn, produce certain types of being. ‘Ritual landscape’ recognises different modalities of agency, power-relation, knowledge, emotion, and movement. The article shows how the subjectivity of other-than-human beings such as ancestors, earth formations, land, animals, plants and, in general, materiality of ritual contexts, shape landscapes. We argue that ways of perceiving landscape includes a number of material and immaterial aspects indicated by ways of moving through landscapes and interacting with different human and non-human subjects that come to inhabit the world, creating relations and producing agentive ensembles and complexes. </p></abstract>

‘Landscape’ and ‘ritual’ have been largely discussed in the social and human sciences, although their inter-relatedness has gained little scholarly attention. Drawing on earlier studies of ritual and landscape, as well as the authors′ own ethnographic works, ‘ritual landscape’ is suggested here as a useful analytical tool with which to understand how landscapes are produced, and how they, in their turn, produce certain types of being. ‘Ritual landscape’ recognises different modalities of agency, power-relation, knowledge, emotion, and movement. The article shows how the subjectivity of other-than-human beings such as ancestors, earth formations, land, animals, plants and, in general, materiality of ritual contexts, shape landscapes. We argue that ways of perceiving landscape includes a number of material and immaterial aspects indicated by ways of moving through landscapes and interacting with different human and non-human subjects that come to inhabit the world, creating relations and producing agentive ensembles and complexes.

Introduction: Enquiries Into Contemporary Ritual Landscapes

Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

{"article-title":"Introduction: Enquiries Into Contemporary Ritual Landscapes"}

‘Landscape’ and ‘ritual’ have been largely discussed in the social and human sciences, although their inter-relatedness has gained little scholarly attention....

Introduction: Enquiries Into Contemporary Ritual Landscapes

Article Category: Special Issue: Contemporary Ritual Landscapes

Published Online: Jul 13, 2017

Page range: 5 - 17

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/jef-2017-0002

Keywords
ritual landscape, non-human agency, materiality, immateriality, belonging, relationality

© 2017

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

Introduction: Enquiries Into Contemporary Ritual Landscapes

Article Category: Special Issue: Contemporary Ritual Landscapes

Published Online: Jul 13, 2017

Page range: 5 - 17

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/jef-2017-0002

Keywordsritual landscape, non-human agency, materiality, immateriality, belonging, relationality

© 2017

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

Keywords
ritual landscape, non-human agency, materiality, immateriality, belonging, relationality