TRADITION IN PRESENT AND HISTORICAL TIME: RITUAL PRACTICES IN AND FROM THE AMERICAS
Ritual practices are often thought of as acts consolidated over time: their procedures are understood as immutable, subject to strict parameters of execution, embedded in a specific spatio-temporality and belonging to a particular community or social group. However, with each interpersonal and generational transmission, their practitioners add or remove elements that respond to their own concerns or realities, effectively modifying them without thereby ceasing to be considered part of a “tradition.”
In the Americas this dynamism is observable both in the historical record and in the present. Recent cases illustrate it: the popularization of “mystical tourism” in the Amazon associated with the use of psychoactive substances such as ayahuasca or yagé, the laying on of hands as a mechanism for legitimizing prominent political figures, or the celebration of humanist or secular weddings. It remains, however, to investigate the cultural, sociological, historical and/or economic causes of these changes; the way in which these practices affirm themselves as part of a given tradition or cultural heritage; and how that connecting thread is woven toward new contemporary forms of expression, including the use of social media and artificial intelligence.
This symposium seeks to explore, in an interdisciplinary manner, answers to questions such as the following: What innovative actions have indigenous or mestizo peoples developed to address current problems from within their respective traditions? How have practices of indigenous or mestizo origin been exported or exchanged in non-traditional spaces, such as the Global North or industrialized nations? In what ways do ritual practices establish new traditions with respect to their contexts of origin? What are the ways in which these practices guide the daily life of their participants?
We accept proposals addressing the religious and ritual phenomenon from both historical and contemporary perspectives, from disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, history, religious studies, archaeology, socio-environmental studies or communication sciences, among others. The geographic focus may be situated in any territory of the Americas, and we also include works on ritual practices of American origin that are developed outside of them.
