[Anthropgrad] Reminder - Seminar by Zazie Bowen: Manoj and Sanjay Story. Friday, 24th July, 3pm.

[John White]

Anthropology Friday Seminar Series. Semester 2, 2009. Milgate Room, AD
Hope. Friday, 24th July, 3pm.

 

Seminar by Zazie Bowen: Manoj and Sanjay Story

 

How may children's play provide a commentary on the contexts within
which their play is performed? In this paper I focus on a locally
perceived hazard of Mayurbhanj (a district of Orissa) rural life: Avidya
Tantrik/witchcraft attacks and how a group of children negotiate this
risk through personal practices, social behavior and most importantly
how this phenomenon finds expression in their play.  

 

First I describe a fictional drama authored, enacted and filmed by some
village children. Then I relate a village incident that has a mirroring
relationship to the drama that preceded it. Both revolve around a fight
between benevolent Tantrik Gods/Goddesses and malevolent Avidya Tantriks
and witches. I then discuss the ways in which the phenomenon of Tantra
(benevolent Vidya and malevolent Avidya Tantra) preoccupies Mayurbhanj
village communities as part of their conceptual paradigm and its
particular concern for children who are the primary targets of Avidya
Tantrik and witchcraft attacks. Then I place this conceptual paradigm
within its ethnographic setting and discuss the resultant social
exclusions and inclusions in play and non-play life. Finally I contrast
and discuss two analytical paradigms, structural-functionalist and
creativity-transformational, as ways of understanding the central
concern of this paper: what can children's play tell us about children's
distinctive engagements with the life-world of their village?

 

 

 

 

All welcome!