Texte remanié de: Diss. / Bibliogr. p. 165-177. Index.

This study is focused on some individuals' experience of the concept of culture in their everyday life. Some questions about culture were asked to some persons living in a small village in the isle of Gotland and some persons in the capital of Sweden, Stockholm, in the autumn in 2007 in a field study. The study showed that peopele tend to shape their own life world in the continuous activity in their near surroundings, in the garden and in reading literature and listening to music. There were some differences in the life world depending on where they lived,  in the country side or in town. Urban life has more offers as to popera and theatres but negatively more violence and stress. A study of literature on the ethnological concept of culture is included. The answers of the individuals also led to different topics such as nostalgia, mind, fear, feelings, body and soul which were enlightened by scientist from the respective fields.

Le mantra de la compassion fascine depuis très longtemps de nombreux chercheurs de tous bords et de différentes époques. Ces derniers semblent cependant s’être toujours plus intéressés à sa signification plutôt qu’à sa fonction, son usage ou son utilité. Ce mémoire, qui se base sur l’expérience d’un travail de terrain ethnologique au sein d’un centre bouddhiste affilié à l’école guélougkpa, vise autant à se rapprocher de l’authenticité de sa signification que d’un usage de la formule pouvant être utile afin de protéger l’esprit. L’une des traductions du mot mantra est « protection de l’esprit ». Nous nous intéresserons particulièrement à notre objet sous le prisme de sa performance. La question du sens de la formule sera progressivement déplacée d’une dimension statique et sémantique à une autre plus dynamique et métapragmatique. Nous profiterons notamment des outils fournis par l’ethnomusicologie afin d’observer la part prise au sein de cette protection par les composantes musicales de la récitation. Ce travail sera aussi l’occasion de rassembler différentes théories et plusieurs concepts occidentaux au sein d’un même cadre théorique. La cadre de la sémiologie de la musique proposé par Molino et Nattiez, constituera une fondation étique solide à laquelle nous tenterons d’intégrer et d’articuler deux autres pensées majeures : la pensée austinienne de la « performativité » et la conception bachelardienne des images. Une fois nos outils d’observation affinés, nous regarderons mieux comment doit être comprise la « compassion » au sein de l’épistémè bouddhiste tibétaine, comment celle-ci est évoquée au sein de notre terrain de recherche et le lien tout à fait particulier qu’elle entretient avec le mantra qui porte son nom. La performance du mantra sera considérée comme étant, et au moins partiellement, une manifestation sonore de cette compassion. / The mantra of compassion has long fascinated many scholars from all walks of life and from different eras. However, they seem to have always been more interested in its meaning than in its function, use or utility. This M.A. thesis, which is based on the experience of ethnological fieldwork in a Buddhist center affiliated with the gelugkpa school, aims to get closer to both the authenticity of its meaning and to a use of the formula that may be helpful in protecting the mind. One of the translations of the word mantra is "protection of the mind". We will be particularly interested in our object under the prism of its performance. The question of the meaning of the formula will then be progressively moved from a static and semantic dimension to a more dynamic and metapragmatic one. We will use the tools provided by ethnomusicology, to observe the part taken by the musical components of the recitation in this protection. This work will also be an opportunity to bring together different theories and several Western concepts within the same theoretical framework. The framework of the semiology of music proposed by Molino and Nattiez, will constitute a solid etic foundation to which we will try to integrate and articulate two other major thoughts: the austinian thought of the "performativity" and the bachelardian conception of images. Once we have refined our tools of observation, we will look more closely at how "compassion" is to be understood within the Tibetan Buddhist episteme, how it is evoked within our research field and the very particular link it has with the mantra that bears its name. The performance of the mantra will be considered as being, at least partially, a sound manifestation of this compassion.

<p>The use of codified sacred utterances, formulas or hymns called “mantras” is widespread in India. By and large, scholarship over the last few decades studies and explains mantras by resorting to Indian sources from over a millennium ago, and by applying such frameworks especially related to language as speech-act theory, semiotics, structuralism, etc. This research aims to understand mantra, and the visionary experience of mantra, from the perspectives of practitioners engaged in “mantra-sadhana (personal mantra practice).” </p><p>The main fieldwork for this project was conducted at three communities established around “gurus (spiritual teachers)” regarded by their followers as seers, i.e., authoritative sources with visionary experience, especially of deities. The Goddess, in the forms of Kali and Lalita Tripurasundari, is the primary deity at all three locations, and these practitioners may be called tantric or Hindu. Vedic sources (practitioners and texts) have also informed this research as they are a part of the history and context of the informants. Adopting an immersive anthropology and becoming a co-practitioner helped erase boundaries to get under the skin of mantra-practice. Fieldwork shows how the experience of mantras unravels around phenomena, seers, deities, intentionality and results. Practitioners find themselves seers mediating new mantras and practices, shaping tradition. Thus, practitioners are the primary sources of this research. </p><p>This dissertation is structured in three phases: preparation (Chapters One and Two), fieldwork (Chapters Three, Four and Five) and conclusions (Chapter Six). Chapter One discusses the groundwork including a literature review and methodological plan— a step as crucial as the research itself. Chapter Two reviews two seers in recent times who have become role-models for contemporary mantra practitioners in Andhra-Telangana. Ethnographic chapters Three, Four and Five delve into the visionary experience and poetics of mantra-practice at three locations. Chapter Six analyses the fieldwork findings across all three locations to arrive at a number of conclusions.</p><p>Chapter Three takes place in Devipuram, Anakapalle, where a temple in the shape of a three-dimensional “Sriyantra (aniconic Goddess form)” was established by the seer AmritanandaNatha Sarasvati. Chapter Four connects with the community surrounding the seer Swami Siddheswarananda Bharati whose primary location is the Svayam Siddha Kali Pitham in Guntur where the (image of the) deity manifested in front of a group of people. Chapter Five enters the experience of mantras at Nachiketa Tapovan ashram near Kodgal with Paramahamsa Swami Sivananda Puri and her guru, Swami Nachiketananda. </p><p>Across these three locations, which I find akin to “mandalas (groups, circles of influence, chapters),” practitioners describe their experiences including visions of deities and mantras, and how mantras transformed them and brought desired and unexpected results. More significantly, practitioners share their processes of practice, doubts, interpretations and insights into the nature of mantras and deities. Practitioners who begin “mantra-sadhana (mantra-practice)” motivated by some goal are encouraged by phenomena and results, but they develop attachment to deities, and continue absorbed in sadhana. Practitioners care to discriminate between what is imagined and what actually occurred, but they also consider imagination crucial to progress. Deities are sound-forms and powerful other-worldly friends existing both outside and within the practitioner’s (not only material) body. We learn about mantras received from deities, seen and heard mantras, hidden mantras, lost mantras, dormant mantras, mantras given silently, mantras done unconsciously, and even the “no”-mantra. </p><p>Chapter 6, Understanding Mantras Again is an exploration of the fundamental themes of this research and a conceptual analysis of the fieldwork, keeping the mantra-methodologies and insights of practitioners in mind—what are mantras and how do they work in practice, what is visionary experience in mantra-practice, what are deities and how do they relate to mantras, and other questions. I conclude with a list of the primary sources of this research— practitioners.</p> / Dissertation

This thesis argues that the inscription of bodies is necessary in order to constitute the cosmos, gender and sex. A study of the Vedic cosmogonic mythologies of the deities Purusha and Prajapati illustrates the ways in which sacrifice, as a form of inscription, constitutes the cosmos by ordering and fashioning the boundaries of the bodies of the deities through differentiation and unification. An analysis of samskaras, or consecratory rites of The Law Code of Manu, show that they operate as regulatory norms in order to constitute sex and gender. But the instability and unnaturalness of the categories of gender and sex are exposed when an analysis of the samskara rituals of the bride and student show that performative acts and speech involved in their respective rites are nearly identical. This discussion of bodies, gender and sex is founded on Judith Butler's work to show how bodies, sex, and gender are also social and cultural constructs. In particular, Butler's work with performativity reveals the ways in which performative action and speech acts constitute people through their stylized and strained repetition. It is this repetition that proves to be deceiving as it creates the illusion that sex and gender are inherent to bodies. We discover that the problems maintaining the appearance of these categories is experienced in both the cosmogonic myths and with the wife and student.

Tesis para optar al grado de Magíster en Literatura

This PhD thesis is a multi-sited ethnographical study (Marcus 1995) of globalized world through focusing on the social life (Appadurai 1986) of one of the well-known Vedic mantras (the Gayatri Mantra) as a globalized phenomenon and a commodity. Chanting of mantras (Hindu sacred chants in Vedic Sanskrit; pronunciation, intonation and rhythm of which is prohibited to change in the Brahmanic discourse) which had been a local cultural practice, has become a globally known phenomenon. During the globalizing process of their cultural transmission from India to the West and later to the Czech Republic, the mantras have gained new sound forms, new social and cultural contexts, new functions and new meanings. Contemporary cultural productions of mantras are a thick example how the present inter-continental connectedness works in everyday life, music and in the relationship to the Sacred. Selected places on this trajectory will be sites of the fieldwork. The project will research, how the transmission process happens, what music forms it takes, and what meanings are attached to them by their agents.

Syftet med studien är att belysa vetskapen om att alla människor är olika och att övning bör anpassas utefter det. Prestationsångest har en stor påverkan på musiker och deras övning. Genom analyser av litteratur kunde egna problem och dåliga vanor uppmärksammas. Intervjuer med musiker och en läkare inspirerade sedan metoder att prövas för en eventuell förbättrad miljö i övningsrummet. Metoderna som undersöktes var kortare övningspass, medveten närvaro, mantran och fokusområden. Undersökningen gav positiva effekter på övningen och resulterade i insikten att förändring av en ångestladdad övningssituation inte är omöjlig. Genom att ifrågasätta gamla vanor, utmana ohjälpsamma tankar och aktivt införa små förändringar kan en förbättra sin situation. En bör vara  medveten om att övning är en lång process som bör anammas med ett nyfiket förhållningssätt, och även lämna dömande tankar åt sidan. Slutsatser drogs kring vikten av att bevisa för sig själv att om en uppskattar att spela musik, är det också fullt möjligt att uppskatta övning. Studien kan uppmana andra att våga ändra på vanor, och reagera på tankar om att en situation kan vara bättre. / <p><strong>Examenskonsert, Sabina Scott</strong> Oboe</p><p> </p><p><strong>Concerto in D major, </strong>Richard Strauss (1945)</p><p>for Oboe and Small Orchestra </p><p>I. Allegro moderato</p><p>II. Andante</p><p>III. Vivace - Allegro </p><p><strong></strong></p><p><strong>Three Romances op.22 </strong>Clara Schumann (1853)</p><p>for Violin and Piano </p><p>I. Andante molto</p><p>II. Allegretto</p><p>III. Leidenschaftlich schnell </p><p></p><p><strong>Le Tombeau de Couperin </strong>Maurice Ravel (1917) </p><p>Transcribed for Woodwind Quintet by Mason Jones </p><p>I. Prélude</p><p>II. FugueI</p><p>II. Menuet</p><p>IV. Rigaudon </p><p></p><p><strong>Piano</strong> Terés Löf </p><p><strong>Flöjt</strong> Kajsa Nilsson</p><p><strong>Klarinett</strong> Astrid le Clercq</p><p><strong>Valthorn</strong> Erik Rönér </p><p></p>

This PhD thesis is a multi-sited ethnographical study (Marcus 1995) of globalized world through focusing on the social life (Appadurai 1986) of one of the well-known Vedic mantras (the Gayatri Mantra) as a globalized phenomenon and a commodity. Chanting of mantras (Hindu sacred chants in Vedic Sanskrit; pronunciation, intonation and rhythm of which is prohibited to change in the Brahmanic discourse) which had been a local cultural practice, has become a globally known phenomenon. During the globalizing process of their cultural transmission from India to the West and later to the Czech Republic, the mantras have gained new sound forms, new social and cultural contexts, new functions and new meanings. Contemporary cultural productions of mantras are a thick example how the present inter-continental connectedness works in everyday life, music and in the relationship to the Sacred. Selected places on this trajectory will be sites of the fieldwork. The project will research, how the transmission process happens, what music forms it takes, and what meanings are attached to them by their agents.

The thesis paper Design takes place in our lives, naturally and sometimes invisibly, but how can we become alert to its impact on us? How can we as designers elaborate on our role in creating tools for people’s lives? A handmade metal wire toy I found in my parents’ house made me discover the world of mandalas; a Buddhistic symbol and a tool for spiritual enlightenment. Mandalas speak of the relation between us and the world and balance between body and mind. In my Master’s project, the act of playing is explored as a tool for altering perspectives on our physical environment. Inspired by the mandala, an alternative approach to functional form is visualized, connecting our bodies and minds in closer relation to a playful and imaginative state of being. By investigating our physical environment and encouraging interaction, new mantras for our everyday lives may be created. The design process Using the metal wire mandala as my starting point, I have explored spatial forms with possibilities in transformation. Different combinations of the same parts; half circles of bent metal wire which connected can move and therefore change the other shape of the construction, creates different kinds of space with more or less clear practical application. The ambition of this project has been to investigate the metal construction as foundation and frame for textile in and as architecture; building a whole space, as visual room dividers indoor or outdoor and as sun screen. The design is based on transformation and reuse of the same parts to build new forms. The textiles have been designed and produced with the metal construction as frame. The textiles are knitted with nylon thread, hand dyed and mounted onto the construction. The technique of partial knitting makes it possible to create the round shapes with an even elasticity in all directions, and an open centre for the next piece overlapping. When knitting, no waste material I generated since nothing is cut away after production. Using punch cards, patterns and structure is added to the surface. The need to create smaller spaces within a larger space is present in many places; indoors as well as out doors. The public environment in which we live, controls and shapes our lives. By creating more intimate sites, with the possibility for visual and mental rest, we can come closer one another and hold other types of conversations. This will create new patterns of behaviour; new mantras for everyday life. During the Konstfack Degree Exhibition 2013, I displayed one of the possible forms in full scale with textiles, along side a smaller size model of the same shape and one other possible shape with closer resemblance to the original wire toy. On site in the exhibition, visitors could meet and try the space in a real setting. / Thesis uppsats Formgivning sker i våra liv, naturligt och ibland osynligt, men hur kan vi bli uppmärksamma på dess inverkan på oss? Hur kan vi som formgivare utveckla vår roll i att skapa redskap för människors liv? En handgjord leksak av metalltråd som jag hittade i mitt föräldrahem fick mig att upptäcka mandalans värld – en buddistisk symbol och ett redskap för andlig upplysning. Mandalan vittnar om förhållandet mellan oss och världen och jämvikt mellan kropp och själ. I mitt masterarbete utforskas lekaktivitet som ett redskap för att ändra perspektiv på vår fysiska omgivning. Med inspiration från mandalan åskådliggörs en alternativ infallsvinkel på funktionell form som förenar våra kroppar och sinnen mer intimt med en lekfull och fantasifull tillvaro. Genom att undersöka vår fysiska omgivning och uppmuntra samspel kan vi skapa nya mantra för vardagen. Designprocessen Med leksaken av metalltråd som utgångspunkt, har jag utforskat rumsliga former med möjlighet till transformation. Olika kompositioner av samma byggstenar; halvcirklar av böjd metalltråd vilka sammanlänkade kan röra sig mot varandra och på så vis förändra den yttre formen, skapar olika typer av rumsligheter med mer eller mindre definierad praktisk användning. Projektets ambition har varit att utforska metallkonstruktionens möjligheter som stomme för textil i och som arkitektur; som skapande av hela rum, som visuella rumsavdelare inomhus eller utomhus samt som solskydd. Designen bygger på förvandling och återanvändning, där samma delar kan användas till att sätta samman nya former. De textila materialen har arbetats fram med metallkonstruktionen som utgångspunkt och ram. Textilierna är stickade i nylon, färgade och monterade i konstruktionen. Tekniken att delsticka på stickmaskin möjliggör att de runda formerna med jämn elasticitet åt alla håll, och ett hål lämnas i centrum för nästa överlappande del i den monterade konstruktionen. I stickningen skapas heller inget spillmaterial eftersom ingenting klipps bort efter tillverkningen. Med hjälp av hålkort integreras mönstringar och strukturer. Behovet av att skapa mindre rum i större rum finns många platser; inomhus såväl som utomhus. De offentliga platser vi rör oss på styr vårt beteende och formar våra liv. Med intimare mötesplatser och möjlighet till visuell och mental vila kan vi komma närmare varandra och föra andra typer av samtal vilket kan skapa nya mönster av beteende; nya mantran. Under Konstfacks vårutställning 2013, visades en av de möjliga formerna i fullskala med textilier, samt en mindre modell av denna samt en annan form med tydlig anknytning till mandala-leksakens ursprungliga form. På plats i utställningen kunde besökare pröva rummet i ett verkligt sammanhang.