This dissertation research examines the political significance of plazas in ancient Maya society from the Late Preclassic period through the Terminal Classic period (ca. 150 B.C.- A.D. 900). I consider plazas not as by-products of temples and palaces, but as political arenas in which different social actors created and transformed social realities and values. My primary question is how power relations and ideologies emerge from people's practices and their engagements with materiality--more specifically, the construction of plazas and ritual performances. I address this question through the combination of various methods including the following: spatial analyses based on GIS, extensive excavations, epigraphic studies, and material analyses through petrographic microscopy and particle-induced X-ray emission (PIXE). Using these methods, I conducted archaeological research at El Palmar, a Maya polity located in southeastern Campeche of Mexico. During the 2007-2014 field seasons, I investigated eleven plazas in total with eight located in the urban core and three in its outlying areas. The results from the urban core suggest that the power relations at El Palmar changed through time. Such changes are reflected in the designs of both public and exclusive plazas and associated ritual events. The results in the north outlying plaza, where a hieroglyphic stairway was built around A.D.726, further suggest that a group of officials negotiated their status and power with rulers. The protagonist of the event was not an El Palmar ruler but an official who emphasized diplomatic relations with foreign rulers, giving the El Palmar ruler only scant reference. Considering inter-regional contexts, however, they were not only engaged in internal power struggles, but also cooperated to negotiate with foreign dynasties. This complex mechanism of power was closely tied to the remodeling of the plaza and ideological symbolism materialized by mortuary practice, fire rituals, and termination rituals. My dissertation concludes that ritual performances in outlying plazas were not merely a reflection of royal ideology promoted by rulers but could have introduced new power and ideological relations in the community, relations that would be difficult to identify solely through the analysis of the main plaza.

The ritualistic aspect of Walter Pichler's work greatly problematizes the traditional view of the art object as the locus of aesthetic contemplation. Yet how are we to approach such art in our secularized world? For it to maintain its meaningfulness, does not ritual require a shared symbolic system? / Indirectly guided by Pichler's work, this thesis is an exploration of the contemporary status of the work of art. An investigation into the myth of Prometheus reveals that art and ritual share the same origin. Further inquiries into early Greek sculpture, as well as the concepts of techne and mimesis, expand this origin into the relationship between the art object and the viewer, shifting the customary focus away from the resemblance between the model and the copy. In this space of looking , art no longer presents itself as an aestheticized object---presence and absence, the visible and the invisible, recognition and anamnesis come into play as possible ways of participation in the work of art.

This project presents the design of a theatre. The theatre site is located in Halifax, Nova Scotia and will serve as the home for the Legacy Centre for the Performing arts. A selection of theatre spaces and ritual spaces, including temples and churches are analyzed, with attention paid to performance theory research in order to interpret the shared activities within these two building types. Architectural connections between these spaces are made as well as a building language common to both. A collection of theatre buildings, including the design for the Legacy Centre, is produced. Each design exhibits the line between front of house and backstage that has been established as being similar to both theatres and ritual spaces and that will enhance the experience of going to the theatre.

Cemeteries serve as repositories of history and memories of the local community, as well as afford the living population an opportunity to connect and learn about a culture’s past. Accordingly, the cemetery as a place and the rituals associated with death and remembrance that it holds, not only communicate and express the ideals of a collective identity, but also undergo modifications with time and geography. Through the study of burial rituals and funerary traditions of the multicultural community in the City of Richmond in British Columbia, this thesis seeks unifying qualities within the diversity of practices that will offer strategies for the design of ritual spaces that not only communicate the cultural identity within each community, but also serve as a place in which new ritual practices are born and integrated for the greater community of Richmond.

Traditional church buildings negotiate thresholds in a way that supports a program of cyclical and elevating rituals. Each threshold is marked by an architectural image, one that comes to be associated with a particular practice or event. This thesis begins with an analysis of the experience of sacred spaces, then considers ways to emphasize qualities of existing elements. The design inhabits the liminal spaces across thresholds and promotes the contemporary ritual practices of art. The chosen test site for the design methodology is Central Presbyterian Church on the bank of the Grand River in Cambridge, Ontario. A recent resurgence of the local creative community has drawn interest to the area and provides the basis of the user-based program for this project.

Nature has an effective approach to cycling materials and energy flows to promote life. This thesis aims to expose urbanite users to nature’s way of cycling materials. The seawall is the largest public space in Vancouver at the edge of land and sea. A neighbourhood community centre along the edge called the Conservatory for Community Matters is created to nurture environmental stewardship by mimicking natural cycles in its function. By conveying architectural systems and form in a cyclical and organic approach, an architectural intervention can address the daily environmental impact of urbanites while rooting people in place and nature in the city. The community centre’s program connects the individually focused daily rituals of eating, making, and exercising to benefit the larger community where urbanites can reintegrate their organic ‘wastes’ into usable by-products. This promotes a paradigm shift transforming the apathetic consumer into an active member of the urban ecosystem.

No description available.

The Tracks rites of passage are processes that mark the adolescent transition, for the participant, the family and the community, between the two life stages of childhood and adulthood. Adolescent initiation rites offer a community led journey of separation, transition and integration as a way to work meaningfully with adolescents as they move between the life stages of childhood into adulthood. In Aotearoa/New Zealand the Tracks programme provides a five day contemporary rite of passage for adolescents and, where possible, their fathers. The rite of passage is based on the assumption that adolescents need opportunities to find their voices and make meaning if they are to become more aware of who they are and where they belong. The methodology recognises that I, as researcher and insider in the Tracks organisation, needed to develop a holistic approach to insider research so that I could call on my understandings of the organisation and also guard against bias. The holistic approach involves the four interpenetrating strategies of appreciative inquiry, narrative inquiry, a blend of approaches to self-study that include meditation and critical reflection, and most importantly organic inquiry. The four strategies are based on coherence theories that describe learning as being organic, interconnected and emergent. Data were gathered from interviews and cycles of critical self-reflection in the form of a learning journal. Data comes from interviews with the mother or fathers and young men of six families who have participated in the Tracks rite of passage programme. I have also discussed this work with a number of professionals in the field of youth work. The project found that Tracks had created conditions that empowered these young men with an increased capacity to make sense of their lives. Fathers expressed how challenging and rewarding they had found it to speak in honest terms with their sons, and that they were supported to do the inner work necessary to be able to speak in such ways. All of the family members expressed a need to have more support after the event. The findings suggest a need to explore further the nature of the work happening at Tracks. It validates Lashlie’s (2005) theory that adolescents need their fathers and other men to be involved in their lives at the time of transition. Tracks also helps fathers to get to grips with the inner work of developing emotional maturity. The work happening at Tracks invites further research into and debate on the value of emotional intelligence. The Tracks rite of passage offers an alternative perspective to understand the unacceptably high rates of adolescent morbidity and mortality happening in New Zealand.

Is there a specific tradition of songs within the swedish environmental movement? What kinds of music has been performed in different situations and what does it mean to the movement and its inner life? The essay deals with a town meeting and action against plans of establishing passenger flights at a former military airport in Uppsala, looking at the action as a performance and as a ritual. The second part of the essay is built on interviews of three veterans of the movement's organisations one of which is as a singer-songwriter originally active in the peace movement of the 60's. The paper is about the songs and the situations in which they were sung, concluding that there is, the limited material considered, little evidence of considerable transfer of songs within the movement, though some coherence exists. The connection to between environmental movement and the swedish radical music movement of the 70's is also slightly mentioned. Finally there is a reasoning about songs and their different functions and the songs as an important part of a movement's narrative. / Finns det en speciell sångtradition inom den svenska miljörörelsen? Vilken slags musik har framförts i olika situationer och vad betyder det för rörelsen och dess inre liv. Denna uppsats behandlar ett torgmöte och en aktion mot planer att etablera passagerarflyg vid en tidigare militär flygplats i Uppsala. Aktionen ses ur performance- och ritualperspektiv. Vidare intervjuas tre veteraner i miljörörelsen varav en är en trubadur aktiv sedan fredsrörelsen på 1960-talet. Uppsatsen handlar om sånger och framförandesituationer. Förbindelsen mellan miljörörelsen och musikrörelsen under 1970-talet tas också kortfatttat upp. Slutligen finns ett resonemang om sången och dess funktion och sång såsom rörelseberättelse.

This thesis is an ethnography of the indigenous religion, education system and social organization of the community living in the central mountains of Sikka Regency on the island of Flores in Indonesia. The question that has motivated my research is ‘how are the ideas and practices of this community’s indigenous cosmology taught and learned so to persist with continuity through generations?’ In answer I explore the ways in which cosmological ideas and practices are taught to be valued as truth as they are embodied during the practical activity of ritual. This study advances a performative theory of ritual education through a combination of Gregory Bateson’s theory of the ecology of mind and Roy Rappaport’s theory of ritual and sanctification / I begin with a critical examination of the representations of the community in question that have been made by scholars and neighboring populations. I argue that these representations wrongly imply a static and bounded community. Instead, I contend that the community is constituted by dynamic village and clan relationships anchored on sentimental and structural forms of individual belonging to particular villages and clans. This belonging is principally developed through individuals’ adherence to the indigenous cosmology, locally called Adat. I continue by discussing the educational methods by which this cosmology is perpetuated. Ritual language lessons concerning education insist that from an early age community members participate fully in daily religious life (particularly in the practice of ritual) under the guidance of close family. I then describe the learning environments found in childhood, marriage and mortuary rites. Following Bateson, I argue that during ritual contexts participants ‘deutero-learn’ embodied skills that are patterned by previous experiences, and generate the future conditions, of these same ritual contexts. / In addition to traditional educational settings, the Adat cosmology is now taught in Indonesian primary and high schools in ‘local content curriculum’ classes. I compare Adat education based on participation in ritual with that of modern schools, and I argue that in the classroom the indigenous cosmology is abstracted from its performative underpinnings. Adat is embodied differently in ritual and school contexts, and the tensions caused by these differences lead to transformations in Adat knowledge. I end this thesis by contextualizing my findings with national discourses of indigeneity and intercultural education.