two lovers separated during the nationalistic shifts of the balkan wars exchange a handkerchief....again, this follows on from my last post on fabric and ritual...

The song whose lyrics I published in my last blog post is this one, from a Turkish soap opera broadcast several years ago.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQiv8Aq3CXA

At the moment I am grappling a bit with Clifford Geertz in an attempt to get a firmer background in classical anthropological texts, although of course that can be both a blessing in a curse. On the one hand I am learning the language of Anthro and its ancestor cult (!) but I also risk adopting ideas that have been morei ntegrated, critiqued, surpassed etc...by now. I risk being out of touch. Oh well!

While looking at Geertz have the impression that my emphasis on contextualization is…

So, I have recently returned from a conference/summer school on Meso-American traditional healing practices at the University of New Mexico. The participants were an interesting mix of academics and practitioners with the slant towards a general audience amongst the presenters.I am hoping to continue connecting to the scholars at the program, which is repeated every summer in Albuquerque.I gave a couple of short presentations on popular beliefs and healing practices in Turkish culture. Its…