000			02025cam a2200229 4500500
005			20250112023038.0
041			_afre
042			_adc
100	1	0	_aArabestani, Mehrdad _eauthor
245	0	0	_aCosmology, identity and food related rituals among the Mandaeans
260			_c2020.
500			_a55
520			_aThe Mandaeans are members of a Gnostic ethnoreligious group who live in Iran and Iraq. They have always been a small minority under the threat of cultural extinction. Recent wars and political unrest in their homeland have intensified the situation and accelerated the emigration and dissemination of the community. They practice elaborate religious rituals that revolve around the recurrent theme of bodily purity, including ritual concern for food and its preparation. On the one hand, using a Geertzian approach to the study of religion with ethnographic data, the mutual relationship between the food-related rituals, Mandaean cosmology and the formation of a “religious world” is considered. On the other hand, the very formation of a “religious world” can be seen as a social construction based on the historical experience and socio-political situation of the people. The ritual obsession with the purity of body and food symbolically represents a preoccupation with the purity and integrity of the community, while at the same time it re-establishes the boundaries of a distinct group identity in a threatening milieu. Therefore, food-related rituals not only symbolically represent Mandaean worldview and simultaneously set up a specific ethos for the people, but they also create and recreate this distinct identity.
690			_acosmology
690			_aidentity
690			_apurification
690			_aritual
690			_afood
690			_aMandaean
786	0		_nArchives de sciences sociales des religions | o 189 | 2 | 2020-03-30 | p. 203-226 | 0335-5985
856	4	1	_uhttps://shs.cairn.info/journal-archives-de-sciences-sociales-des-religions-2020-2-page-203?lang=en
999			_c141153 _d141153