Reconsidering Heathenry: The Construction of an Ethnic Folkway as Religio-ethnic Identity

This article is the result of ethnographic fieldwork among American practitioners of Heathenry, a reconstructionist religious movement whose practitioners align themselves with ancient Germanic and Norse cosmology. In this article, I respond to previous representations of Heathenry as racist by expl...

Description complète

Enregistré dans:  
Détails bibliographiques
Auteur principal: Snook, Jennifer (Auteur)
Type de support: Électronique Article
Langue:Anglais
Vérifier la disponibilité: HBZ Gateway
Journals Online & Print:
En cours de chargement...
Fernleihe:Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste
Publié: University of Californiarnia Press 2013
Dans: Nova religio
Année: 2013, Volume: 16, Numéro: 3, Pages: 52-76
Sujets non-standardisés:B Ethnicity
B Ásatrú
B Heathenry
B Paganism
B Whiteness
Accès en ligne: Volltext (JSTOR)
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Édition parallèle:Électronique
Description
Résumé:This article is the result of ethnographic fieldwork among American practitioners of Heathenry, a reconstructionist religious movement whose practitioners align themselves with ancient Germanic and Norse cosmology. In this article, I respond to previous representations of Heathenry as racist by exploring the intricacies and nuances of members' co-construction of their own ethnic folkway. I show that Heathens construct group boundaries by distinguishing between categories of folkish and universalist, while mostly living between racial exclusivity and complete inclusivity. In other words, Heathens self-consciously establish symbolically meaningful categories to distinguish between practitioners' understandings of who gets to be Heathen, of racial/ethnic exclusivity, and complete inclusivity. While some American Heathens find race or ancestry irrelevant, most do not and all must participate in the conversations that seek to define Heathenry as an indigenous tradition, purely a system of faith, or a complex folkway struggling to be ethnic while resisting racist labels.
ISSN:1541-8480
Contient:Enthalten in: Nova religio
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1525/nr.2013.16.3.52