Contenu du sommaire : Paysages

From Nature to the Supernatural For mountain-dwelling Nepalese peasants, a series of secret correspondances links nature to mankind. In this global vision, wherein social, biological and religious aspects are combined, nature appears to be sacred, divine. In most Himalayan societies, nature gods hold an intermediate position between the major divinities of written traditions, whether Hindu or Buddhist, and demon spirits. This threefold structure of the pantheon is underlaid by a complex theology of the corporeity of various divine powers, a theology based on the interplay of identity and difference, immanence and transcendence.

On peasants in the Jungle : Trapping in Tharu Relations with the Forest World The ways the Tharu, peasants who live in the paludal forest of Terai, use snares are described. Neither hunting nor fishing call for bloodshed. When they invoke the spirits of violent death, who are responsible for most diseases, priests use ritual techniques depending on the "landscape category" (dwelling sites or forest) with which these spirits are associated. "In the forest", the priest, at its edge (like the hunter who never goes deeps into it), tries to trap spirits whereas, at a dwelling site, he "nails" them by burying them in the ground. He offers "sacrifices of breath", which do not call for bloodshed, to forest spirits. How do Tharu rites symbolically work to "put the landscape in order" ? This ritual ordering of the world is underlaid by a separation between village and forest and based upon a relationship to the forest world that is marked by an attitude, characteristic of this peasant society, of withdrawal and nonviolence.

Râmro-narâmro : The Perception of the Landscape among Indo-Nepalese in the Central Nepal Hills How do the Nepalese Hindus of the Hill Region see their environment ? By semantics, their notion of a landscape can be associated with beauty, but what beauty ? According to what criteria ? Practical utility, wherein beauty is combined with fertility, is related to the religious symbolism used to portray a highly valued universe. A comparison with the landscape as evoked in folk songs and a brief look at painting shows that realistic representation has no meaning.

Men/Divinities of the Forest : Through the Mirror in the Central Nepal In Gulmi, "forest divinities", or "little divinities", are a class in the pantheon. The forest space attributed to them comprises all categories of space thought to be "low". Supernatural figures are associated with each category. Peasants' conceptions of these divinities and their means of appeasing them are described. Conceived to be the wild alter ego of people, the forest divinities share the terrestrial world with mankind. These two groups compete and clash. They are seen as being on opposite sides of a mirror, a precarious and dangerous threshold that people risk crossing toward the wild state.

Agitated Negotiations : The Description of a Situation of Interactions between People and Gods How do the divinities manifest themselves to the communities who dwell in the Imachal Pradesh valleys, a Himalayan region of Hindu culture ? Through mediations that are culturally determined but not at all mysterious, not even to the foreign observer, local divinities directly intervene in events. The article relates how and why a divinity stopped a ceremony in his honour, an event that was much regretted by the persons present. This incident crystalized tensions between the various constituents of these communities.

Earth Gods and Demons in Himalayan Religions In most Himalayan pantheons, terrestrial gods have an intermediate position between celestial divinities and chtonic demons. They have friendly as well as terrifying aspects, and are simultaneously masculine and feminine. Among the Thamang of western Nepal, they are worshipped by a category of exorcist priests, the lambu, who concentrate in themselves not only life forces but also dark powers and death forces. In general, there is an affinity between earth gods and demons. Among the Newar for instance, Bhairava, the god in the pantheon who is most directly linked to underworld forces, is sometimes imagined to have been a demon. His pacification and transformation into a protecting divinity are attributed to a tântrika expert in magic. This dialectical relationship between telluric powers and demons reflects the wariness of Himalayans about setting up a categorical opposition between order and disorder, light and darkness. The societies in the area under study tend to see divine spirits as being complementary aspects of opposite values.

On Gods, Mountains and People : The Tibetan Interpretation of the Landscape In the Tibetan interpretation of the landscape, space is organized as a square form with cardinal points that is stratified in height and ideally centered on a vertical axis running through these various levels. Certain points in this interpretation are more meaningful than others. The landscape, usually reduced to the main constituents of the terrain that are directly visible if there is no plant cover, is seen to be stratified, centered, bounded, hierarchized, and inhabited by gods and spirits in a close relationship with mankind.

From the Human Body to Humanized Space The frame of reference underlying the conception of village space among the Isan in northeastern Thailand is explained through two concrete cases and the analysis of a conceptual model hwa (head)/fim (feet). Transposed on the various scales of village space (houses, rice granaries, neighborhoods, rice field lots, the village), this model reflects the structural homology that the Isan establish between the human body, social body, dwelling-unit and unit of rice. It also specifies both the ways humanized space is organized and its limits. Moreover, it highlights the close link between the Isan rice-farmer and his main crop.

Two Models of the Man-Animal Relationship in Systems of Representation The widespread absence in Aboriginal Australia of beliefs in animal souls, of spirits masters of hunting, of the idea of a man-animal contract, and of ceremonies for winning the favor of animals, means that the conceptions of man-animal relationships are very different from those prevalent in America or Siberia. An examination of myths about the theft of fire leads to the same conclusion, as does a re-examination of totemism.

From the Foundling to the Welfare Child Three actors are involved with the "welfare child" : the State, the institution of origin, and the host institution where the child is placed. After observing problems in the child's original family, the State, or rather its administration (Assistance publique) intervenes to place him in an institution or another family. By outlining the history of placement services, defining the type of children taken into custody (foundlings, abandoned children, etc.) and noting the type of custody (in an orphanage or a foster home), we can reflect upon society's expectations, during given periods, about families. Conceptions of the "right" family and of child placement were formed in the 19th century and did not change till the 1970s !

Peasant Production : Points for a New Economics The rural history of 18th and 19th century Quebec is similar to that of the American Northeast in ways that recall French rural history and raise the same theoretical problems. How to understand peasant behaviors, their conservatism and reluctance about the marketplace ? A formalist explanation, inspired by neoclassical economics, supposes a generalized commercial rationality and explains peasant behaviors in terms of failures and imperfections of the market. On the contrary, an antiformalist explanation assumes the existence of a noncommercial peasant rationality. Whereas the formalists are able to derive, through corollaries contained in the market situation, a set of behaviors that reflect this commercial rationality, the antiformalists are unable to ground their observations in axioms equal to those of neoclassical economics. They sometimes talk about Chayanov, Marx or even Kroeber, and are satisfied with postulating an autarkic or domestic orientation of peasant production. This article aims at : outlining such axioms ; deducing, from a narrow definition of the social organization of peasant property and production, the major characteristics of a specifically peasant rationality, and thus deriving nearly all the facts that have been pointed out in historiographical accounts, whether by formalists or antiformalists.