Contributors vii Preface xi Acknowledgements xiii 1 Ritual Knowledge and Performance from the Margins 1 Jin Young Choi Part 1 Gender Oppression and Ritual 2 The Impact of Religious Rituals and Ceremonies on Gender 21 Gifta Angeline Kumar 3 Cultural Crossroads: Women’s Ritual Participation in Northeast India and the Mainland 39 Ajungla Jamir Part 2 Colonialism and Indigenous Spiritualities of Liberation 4 African Spiritualities and the Normalization of Ancestral Rituals in Brussels Afro-diasporic Contexts 59 Christel Zogning Meli 5 ‘The Absurdity of Joy’: Reclaiming Pinkster (Pentecostal) Rituals as Decolonial Indigenous Expressions of Existence, Resistance and Solidarity 80 Johnathan Jodamus 6 Dancing, Drinking and Feasting: Rarámuri Worship During Holy Week Creates an Ecclesial Third Space 95 Ángel F. Méndez Montoya Part 3 Trauma, Spectrality and Ritual 7 Rituals of the (Para)normal: Spectrality, Trauma and Liberation in Latin America 115 Miguel M. Algranti 8 Conjure: A Womanist Perspective on Sacred Ritual 135 Teresa L. Smallwood Part 4 Ritual as a Site of Struggle and Transgression 9 Liberating Liturgy: Liturgy as a Site of Struggle 153 Gerald O. West 10 Defiance and Democracy: Protests as Rites in Singapore 170 Lynnette Xiangling Li Part 5 Rituals of Healing and Planetary Thriving 11 Bearing Grief and Breathing Liberation: Rituals after the Anthropocene 185 Cláudio Carvalhaes 12 Release from the Tyranny of the Small Self: A Modern Subject’s Initiation into Indigenous Ritual 203 S. Lily Mendoza Index 221