The Netherlands has an established euthanasia practice. The increase in euthanasia cases for psychiatric suffering over the past 10 years is subject to ongoing public and political debate. During the fieldwork of the research project “ritualisation of euthanasia”, remarkable differences between euthanasia cases for somatic suffering and psychiatric suffering were observed, which sparked a closer investigation. This article analyses how euthanasia is ritualised differently in cases of those two groups and tentatively explained using theories from ritual studies, sociology and anthropology. Between November 2023 and November 2025, 52 euthanasia cases were explored using a multi-sited focused ethnography approach. Through observations and prospective and retrospective interviews, data was collected and analysed using constant comparative methods. This paper reveals that psychiatric cases, often younger people and more socially stigmatised, engage in more expressive, symbolic, and creative rituals, such as curated funerals, memory boxes, and tattoos. In contrast, somatic cases tend to focus on relational closure through familiar and everyday rituals. The paper highlights how ritual behaviour reflects age, stigma, and social positioning, with rituals in psychiatric cases serving the creation of a post-self, recognition, agency, and active narrative shaping at the end of life. The findings suggest that ritualisation is not only personal but also deeply socio-cultural and moral, offering insight into how different forms of suffering shape the meaning of a “good death”.

For decades, the Catholic monastic tradition has been defined by demographic decline and the closure of monasteries. And yet, new religious groups have emerged that have cultivated their own take on the monastic tradition, while old monasteries have become treasured heritage objects. In recent years, these new religious groups have started to acquire and inhabit old monasteries. It follows that simultaneous re-religionization and heritagization is taking place at these locations. This combination presents a unique opportunity to scrutinize an unexplored entanglement of religion and heritage. Although re-religionization might seem to conflict with the cultural heritage narrative surrounding these monasteries, this article presents Klooster Nieuw Sion—a new Dutch religious initiative—as a case study, indicating that these developments do not only coexist or oppose each other but are also mutually reinforcing. Drawing on our fieldwork, we explore how heritagization can offer new spiritual opportunities for religious actors within these revitalized monastic spaces.

Euthanasia is often considered an individual choice, yet the process and the status passages are embedded in three dimensions-medico-legal, ritual, and personal-which are intertwined. This paper explores how individuals and their social circles manage and frame these dimensions and passages with ritual behavior. Using interviews and observations, this study explores the current ritual repertoire in the Netherlands surrounding euthanasia trajectories. Findings suggest these rituals mark status passages, reinforcing bonds and structuring the emotional and social experience of individuals and their networks. By framing euthanasia as a ritualized process, this study offers new insights into the interplay between agency, communal support, and end-of-life decision-making.

In NTT JTSR's series on Key Texts, W.E.H

Nineteenth-century, private collections of ethnographic artefacts have a bad reputa-tion in anthropology. Appearing to comprise `a haphazard assemblage of junk' (Gath-ercole 1978:276), anthropologists and others interested in ethnographic objects and col-lecting have ignored private collections for some time. While Jean Louis Henri Beijens's collection resembles at first glance a haphazard assemblage not worthy of attention, a closer inspection reveals its historical and contemporary significance. In this article, we offer a glimpse into Beijens's private military collection, which contains artefacts originating from the Dutch colonies in both the East and West, as well as from Belgian Congo. Highlighting the colonial self-fashioning that occurred while he was assembling his `haphazard' collection, we elucidate the colonial dispossession and violence that is at the heart of Beijens's and other private and public collections. In doing so, this art-icle attempts to address the enduring legacies and responsibilities of colonial collecting and collections.

We identify and analyse practices and management regimes around burial and handling of ashes across eight case study towns within six Northern European countries. We analyse management of cemeteries and crematoria gardens, majority practices and provision for minority communities, including various burial types, cremated remains, the re-use of graves, and costs for interments. Comparative data is drawn from analysis of national and local regulations, interviews with stakeholders, and observations at cemeteries and crematoria gardens. The findings show significant variation in national and local regulations and practices for burial and cremation particularly around the re-use of graves, handling of ashes and costs for grave space and cremation. We identify the opportunities and constraints of these variations in terms of accessibility, diversity and equality; and argue for national directions to avoid unequal treatment within nations. Furthermore, we stress the importance of a liberal and inclusive management of European cemeteries and crematoria gardens.

Nineteenth-century, private collections of ethnographic artefacts have a bad reputation in anthropology. Appearing to comprise ‘a haphazard assemblage of junk’ (Gathercole 1978:276), anthropologists and others interested in ethnographic objects and collecting have ignored private collections for some time. While Jean Louis Henri Beijens’s collection resembles at first glance a haphazard assemblage not worthy of attention, a closer inspection reveals its historical and contemporary significance. In this article, we offer a glimpse into Beijens’s private military collection, which contains artefacts originating from the Dutch colonies in both the East and West, as well as from Belgian Congo. Highlighting the colonial self-fashioning that occurred while he was assembling his ‘haphazard’ collection, we elucidate the colonial dispossession and violence that is at the heart of Beijens’s and other private and public collections. In doing so, this article attempts to address the enduring legacies and responsibilities of colonial collecting and collections.

The chapter analyzes the world-making and group-defining function of the vernacular funerary arts, at the example of Tongerseweg Cemetery, in Maastricht, the Netherlands, since its inception in 1812. Despite the differentiation of groups from various backgrounds by means of spatial separators, the funerary arts have also helped to transcend differences and to indicate similarities, thus helping to maintain a sense of belonging to a single civic community. The chapter signals the retreat of such abstract, overly political referends since the 1980s and attributes this to a shift in economic, political and cultural understandings that occurred in the 1970s.

This article contributes to the study of ritual in art, which is an unconventional setting for ritual studies. It concerns ritual, ritualization, and religion in the oeuvre of the up-and-coming Kazakhstani artist Anvar Musrepov. We discuss the prayer ritual, the process of ritual erasure (by covering in black), consumption rituals, and a cleansing ritual with a drone and ritualization with computer-generated imagery. Musrepov seeks to reimagine Kazakhstani national identity. His art, we argue, draws on what Alfred Gell has called the technology of enchantment.

Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community.

Central Asia’s most famous artist Said Atabekov both interrogates and imagines religiosity in post-Soviet Kazakhstan in his art. He has been doing so as a member of the Kyzyl Tractor (Red Tractor) art collective and in his own art practice. They perform as shamans and explore the nomadic steppe culture of the days of yore. Offering a nuanced and often ironic critique of present-day developments in his art, Atabekov seeks to make his audience think about meaning making or the lack thereof. He highlights the inclusiveness of vernacular religion while simultaneously drawing attention to the vacuousness of the hegemonic ideologies of the day, ranging from communism to capitalism to dogmatic religion. From his oeuvre, we discuss works that concern a dervish shaman, the nomadic game of kokpar and the advent of rigid religion, respectively.

The author appreciates Davidsen’s concern with the future of Religious Studies, but thinks that its strength lies in being an interdisciplinary field of study. The field has the potential to bring together scholars involved in the study of religion and demonstrate its relevance by generating insights into complex, relevant and pressing problems.

By the end of 1991, Tiwi people discussed an ambitious plan to establish an entirely new township. The new township has its origin in the aspirations of section of the Tiwi leadership. Until about the mid-1970s it seems anthropologists did not bother much about Aboriginal politics. In this essay the author offers such a case study of brokers cum leaders in 'traditionally oriented' group of Aborigines in northern Australia. In November 1991, the Councils of the three existing townships decided to give their housing allocation for one year to the new township Rangku. When the need for a new township had been established through the Tiwi Land Council and support of the three local councils came off, the Northern Territory (NT) Department of Lands and Housing also became involved. The NT Minister made clear that he was supportive of the new township. The most prominent leader of this area wants new township like Rangku, but a bit farther away.

Cemeteries have been viewed in opposed ways as ritual spaces that either mirror society or present an idealized model of society. In this article, we propose an analysis of cemeteries as ritual spaces, focused on the case study of municipal cemetery Tongerseweg in Maastricht, among the most important monumental cemeteries still in active use in The Netherlands today. Drawing on historical as well as interview material, spatial and ritual studies, the authors argue for a new "Arena Model" to understand cemeteries as dynamic ritual spaces. Cemeteries do not only form an ensemble of ritual spaces that are reliant on pre-existing communities, they also evoke, produce and maintain communities. Codeterminants are the physical layout and a wide range of ritual markers that variously underscore, mitigate or even contradict the communities created by the spatial layout. Important actors pertain to municipal politics and administration as well as the users, their respective allies and service providers. The article further analyses the wide range of competing values that help to shape a cycle of cocreating plural ritual spaces as well as communities.