Religion and Societies

Religion and Societies

Author: Carlo Caldarola

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2011-06-01

Total Pages: 697

ISBN-13: 3110823535

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The series Religion and Society (RS) contributes to the exploration of religions as social systems – both in Western and non-Western societies; in particular, it examines religions in their differentiation from, and intersection with, other cultural systems, such as art, economy, law and politics. Due attention is given to paradigmatic case or comparative studies that exhibit a clear theoretical orientation with the empirical and historical data of religion and such aspects of religion as ritual, the religious imagination, constructions of tradition, iconography, or media. In addition, the formation of religious communities, their construction of identity, and their relation to society and the wider public are key issues of this series.


Media and the Transformation of Religion in South Asia

Media and the Transformation of Religion in South Asia

Author: Lawrence A. Babb

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2016-11-11

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 151280018X

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This volume explores the effects of the religious transformation taking place in India as sacred symbols assume the shapes of media images. Lifted from their traditional forms and contexts, many religious symbols, beliefs, and practices are increasingly refracted through such media as god posters, comic books, audio recordings, and video programs. The ten original essays here examine the impact on India's traditional social and cultural structures of printed images, audio recordings, film, and video. Contributors: Lawrence A. Babb, Steve Derné, John Stratton Hawley, Stephen R. Inglis, John T. Little, Philip Lutgendorf, Scott L. Marcus, Frances W. Pritchett, Regula Burckhardt Qureshi, H. Daniel Smith, and Susan S. Wadley.


Popular Literature and Pre-Modern Societies In South Asia:

Popular Literature and Pre-Modern Societies In South Asia:

Author: Surinder Singh

Publisher: Pearson Education India

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 377

ISBN-13: 9332509816

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Conventional historiography in South Asia relies on official documentation treating the elite as central players in the story of human past. The role of marginalized groups in the making of South Asian history is relegated to the background. Popular Literature and Pre-Modern Societies in South Asia charts a continuous historiographical tension between the archive-centric constructions and marginalized voices of the non-elite. Vernacular literature, fables, folklore, myths, and legends drawn from the rich cultural and linguistic diversity of South Asia are brought together to reconstruct an alternative craft of history writing. Spanning large swaths of pre-modern history and exploring material from diverse regions of the subcontinent, this volume speaks of people, individuals, cultures, and traditions sidelined in modern history. The subjects of this volume retrieve the non-maintstream descriptions/memories of peoples’ past, mapping the contest between the hegemonic and counter-hegemonic forces persisting actively in the domains of state, society, patriarchy, religion, and culture.


Non-Shia Practices of Muḥarram in South Asia and the Diaspora

Non-Shia Practices of Muḥarram in South Asia and the Diaspora

Author: Pushkar Sohoni

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-09-26

Total Pages: 138

ISBN-13: 1000456978

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This book analyses engagements with non-Shia practices of Muḥarram celebrations in the past and present, in South Asia and within a larger diaspora. Breaking new ground by bringing together a variety of regional perspectives (the Deccan, the Punjab, Singapore, South Africa, and Trinidad and Tobago) and linguistic backgrounds (Bhojpuri, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil, Urdu), the chapters discuss the importance of Muḥarram celebrations in terms of their respective actors. While in some cases these include an interrelationship with Shia Muslims and their traditions of mourning during Muḥarram, other contributions address contexts in which Shias, and even Muslims, form only a minor component of the celebrations, or even none at all. Focusing on Muḥarram celebrations that are beyond the script provided by Shia Muḥarram practices, this book opens up new perspectives on Muḥarram as a social practice widely shared by South Asians across regions. The book will be a key resource to scholars and students of South Asian studies, Asian religion, in particular rituals and religious practices, and Islamic studies but also engaging to non-academic readers interested in the practices of several regions.


Studies in Religion and the Everyday

Studies in Religion and the Everyday

Author:

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2024-03-28

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 0198902794

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Studies in Religion and the Everyday is a collection of essays addressing the contours of religious beliefs and practices in the context of everyday life in India. Events and processes in contemporary India—especially post the 1990s—have contributed to distinct modes of articulating religious practices. This volume is an attempt to historicize—and problematize—the categorization of religion as a universally held and analytically distinct feature of human life and seeks to understand the conditions—historical, political, discursive—and processes of authorization under which a particular set of practices, values, and dispositions constitutes the 'religious' at a specific point in time. By bringing together studies that draw from diverse methodological and epistemological approaches, the book will serve as a useful introduction to religion in India for the general reader and as an indispensable resource for students and researchers. The volume presents fresh perspectives on existing fields of study such as the city, capital, minorities, secularization, and the state—no longer seen as distinct from religion but actively co-produced with religion in the context of the theoretical rubric of the everyday—thereby marking a departure from approaching the question of religion solely through the lens of identity and conflict.


South Asia from the margins

South Asia from the margins

Author: Biswamoy Pati

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2018-02-28

Total Pages: 191

ISBN-13: 1526130572

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This book aims to sketch the diversities of South Asian social History, focusing on Orissa. It highlights the problems of colonialism and its impact upon the lives of the colonised, even as it details the manner in which the internal order of exploitation worked. Based on archival and rare, hitherto untapped sources, including oral evidence, it brings to life diverse aspects of Orissa’s social history, including the environment; health and medicine; conversion (in Hinduism); popular movements; social history of some princely states; and the intricate connections between the marginal social groups and Indian nationalism. It also focuses on decolonisation, and explores the face of patriarchy and gender-related violence in post-colonial Orissa. This volume will be of interest to students of history, social anthropology, political sociology and cultural studies, as well as those associated with non-governmental organisations and planners of public policy.


Patronage as Politics in South Asia

Patronage as Politics in South Asia

Author: Anastasia Piliavsky

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2014-10-16

Total Pages: 488

ISBN-13: 1316156672

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Western policymakers, political activists and academics alike see patronage as the chief enemy of open, democratic societies. Patronage, for them, is a corrupting force, a hallmark of failed and failing states, and the obverse of everything that good, modern governance ought to be. South Asia poses a frontal challenge for this consensus. Here the world's most populous, pluralist and animated democracy is also a hotbed of corruption with persistently startling levels of inequality. Patronage as Politics in South Asia confronts this paradox with calm erudition: sixteen essays by anthropologists, historians and political scientists show, from a wide range of cultural and historical angles, that in South Asia patronage is no feudal residue or retrograde political pressure, but a political form vital in its own right. This volume suggests that patronage is no foe to South Asia's burgeoning democratic cultures, but may in fact be their main driving force.


South Asia in Transition

South Asia in Transition

Author: Robert Parkin

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2020-05-19

Total Pages: 323

ISBN-13: 1793611793

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South Asia in Transition is an introductory book on the anthropology of South Asia, including India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh, suitable for students at all levels and others interested in this topic. It assumes no prior knowledge of either the region or the discipline of anthropology. The book makes extensive use of existing publications to describe how anthropologists have approached the region and what they have said about it. The first group of chapters deals mostly with India and caste, class, tribes, religion, kinship and marriage, gender, the body and personhood, politics and political economy. A second group of chapters deals successively with Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Nepal.


Princely India Re-imagined

Princely India Re-imagined

Author: Aya Ikegame

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-05-07

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 113623909X

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India’s Princely States covered nearly 40 per cent of the Indian subcontinent at the time of Indian independence, and they collapsed after the departure of the British. This book provides a chronological analysis of the Princely State in colonial times and its post-colonial legacies. Focusing on one of the largest and most important of these states, the Princely State of Mysore, it offers a novel interpretation and thorough investigation of the relationship of king and subject in South Asia. The book argues that the denial of political and economic power to the king, especially after 1831 when direct British control was imposed over the state administration in Mysore, was paralleled by a counter-balancing multiplication of kingly ritual, rites, and social duties. The book looks at how, at the very time when kingly authority was lacking income and powers of patronage, its local sources of power and social roots were being reinforced and rebuilt in a variety of ways. Using a combination of historical and anthropological methodologies, and based upon substantial archival and field research, the book argues that the idea of kingship lived on in South India and continues to play a vital and important role in contemporary South Indian social and political life. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.