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Demoting Vishnu
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Download or read book Demoting Vishnu written by Anne T. Mocko and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book examines how public ritual once placed kings at the privileged apex of Nepal's government, and how in the 21st century those same rituals stopped serving the king and turned instead to authorize party-based politicians. Ritual upheaval undermined the institutional logic of monarchy, and demonstrated that kingship was contingent/dispensable"--
Book Synopsis Sacred Kingship in World History by : A. Azfar Moin
Download or read book Sacred Kingship in World History written by A. Azfar Moin and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2022-05-10 with total page 653 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sacred kingship has been the core political form, in small-scale societies and in vast empires, for much of world history. This collaborative and interdisciplinary book recasts the relationship between religion and politics by exploring this institution in long-term and global comparative perspective. Editors A. Azfar Moin and Alan Strathern present a theoretical framework for understanding sacred kingship, which leading scholars reflect on and respond to in a series of essays. They distinguish between two separate but complementary religious tendencies, immanentism and transcendentalism, which mold kings into divinized or righteous rulers, respectively. Whereas immanence demands priestly and cosmic rites from kings to sustain the flourishing of life, transcendence turns the focus to salvation and subordinates rulers to higher ethical objectives. Secular modernity does not end the struggle between immanence and transcendence—flourishing and righteousness—but only displaces it from kings onto nations and individuals. After an essay by Marshall Sahlins that ranges from the Pacific to the Arctic, the book contains chapters on religion and kingship in settings as far-flung as ancient Egypt, classical Greece, medieval Islam, Mughal India, modern European drama, and ISIS. Sacred Kingship in World History sheds new light on how religion has constructed rulership, with implications spanning global history, religious studies, political theory, and anthropology.
Download or read book Demoting Vishnu written by Anne T. Mocko and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Demoting Vishnu' examines how the same public ritual that once placed kings at the privileged apex of Nepal's government have now, in the 21st-century, stopped serving the king, turning instead to authorise party-based politicians.
Book Synopsis Ritual Innovation by : Brian K. Pennington
Download or read book Ritual Innovation written by Brian K. Pennington and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2018-02-01 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Challenges prevailing conceptions of what religious ritual does and how it achieves its ends. Religious rituals are often seen as unchanging and ahistorical bearers of long-standing traditions. But as this book demonstrates, ritual is a lively platform for social change and innovation in the religions of South Asia. Drawing from Hindu and Jain examples in India, Nepal, and North America, the essays in this volume, written by renowned scholars of religion, explore how the intentional, conscious, and public invention or alteration of ritual can effect dramatic social transformation, whether in dethroning a Nepali king or sanctioning same-sex marriage. Ritual Innovation shows how the very idea of ritual as a conservative force misreads the history of religion by overlooking ritual’s inherent creative potential and its adaptability to new contexts and circumstances. Brian K. Pennington is Professor of Religious Studies at Elon University and the author of Was Hinduism Invented? Britons, Indians, and the Colonial Construction of Religion. Amy L. Allocco is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Elon University.
Book Synopsis What is Hinduism? by : Michael Baltutis
Download or read book What is Hinduism? written by Michael Baltutis and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-05-14 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an engaging introduction to the complex religious tradition of Hinduism. Central to its focus is demonstrating the fundamental diversity within Hinduism through the multiplicity of its core beliefs and traditions. Chapters are divided into four historical categories – Vedic, Ascetic, Classical, and Contemporary Hinduism – with each examining one deity alongside one key term, serving as a twin focal point for a more complex discussion of related key texts, ideas, social structures, religious practices, festivals, and concepts such as ritual and sacrifice, music and devotion, and engagement and renunciation. The organization of this book requires that we see deities as not simply divine individuals who preside over one part of the Hindu world, but that each deity operates as a larger cultural category whose related persons, concepts, and practices provide a vivid lens through which Hindu devotees see and continue to readapt to the world in which they live. With study questions, glossaries, and lists of key contemporary figures, this book is an essential and comprehensive resource for students encountering the multiplicity of Hinduism for the first time.
Book Synopsis Toleration in Comparative Perspective by : Vicki A. Spencer
Download or read book Toleration in Comparative Perspective written by Vicki A. Spencer and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2017-10-24 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays explores conceptions of toleration and tolerance in Asia and the West. It tests the assumption in contemporary Western political discourse and theory that toleration is a uniquely Western virtue and finds that many other traditions have comparable ideas and practices in grappling with religious and cultural diversity.
Book Synopsis Transnational Histories of the 'Royal Nation' by : Milinda Banerjee
Download or read book Transnational Histories of the 'Royal Nation' written by Milinda Banerjee and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-04-27 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book challenges existing accounts of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in which political developments are explained in terms of the rise of the nation-state. While monarchies are often portrayed as old-fashioned – as things of the past – we argue that modern monarchies have been at the centre of nation-construction in many parts of the world. Today, roughly a quarter of states define themselves as monarchies as well as nation-states – they are Royal Nations. This is a global phenomenon. This volume interrogates the relationship between royals and ‘their’ nations with transnational case studies from Asia, Africa, Europe as well as South America. The seventeen contributors discuss concepts and structures, visual and performative representations, and memory cultures of modern monarchies in relation to rising nationalist movements. This book thereby analyses the worldwide significance of the Royal Nation.
Book Synopsis A Social Theory of Corruption by : Sudhir Chella Rajan
Download or read book A Social Theory of Corruption written by Sudhir Chella Rajan and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-12-01 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A social theory of grand corruption from antiquity to the twenty-first century. In contemporary policy discourse, the notion of corruption is highly constricted, understood just as the pursuit of private gain while fulfilling a public duty. Its paradigmatic manifestations are bribery and extortion, placing the onus on individuals, typically bureaucrats. Sudhir Chella Rajan argues that this understanding ignores the true depths of corruption, which is properly seen as a foundation of social structures. Not just bribes but also caste, gender relations, and the reproduction of class are forms of corruption. Using South Asia as a case study, Rajan argues that syndromes of corruption can be identified by paying attention to social orders and the elites they support. From the breakup of the Harappan civilization in the second millennium BCE to the anticolonial movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, elites and their descendants made off with substantial material and symbolic gains for hundreds of years before their schemes unraveled. Rajan makes clear that this grander form of corruption is not limited to India or the annals of global history. Societal corruption is endemic, as tax cheats and complicit bankers squirrel away public money in offshore accounts, corporate titans buy political influence, and the rich ensure that their children live lavishly no matter how little they contribute. These elites use their privileged access to power to fix the rules of the game—legal structures and social norms—benefiting themselves, even while most ordinary people remain faithful to the rubrics of everyday life.
Book Synopsis Political Handbook of the World 2022-2023 by : Tom Lansford
Download or read book Political Handbook of the World 2022-2023 written by Tom Lansford and published by CQ Press. This book was released on 2023-06-09 with total page 3505 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Political Handbook of the World 2022-2023 provides timely, thorough, and accurate political information, with more in-depth coverage of current political controversies than any other reference guide. The updated 2022-2023 edition continues to be the most authoritative source for finding complete facts and analysis on each country′s governmental and political makeup. Tom Lansford has compiled in one place more than 200 entries on countries and territories throughout the world, this volume is renowned for its extensive coverage of all major and minor political parties and groups in each political system. It also provides names of key ambassadors and international memberships of each country, plus detailed profiles of more than 30 intergovernmental organizations and UN agencies. And this update will aim to include coverage of current events, issues, crises, and controversies from the course of the last two years.
Book Synopsis Religion, Secularism, and Ethnicity in Contemporary Nepal by : David N. Gellner
Download or read book Religion, Secularism, and Ethnicity in Contemporary Nepal written by David N. Gellner and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-01-01 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The socio-political landscape of Nepal has been rocked by dramatic and far-reaching changes in the past thirty years. Following a ten-year Maoist revolution and civil war, the country has transitioned from a monarchy to a republic. The former Hindu kingdom has declared its commitment to secularism, without coming to any agreement on what secularism means or should mean in the Nepalese context. What happens to religion under conditions of such rapid social and political change? How do the changes in public festivals reflect and/or create new group identities? Is the gap between the urban and the rural narrowing? How is the state dealing with Nepal’s multicultural and multi-religious society? How are Nepalis understanding, resisting, and adapting ideas of secularism? In order to answer these important questions, this volume brings together eleven case studies by an international team of anthropologists and ethno-Indologists of Nepal on such diverse topics as secularism, individualism, shamanism, animal sacrifice, the role of state functionaries in festivals, clashes and synergies between Maoism and Buddhism, and conversion to Christianity. In an Afterword, renowned political theorist Rajeev Bhargava presents a comparative analysis of Nepal’s experiences and asks whether the country is finding its own solution to the conundrum of secularism.
Book Synopsis The Oxford History of Hinduism: Modern Hinduism by : Torkel Brekke
Download or read book The Oxford History of Hinduism: Modern Hinduism written by Torkel Brekke and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-06-27 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford History of Hinduism: Modern Hinduism focuses on developments resulting from movements within the tradition as well as contact between India and the outside world through both colonialism and globalization. Divided into three parts, part one considers the historical background to modern conceptualizations of Hinduism. Moving away from the reforms of the 19th and early 20th century, part two includes five chapters each presenting key developments and changes in religious practice in modern Hinduism. Part three moves to issues of politics, ethics, and law. This section maps and explains the powerful legal and political contexts created by the modern state—first the colonial government and then the Indian Republic—which have shaped Hinduism in new ways. The last two chapters look at Hinduism outside India focusing on Hinduism in Nepal and the modern Hindu diaspora.
Book Synopsis Architecture of Sovereignty by : Gita V. Pai
Download or read book Architecture of Sovereignty written by Gita V. Pai and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-11-30 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this innovative study, Gita V. Pai traces the history of the Pudu Mandapam (Tamil, 'new hall') – a Hindu temple structure in Madurai – through the rise and fall of empires in south India from the seventeenth century to the present. This wide-ranging work illustrates how south Indian temples became entangled in broader conflicts over sovereignty, from early modern Nayaka kings, to British colonial rule, to the post-independence government today. Drawing from methodologies in anthropology, religious studies, and art and architectural history, the author argues that the small temple site provides profound insight into the relationship between aesthetics, sovereignty, and religion in modern South Asia.
Book Synopsis Introducing Anthropology of Religion by : Jack David Eller
Download or read book Introducing Anthropology of Religion written by Jack David Eller and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-12-27 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This clear and engaging guide introduces students to key areas of the field and shows how to apply an anthropological approach to the study of religion in the contemporary world. Written by an experienced teacher, it covers major traditional topics including definitions, theories, and beliefs, as well as symbols, myth, and ritual. The book also explores important but often overlooked issues such as morality, violence, fundamentalism, secularization, and new religious movements. The chapters all contain lively case studies of religions practiced around the world. The third edition of Introducing Anthropology of Religion is fully updated and contains additional content on material religion, visual religion, and affect theory, and a new chapter takes a closer look at medical and health topics. The author encourages the reader to engage throughout with the unifying themes of race, gender, and power, and how these themes are intertwined with anthropology of religion. Images, a glossary, and questions for discussion are included and additional resources are provided via a companion website.
Book Synopsis War, Maoism and Everyday Revolution in Nepal by : Ina Zharkevich
Download or read book War, Maoism and Everyday Revolution in Nepal written by Ina Zharkevich and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-30 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By providing a rich ethnography of wartime social processes in the former Maoist heartland of Nepal, this book explores how the Maoist People's War (1996–2006) transformed Nepali society. Drawing on long-term fieldwork with people who were located at the epicentre of the conflict, including both ardent Maoist supporters and 'reluctant rebels', it explores how a remote Himalayan village was forged as the centre of the Maoist rebellion, how its inhabitants coped with the situation of war and the Maoist regime of governance, and how they came to embrace the Maoist project and maintain ordinary life amidst the war while living in a guerilla enclave. By focusing on people's everyday lives, the book illuminates how the everyday became a primary site of revolution of crafting new subjectivities, introducing 'new' social practices and displacing the 'old' ones, and reconfiguring the ways that people act in and think about the world through the process of 'embodied change'.
Book Synopsis Nine Nights of the Goddess by : Caleb Simmons
Download or read book Nine Nights of the Goddess written by Caleb Simmons and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2018-07-11 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Nepal written by Axel Michaels and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-03 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive history of Nepal spans pre-historic times and the Licchavi Period to more recent developments, such as the Maoist insurgency and the rise of the republic. In addition to religious history and histories of selected regions (Mustang, Sherpa, Tarai, and others), it covers the nation's relations with its powerful neighbors and its cultural aspects, especially its rich history of arts, architecture, and crafts.
Book Synopsis The Festival of Indra by : Michael Baltutis
Download or read book The Festival of Indra written by Michael Baltutis and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2023-06-01 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Festival of Indra details the textual and performative history of an important South Asian festival and its role in the development of classical Hinduism. Drawing on various genres of Sanskrit textual sources—especially the epic Mahābhārata—the book highlights the innovative ways that this annual public festival has supported the stable royal power responsible for the sponsorship of these texts. More than just a textual project, however, the book devotes significant ethnographic attention to the only contemporary performance of this festival that adheres to the classical Sanskrit record: the Indrajatra of Kathmandu, Nepal. Here, Indra's tall pole remains the festival's focal point, though its addition of the royal blessing by Kumari, the "living goddess" of Nepal, and the regular presence of the fierce god Bhairav show several significant ways that ritual agents have re-constructed this festival over the past two thousand years.
