Sacred Matters

Material Religion in South Asian Traditions

244 Seiten, Hardcover

Kurzbeschreibung des Verlags

Explores how objects shape the worlds of religious participants across a range of South Asian traditions.Sacred Matters explores the lives of material objects in South Asian religions. Spanning a range of traditions including Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Buddhism, and Christianity, the book demonstrates how sacred items influence and enliven the worlds of religious participants across South Asia and into the diaspora. Contributors examine a variety of objects to describe the ways sacred materials derive and confer meaning and efficacy, emerging from and giving shape to religious and nonreligious realms alike. Material forms of deity and divine power are considered along with commonplace ritual items, including images, clay pots, and camphor. The work also attends to materiality's complex role within the "materially suspicious" contexts of Islam, Theravada Buddhism, and Roman Catholicism. This engaging collection presents new frameworks for contemplating the ways in which historical, social, and sacred processes intertwine and collectively shape human and divine activity.

• Themen: Gesellschaft und Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie und Anthropologie Anthropologie Sozial- und Kulturanthropologie, Ethnographie
• ISBN: 9781438459431
• Sprache: Englisch
• Erscheinungsdatum: 01.12.2015
• Größe: 234 x 155 mm
• Verlag: State University of New York Press
• Herausgegeben von: Corinne G Dempsey, Tracy Pintchman