Culture Religion and Home-making in and Beyond South Asia

by James Ponniah

Overview

Culture, Religion, and Home-making in and Beyond South Asia explores how the idea of the home is repurposed or re-envisioned in relation to experiences of modernity, urbanization, conflict, migration and displacement. It considers how these processes are reflected in rituals, beliefs and social practices. It explores the processes by which "home" may be constructed and how relocations often result in either the replication or rejection of traditional homes and identities. Ponniah examines the various contestations surrounding the categories of "home" and "religion," including interfaith families, urban spaces, and sacred places.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781506439938
Publisher:	Augsburg Fortress, Publishers
Publication date:	09/01/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	200
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

James Ponniah is an assistant professor in the department of Christian studies at the University of Madras. He is the author of The Dynamics of Folk Religion in Society: Pericentralisation as Deconstruction of Sanskritisation (2011) and editor of Committed to the Church and the Country (2013) and Identity, Difference and Conflict: Postcolonial Critique (2013). His areas of research include popular Catholicism&Dalit Christianity.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Contributors ix

Foreword Brian K. Pennington Amy L. Allocco xiii

Introduction: Homes and Spaces under Transformation James Ponniah Amitha Santiago 1

Part I Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Migrants, and Home-Making

1 The Memsahib and Her Home in the Indian Colony: A Shadow of the Political Realm in the Domestic Sphere? Rituparna Ray Chowdhury 11

2 Home and Sacred Place in the Letters of Gertrude Sovik: A Norwegian-American in China L. DeAne Lagerquist 33

3 Old Identities in a New Space: The Role of Hindu Priests in Making Diasporic Communities Feel at Home in Mumbai Usha R. Vijailakshmi 49

4 The Ramakrishna Movement in Japan as Seen through the Activities of the Nippon Vedanta Society Midori Horiuchi 67

5 Reconfiguring Home: Cuisink Negotiations of Religion, Culture, and Identity in Marsha Mehran's Pomegranate Soup Lisa John Mundackal 85

Part II Traditions, Female Agency, and Domestic Space

6 Searching for the Quintessential Home: Home-Making and Trans-Identity S. Susan Deborah 97

7 Pushing Boundaries: Negotiations of Power in the Domestic Space Kochurani Abraham 115

8 Women Make it Work: The Story of Inter-Religious Marriages in Urban India James Ponniah 133

9 Women and the "Bratas": The Practice of Vows among Rural Women in Bengal Trayee Sinha 161

Part III Religion, Literature, and Home-Making

10 Bayit Ze Isha: Housing the Body of the Woman through Spatializing Metaphors Amitha Santiago 173

11 Contextualizing Place in Sri Lanka through Popular Literature Dilini Wijeweera Surangi Gunawardena Dimantha Weliange 185

12 Terra Firma and Transcendent Space: A Hagiographic Study of "Arunachala" in Sri Ramana Maharishi's Life and Works Bharathi Harishankar 215

Editorial Reviews

"A book so rich in theory and methodology, illuminated by case studies, will appeal to a broad readership far beyond South Asia, just as the title claims." —Richard Fox Young, Timby Associate Professor of History of Religions, Princeton Theological Seminary

"This book explores concepts of home across three genders, multiple religions, and many specific places, from Sri Lanka to China and Japan, from Mumbai to Arunachal Pradesh. A conceptual and expansive tour de force, this book examines the aftermath of colonialism and war, and strategies for negotiating domesticity in light of food, interfaith marriage, and religious identity." —Christopher Key Chapple, Doshi Professor of Indic and Comparative Theology, Loyola Marymount University

"The essays in this wide-ranging, evocative book explore processes of homemaking across a plethora of contexts. Collectively, these fascinating chapters reveal the many ways people come to manufacture a sense of home across religious, cultural, historical, and geographical register." —Tracy Pintchman, Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the International Studies Program, Loyola University of Chicago

"The book is a welcome collection of empirical studies on religion and space and in particular on the role of the idea of 'home' in South Asia, in diasporas, in the experience of women, and in literary texts. The book illustrates that sacredness of space and home is constructed by human agency as part of social and cultural processes and is ever changing." —Knut A. Jacobsen, Professor of Religion, University of Bergen, Norway

From the Publisher