Materiality, Practice, and Performance at Sacred Sites in India and Pakistan (Bloomsbury Studies in Material Religion)

by NavtejK.Purewal (Author), VirinderS.Kalra (Author)

• New

  Hardcover
  2019

  $173.95

  Drawing on insights from theoretical engagements with materiality and subalternity, Materiality, Practice and Performance at Sacred Sites in India and Pakistan opens new frames for understanding religion in South Asia. The book takes seriously the realm of material expression in popular religion as a very real and important indication of wider developments in political, social and religious identity and practice. As a result, the authors challenge the definition of religion more broadly. By exploring selected sites of piety including shrines and their associated ephemeral paraphernalia such as amulets, posters, and clay objects, the authors argue that popular religion of Punjab should neither be limited to a polarized picture between formal, institutional religion nor the `enchanted universe' of rituals, saints, shrines and village deities. Instead, the book presents a picture of `religion' as a realm of movement, mobilization, and multiplicity. Through extensive ethnographic research, the authors explore the reality of the complex, fluid and dynamic relations that characterize the everyday material and religious lives on the ground. Ultimately, popular religion challenges the borders and boundaries of religious and communal categories, nationalism, and theological frameworks.