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This book focuses on the ritualized forms of mobility that constitute phenomena of pilgrimage in South Asia and establishes a new analytical framework for the study of ritual journeys.
The book advances the conceptual scope of 'classical' Pilgrimage Studies and provides empirical depth through individual case studies. A key concern is the strategies of ritualization through which actors create, assemble and (re-)articulate certain modes of displacement to differentiate themselves from everyday forms of locomotion. Ritual journeys are understood as being both productive of and produced by South Asia's socio-economically uneven, politically charged and culturally variegated landscapes. From various disciplinary angles, each chapter explores how spaces and movements in space are continually created, contested and transformed through ritual journeys. By focusing on this co-production of space and mobility, the book delivers a conceptually driven and empirically grounded engagement with the diverse and changing traditions of ritual journeying in South Asia.
Interdisciplinary in its approach, the book is a must-have reference work for academics interested in South Asian Studies, Religious Studies, Anthropology and Human Geography with a focus on pilgrimage and the socio-spatial ideas and practices of ritualized movements in South Asia.
List of contents
Foreword; Acknowledgements; 1. Introduction. Constellations and Contestations of Mobility and Space in South Asian Ritual Journeys; 2. In Fear of the Past: The Pilgrimage to Badrinath in Perspective; 3. Journeying Sovereignties: Ritual Travelling and Networks of Power in a West Himalayan Kingdom; 4. Wandering God. How young Himalayans Negotiate Religion, Caste Identity and Modernity; 5. Places, Rituals and Past Worlds: Encounters on a Tibetan Pilgrimage in North India; 6. Ritual Displacement as Process of Constructing and De-constructing Boundaries in a Sufi Pilgrimage of Pakistan; 7. "To Worship Our ‘Boss’ (the Buddha):" Youth Religiosity in a Popular Pilgrimage Site in Sri Lanka; 8. Vailankanni Mata and Anglo-Indian Catholics: Rising Postcolonial Devotion and Her Unlikely Pilgrim Devotees; 9. Muslim-Marathi Pilgrimage: The Sufi-shrine of Viśālgaḍh; 10. Approaches to Pilgrimage: Reading Some Post-Independence Pilgrimage Accounts in Modern South Asian Languages; 11. Afterword: On Pilgramage and Plural Paradigms
About the author
Christoph Bergmann is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography, South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg, Germany.
Jürgen Schaflechner is an assistant professor in the Department of Modern South Asian Languages and Literatures, South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg, Germany.
Summary
This book focuses on the ritualized forms of mobility that constitute phenomena of pilgrimage in South Asia and establishes a new analytical framework for the study of ritual journeys.
