Material Acts in Everyday Hindu Worlds

Broadens the parameters of religious studies by accounting for material acts that help shape religious worlds.
In Material Acts in Everyday Hindu Worlds, Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger analyzes the agency of materiality-the ability of materials to have an effect on both humans and deities-beyond human intentions. Using materials from three regions where Flueckiger conducted extensive fieldwork, she begins with Indian understandings of the agency of ornaments that have the desired effects of protecting women and making them more auspicious. Subsequent chapters bring in examples of materiality that are agentive beyond human intentions, from a south Indian goddess tradition where female guising transforms the aggressive masculinity of men who wear saris, braids, and breasts to the presence of cement images of Ravana in Chhattisgarh, which perform alternative theologies and ideologies to those of dominant textual traditions of the Ramayana epic. Deeply ethnographic and accessibly written, Material Acts in Everyday Hindu Worlds expands our understanding of material agency as well as the parameters of religion more broadly.
This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships Open Book Program-a limited competition designed to make outstanding humanities books available to a wide audience. Learn more at the Fellowships Open Book Program at https://www.neh.gov/grants/odh/FOBP.

About the author

Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger is Professor of Religion at Emory University. She is the author of several books, including Everyday Hinduism; When the World Becomes Female: Guises of a South Indian Goddess; and In Amma's Healing Room: Gender and Vernacular Islam in South India.

Product details

• Authors: Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger, Flueckiger Joyce Burkhalter
• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 31.07.2021
• EAN: 9781438480121
• ISBN: 978-1-4384-8012-1
• No. of pages: 206
• Series: SUNY series in Hindu Studies; Suny Hindu Studies; SUNY Press Open Access
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Religion/theology > Other religions; Non-fiction book > Philosophy, religion > Religion: general, reference works; Social sciences, law, business > Sociology > Sociological theories; SOCIAL SCIENCE / Folklore & Mythology, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology of Religion, comparative religion, RELIGION / Comparative Religion, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social, Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography, RELIGION / Hinduism / Rituals & Practice, Folklore, myths & legends, Social and cultural anthropology, Hindu Life & Practice, Hindu life and practice, Folklore studies / Study of myth (mythology)