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Imagining Religious Communities tells the story of the Gupta family through the personal and religious narratives they tell as they create and maintain their extended family and community across national borders. Based on ethnographic research, the book demonstrates the ways that transnational communities are involved in shaping their experiences through narrative performances.
List of contents
- Acknowledgements
- A Note on Transliteration and Translation
- List of Figures
- Introduction: Satya's Story: Transnational Social Networks, Narrative Performances, and Religion
- Chapter 1: On the Importance of Mandalis: Transnational Communities, Social Imaginaries, and Narrative Performance
- Chapter 2: New Opportunities, The Brain Drain, and the Guptas
- Chapter 3: Growing Up Indian, Becoming Immigrants: Interpreting Immigration Narratives
- Chapter 4: "One's own home is better than all other places": Creating Family and Home as Transmigrants
- Chapter 5: Neither Black nor White: Moving to the Atlanta of the New South
- Chapter 6: Sundarkand: Performing Community and Religion
- Conclusion: Toward a Transnational Hinduism
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
About the author
Jennifer B. Saunders is an independent scholar living in Stamford, CT. She has taught in a number of colleges and universities in the Southeast, Midwest, and Northeast. Her research interests include the transmission of Hindu devotional songs among middle class women in India and beyond specifically and religion and migration generally. She has published articles on transnational Hinduism in a variety of peer-reviewed journals including
Religion Compass and Nova Religio. She is co-founder of the American Academy of Religion's Religion and Migration Group and a co-editor of Palgrave Macmillan's Religion and Global Migration series.
Summary
Imagining Religious Communities tells the story of the Gupta family through the personal and religious narratives they tell as they create and maintain their extended family and community across national borders. Based on ethnographic research, the book demonstrates the ways that transnational communities are involved in shaping their experiences through narrative performances.
Additional text
An intimate study of religion-infused global networks, where micro-analyses give way to macro-perspectives. Working closely with a single family whose members are spread across the planet, Saunders deftly demonstrates how personal narratives create social realities that reflect and connect disparate worlds. This book brings the transnational down to earth, with real people giving it shape, one family and one story at a time.
