Download or read book Belief Bounty and Beauty written by Albertina Nugteren and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-08-14 with total page 519 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study is focused on the interaction of material and symbolic values in the domain of sacred trees in India. By presenting samples from 3,000 years of Indian ritual practice, it is shown that in many sacred geographies trees continue to connect the present with the past, the material with the symbolic, and the contemporary ecological with the traditionally sacred. Although in India religion may have become very much a temple cult, its embeddedness in the natural world enhances today's 'green' interpretation of religious traditions. That in environmental matters such religious inspiration may be both successful and highly ambivalent at the same time is the thought-provoking position taken in the final chapters.
Download or read book Religion and Sustainable Development written by Cathrien de Pater and published by LIT Verlag Münster. This book was released on 2009 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This publication is focused on the interface between religion, sustainable development and higher education. It is based on the underlying research question : How are the different worldviews and religions as well as the debate about their alleged contributions to sustainable development incorporated in the academic disciplines of religious studies and theology?"--P. [7]
Download or read book People Trees written by David L. Haberman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-25 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a book about religious conceptions of trees within the cultural world of tree worship at the tree shrines of northern India. Sacred trees have been worshipped for millennia in India and today tree worship continues there among all segments of society. In the past, tree worship was regarded by many Western anthropologists and scholars of religion as a prime example of childish animism or decadent ''popular religion.'' More recently this aspect of world religious cultures is almost completely ignored in the theoretical concerns of the day. David Haberman hopes to demonstrate that by seriously investigating the world of Indian tree worship, we can learn much about not only this prominent feature of the landscape of South Asian religion, but also something about the cultural construction of nature as well as religion overall. The title People Trees relates to the content of this book in at least six ways. First, although other sacred trees are examined, the pipal-arguably the most sacred tree in India-receives the greatest attention in this study. The Hindi word ''pipal'' is pronounced similarly to the English word ''people.''Second, the ''personhood'' of trees is a commonly accepted notion in India. Haberman was often told: ''This tree is a person just like you and me.'' Third, this is not a study of isolated trees in some remote wilderness area, but rather a study of trees in densely populated urban environments. This is a study of trees who live with people and people who live with trees. Fourth, the trees examined in this book have been planted and nurtured by people for many centuries. They seem to have benefited from human cultivation and flourished in environments managed by humans. Fifth, the book involves an examination of the human experience of trees, of the relationship between people and trees. Haberman is interested in people's sense of trees. And finally, the trees located in the neighborhood tree shrines of northern India are not controlled by a professional or elite class of priests. Common people have direct access to them and are free to worship them in their own way. They are part of the people's religion. Haberman hopes that this book will help readers expand their sense of the possible relationships that exist between humans and trees. By broadening our understanding of this relationship, he says, we may begin to think differently of the value of trees and the impact of deforestation and other human threats to trees.
Download or read book Objects of Worship in South Asian Religions written by Knut A. Jacobsen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-08-27 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Objects of worship are an aspect of the material dimension of lived religion in South Asia. The omnipresence of these objects and their use is a theme which cuts across the religious traditions in the pluralistic religious culture of the region. Divine power becomes manifest in the objects and for the devotees they may represent power regardless of religious identity. This book looks at how objects of worship dominate the religious landscape of South Asia, and in what ways they are of significance not just from religious perspectives but also for the social life of the region. The contributions to the book show how these objects are shaped by traditions of religious aesthetics and have become conceptual devices woven into webs of religious and social meaning. They demonstrate how the objects have a social relationship with those who use them, sometimes even treated as being alive. The book discusses how devotees relate to such objects in a number of ways, and even if the objects belong to various traditions they may attract people from different communities and can also be contested in various ways. By analysing the specific qualities that make objects eligible for a status and identity as living objects of worship, the book contributes to an understanding of the central significance of these objects in the religious and social life of South Asia. It will be of interest to students and scholars of Religious Studies and South Asian Religion, Culture and Society.
Download or read book Delights and Disquiets of Leisure in Premodern India written by and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-12-30 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leisure is a corollary to pleasure. Essays in this historical exploration trace how leisure and recreation were often imagined and celebrated during premodern times, from the ancient to the precolonial period. This book takes into account the differential access to leisure and pleasure based on class and gender where masculinity is projected through manly sports and femininity though beauty and indulgence in the projection of recreation, entertainment and luxury. The counter-discourse representing labour for those who cater for this leisure is invisibilized as is their transactional nature. The volume dwells on the attitudes, prescribed and proscribed, and brings to the fore the differences across religious ideologies such as Brahmanism, Buddhism, Jaina and Muslim in various periods. Further it looks at leisure in the various classes and cultural spaces such as the elite, women, the king in the bed chamber, the court with dancing girls, public areas such as orchards and gardens and performance spaces.
Download or read book Post Disaster Reconstruction and Change written by Jennifer E. Duyne Barenstein and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2012-10-29 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Successful recovery following a disaster depends upon transcending the disciplinary divides of architecture, engineering, and planning and emphasizing the importance of community perspectives in the post-disaster reconstruction process. Effective results in community recovery mandate that we holistically examine the complex interrelationship betwee
Download or read book Feeding a Thousand Souls written by Vijaya Nagarajan and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every day millions of Tamil women in southeast India wake up before dawn to create a kolam, an ephemeral ritual design made with rice flour, on the thresholds of homes, businesses and temples. This thousand-year-old ritual welcomes and honors Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth and alertness, and Bhudevi, the goddess of the earth. Created by hand with great skill, artistry, and mathematical precision, the kolam disappears in a few hours, borne away by passing footsteps and hungry insects. This is the first comprehensive study of the kolam in the English language. It examines its significance in historical, mathematical, ecological, anthropological, and literary contexts. The culmination of Vijaya Nagarajan's many years of research and writing on this exacting ritual practice, Feeding a Thousand Souls celebrates the experiences, thoughts, and voices of the Tamil women who keep this tradition alive.
Download or read book Consolationscapes in the Face of Loss written by Christoph Jedan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-10-09 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human beings are grieving animals. ‘Consolation’, or an attempt to assuage grief, is an age-old response to loss which has various expressions in different cultural contexts. Over the past century, consolation has dropped off the West’s cultural radar. The contributions to this volume highlight this neglect of consolation in popular and academic discourses and explore the usefulness of the concept of consolation for analysing spatio-temporal constellations. Consolationscapes in the Face of Loss brings together scholars from geography, philosophy, history, anthropology and religious studies. The chapters use spatial and conceptual mappings of grief and consolation to analyse a range of spaces and phenomena around grief, bereavement and remembrance, comfort and resilience, including battlefield memorials, crematoria, graveyards and natural burial sites in Europe. Authors shift the discussion beyond the Global North by including responses to traumatic grief in post-conflict African societies, as well as Australian Aboriginal traditions of ritual consolation. The book focuses on the relationship between space/place and consolation. In so doing, it offers a new lens for research on death, grief and bereavement. It offers new insights for students and researchers interrogating contemporary bereavement, as well as those interested in meaning-making, emerging socio-cultural practices and their role in personal and collective resilience.
Download or read book How Nature Matters written by Simon P. James and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-07-28 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: HOW NATURE MATTERS presents an original theory of nature's value based on part—whole relations. James argues that when natural things have cultural value, they do not always have it as means to valuable ends. In many cases, they have value as parts of valuable wholes — as parts of traditions, for instance, or cultural identities. James develops his theory by investigating twelve real-world cases, ranging from the veneration of sacred trees to the hunting of dugongs. He also analyses some key policy-related debates and explores various fundamental issues in environmental philosophy, including the question of whether anything on earth qualifies as natural. This accessible, engagingly written book will be essential reading for all those who wish to understand the moral and metaphysical dimensions of environmental issues.
Download or read book Eco Art History in East and Southeast Asia written by De-nin D. Lee and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2019-01-29 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in this anthology examine artwork and sites in East and Southeast Asia through the lens of eco–art history. In these regions, significant anthropogenic changes to terrain, watercourses, and ecosystems date back millennia, as do artwork and artefacts that both conceptualize and modify the natural world. The rising interest in earth-conscious modes of analysis, or “eco–art history,” informs this anthology, which explores the mutual impact of artistic expressions and local environments in East and Southeast Asia. Moreover, conceptual tools and case studies focused on these regions impart important insights bearing on the development of eco–art history. The book includes case studies examining the impact of the Little Ice Age on court painting and systems of representing marine life in the Joseon period in Korea. Other contributors consider contemporary artistic strategies, such as developing a “sustainability aesthetics” and focusing attention to non-human agents, to respond to environmental damage and climate change in the present. Additional essays analyse the complicated art historical ecology of heritage sites and question the underlying anthropocentrism in art historical priorities and practices. As a whole, this anthology argues for the importance of ecological considerations in art history.
Download or read book Sultans of the South written by Navina Najat Haidar and published by Metropolitan Museum of Art. This book was released on 2011 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between the 14th and the 17th century, the Deccan plateau of south-central India was home to a series of important and highly cultured Muslim courts. Subtly blending elements from Iran, West Asia, southern India, and northern India, the arts produced under these sultanates are markedly different from those of the rest of India and especially from those produced under Mughal patronage. This publication, a result of a 2008 symposium held at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, investigates the arts of Deccan and the unique output in the fields of painting, literature, architecture, arms, textiles, and carpet.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the Study of Religion written by Michael Stausberg and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-17 with total page 881 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of the Study of Religion provides a comprehensive overview of the academic study of religion. Written by an international team of leading scholars, its fifty-one chapters are divided thematically into seven sections. The first section addresses five major conceptual aspects of research on religion. Part two surveys eleven main frameworks of analysis, interpretation, and explanation of religion. Reflecting recent turns in the humanities and social sciences, part three considers eight forms of the expression of religion. Part four provides a discussion of the ways societies and religions, or religious organizations, are shaped by different forms of allocation of resources. Other chapters in this section consider law, the media, nature, medicine, politics, science, sports, and tourism. Part five reviews important developments, distinctions, and arguments for each of the selected topics. The study of religion addresses religion as a historical phenomenon and part six looks at seven historical processes. Religion is studied in various ways by many disciplines, and this Handbook shows that the study of religion is an academic discipline in its own right. The disciplinary profile of this volume is reflected in part seven, which considers the history of the discipline and its relevance. Each chapter in the Handbook references at least two different religions to provide fresh and innovative perspectives on key issues in the field. This authoritative collection will advance the state of the discipline and is an invaluable reference for students and scholars.
Download or read book Tarot of the Spirit written by Pamela Eakins and published by Weiser Books. This book was released on 1992-01-15 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Tarot of the Spirit is a companion book to the tarot deck painted by Joyce Eakins and is meant to pick up where other tarots leave off. It is here to aid serious students on the esoteric path of the Western Mysteries. Its reason for being is to provide assistance for inner awakening and continued spiritual practice. Centered on the Qabbalistic Tree of Life, this symbolism clearly explores the Minor Arcana as a representation of the four components of life: spirit, emotion, intellect, and body while it reveals the Major Arcana to be the keys to our emotional response patterns to the symbolic universe in which we live. Includes seven monthly meditations, individual readings, and layouts. Every concept presented in the book is essential in its context. Nothing has been reduced, neither has it been convoluted. Every effort has been made to keep the interpretations clearly understandable. Both this book and the deck are meant to be referred to again and again. As the knowledge of the student deepens, the texts will take on greater meaning.
Download or read book Environmental and Climate Change in South and Southeast Asia written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2014-08-07 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on pioneering research, this volume on South and Southeast Asia offers a cultural studies' perspective on the vast and largely uncharted domain of how local cultures are coping with climate changes and environmental crises.The primary focus is on three countries that have high emission rates: India, Indonesia, and Thailand. Whereas the dominant discourse on climate largely reflects the view of Western cultures, this volume adds indigenous views and practices that provide insight into Hindu, Buddhist and Islamic responses. Making use of textual materials, fieldwork, and analyses, it highlights the close links between climate solutions, forms of knowledge, and the various socio-cultural and political practices and agencies within societies. The volume demonstrates that climate is global and plural. Contributors are: Monika Arnez, Somnath Batabyal, Joachim Betz, Susan M. Darlington, Dennis Eucker, Rüdiger Haum, Albertina Nugteren, Marcus Nüsser & Ravi Baghel, Martin Seeger, and Janice Stargardt.
Download or read book 7 Day Chakras written by Shai Tubali and published by Llewellyn Worldwide. This book was released on 2021-05-08 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Ultimate Chakra Practice to Center Your Life This innovative book presents an easy-to-use, step-by-step chakra method that helps you integrate energy work into your daily lifestyle. Assigning one chakra to each day of the week, 7 Day Chakras makes it simple to focus your intentions, awaken your energy centers, and reach your goals. Join Shai Tubali on a rich, multicolored journey into the wisdom of the chakras. He shares meditations, affirmations, exercises, journal prompts, and visualizations, all of them specially designed to help you fully awaken your body and mind. Explore the chakras individually as well as how they work together. Discover what your chakra personality type is and what practices empower your days. This enlightening book teaches how to heal yourself and pay better attention to neglected areas every week, guiding you to a sacred and fulfilling life.
Download or read book Ritual Innovation written by Brian K. Pennington and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2018-02-01 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Challenges prevailing conceptions of what religious ritual does and how it achieves its ends. Religious rituals are often seen as unchanging and ahistorical bearers of long-standing traditions. But as this book demonstrates, ritual is a lively platform for social change and innovation in the religions of South Asia. Drawing from Hindu and Jain examples in India, Nepal, and North America,the essays in this volume, written by renowned scholars of religion, explore how the intentional, conscious, and public invention or alteration of ritual can effect dramatic social transformation, whether in dethroning a Nepali king or sanctioning same-sex marriage. Ritual Innovation shows how the very idea of ritual as a conservative force misreads the history of religion by overlooking rituals inherent creative potential and its adaptability to new contexts and circumstances. The breadth of coverage in Ritual Innovation is extraordinary and refreshing in terms of the types of contemporary ritual practices and practitioners receiving attention, not to mention the geographic spread across South Asia. This book makes a significant contribution to the scholarly literature on South Asian religions and contemporary Hinduism. Karline McLain, author of The Afterlife of Sai Baba: Competing Visions of a Global Saint
Download or read book Water Co Management written by Velma I. Grover and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2013-02-21 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Co-management is a highly dynamic, evolving, adaptive, and forward looking process. This edited volume covers theoretical background and includes supporting lessons learnt from field experiences. The book has case studies from both North and South America (co-management of fisheries, resilience in near-shore waters of the Great Lakes basin, water level management in Lake Ontario, and case studies from Chile and Brazil), Europe (Tisza river, coastal management and examples of rivers from the Netherlands and from Uzbekistan), Africa (Lake Victoria) and Asia (Pushkar Lake in India).
