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Book Guilty Males and Proud Females

Download or read book Guilty Males and Proud Females written by Fabrizio M. Ferrari and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Guilty Males and Proud Females is the first complete study on the Bengali gajan festival dedicated to Dharmaraj, a village god in the Rarh region of Bengal. The gajan is the dramatic representation of an hierogamy--the marriage of a god and goddess--and a recreation of the life-cycle of earth. As Fabrizio M. Ferrari explains one of the most fascinating aspects of the gajan is its approach to gender. The central deity of the gajan is a goddess identified with the earth. To please such a goddess, male devotees must acknowledge the pain they inflict towards the female world and become "ritual women." Conversely, as part of the festival, women display their generative power and provoke the jealousy of men by ritually mocking conception and delivery. The outcome of the ritual is that their suffering is acknowledged and transformed into power. Much more than an ethnography of Bengali popular religion, Guilty Males and Proud Females contributes to new studies on gender transformation in the Bengal region and will be of interest to scholars of South Asian religions, folklore, and gender studies.

Book Beliefs about Inequality

Download or read book Beliefs about Inequality written by James R. Kluegel and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-08 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Motivated by the desire to explain how Americans perceive and evaluate inequality and related programs and policies, the authors conducted a national survey of beliefs about social and economic inequality in America. Here they present the results of their research on the structure, determinants, and certain political and personal consequences of these beliefs. The presentations serve two major goals; to describe and explain the central features of Americans' images of inequality. Beliefs About Inequality begins with a focus on people's perceptions of the most basic elements of inequality: the availability of opportunity in society, the causes of economic achievements, and the benefits and costs of equality and inequality. The book's analysis of the public's beliefs on these key issues is based on fundamental theories of social psychology and lays the groundwork for understanding how Americans evaluate inequality-related policies. The authors discuss the ultimate determinants of beliefs and the implications of their findings for social policies related to inequality. They propose that attitudes toward economic inequality and related policy are influenced by three major aspects of the current American social, economic, and political environment: a stable "dominant ideology" about economic inequality; individuals' social and economic status; and specific beliefs and attitudes, often reflecting "social liberalism" shaped by recent political debates and events.

Book Ritual Matters

    Book Details:
  • Author : Ute Husken
  • Publisher : Routledge
  • Release : 2012-08-21
  • ISBN : 1136517936
  • Pages : 417 pages

Download or read book Ritual Matters written by Ute Husken and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-08-21 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the interaction of rituals and ritualised practices utilising a cross-cultural approach. It discusses whether and why rituals are important today, and why they are possibly even more relevant than before.

Book Thematizations of the Goddess in South Asian Cinema

Download or read book Thematizations of the Goddess in South Asian Cinema written by Anway Mukhopadhyay and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2022-11-16 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection presents cross-disciplinary explorations of the tropes, themes and representational frameworks constellating around the figure of the Goddess in South Asian cinema. It critically approaches the Goddess theme in various genres of South Asian cinema, using analytical tools culled from gender studies, comparative cultural studies, and religious studies, as well as film semiotics. The films discussed here represent variegated thematizations of the Goddess across regions in South Asia, including Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and various geo-cultural locations in India. As the volume highlights the regional and politico-cultural differences and commonalities in representational schemes between South Asian films of different genres through the Goddess motif, it will appeal to scholars of film studies, South Asian studies and comparative religion, and will hold a special appeal for those interested in Goddess cultures and theology.

Book The Muhammad Avat  ra

    Book Details:
  • Author : Ayesha A. Irani
  • Publisher : Oxford University Press
  • Release : 2020-12-18
  • ISBN : 0190089245
  • Pages : 457 pages

Download or read book The Muhammad Avat ra written by Ayesha A. Irani and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-12-18 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Muhammad Avatara, Ayesha Irani offers an examination of the Nabivamsa, the first epic work on the Prophet Muhammad written in Bangla. This little-studied seventeenth-century text, written by Saiyad Sultan, is a literary milestone in the multi-ethnic, multi-cultural history of Islam, and marks a significant contribution not only to Bangla's rich literary corpus, but also to our understanding of Islam's localization in Indic culture in the early modern period. That Sufis such as Saiyad Sultan played a central role in Islam's spread in Bengal has been demonstrated primarily through examination of medieval Persian literary, ethnographic, and historical sources, as well as colonial-era data. Islamic Bangla texts themselves, which emerged from the sixteenth century, remain scarcely studied outside the Bangladeshi academy, and almost entirely untranslated. Yet these premodern works, which articulate Islamic ideas in a regional language, represent a literary watershed and underscore the efforts of rebel writers across South Asia, many of whom were Sufis, to defy the linguistic cordon of the Muslim elite and the hegemony of Arabic and Persian as languages of Islamic discourse. Irani explores how an Arabian prophet and his religion came to inhabit the seventeenth-century Bengali landscape, and the role that pir-authors, such as Saiyad Sultan, played in the rooting of Islam in Bengal's easternmost regions. This text-critical study lays bare the sophisticated strategies of translation used by a prominent early modern Muslim Bengali intellectual to invite others to his faith.

Book Habitat  Ecology and Ekistics

Download or read book Habitat Ecology and Ekistics written by Rukhsana and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-10-21 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume uses an innovative and interdisciplinary approach to assess various issues resulting from human-environment interactions in relation to sustainable development. The book encompasses theoretical and applied aspects, using both thematic and regional case studies from India, to highlight the impact of human-environment interactions at various spatio-temporal scales, with each study focusing on a particular anthropogenic issue, particularly in an Indian context. The book's three focal themes (e.g. habitat linkages, ekistics and social ecology, hazard and environmental management) elaborate the essential components of human-environment interactions with nature, its impact on the surrounding natural and social environments, and management techniques through research innovations. Readers will learn how maladjustments, disturbances and disasters are often inevitable byproducts of human-environment systems, and what conceptual and practical strategies can be applied towards sustainable coexistence. The book will be of interest to students, academics and policymakers engaged in environmental management, human-environment interactions and sustainable development.

Book The Muhammad Avat ara

    Book Details:
  • Author : Ayesha A. Irani
  • Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
  • Release : 2021-01-18
  • ISBN : 0190089229
  • Pages : 457 pages

Download or read book The Muhammad Avat ara written by Ayesha A. Irani and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2021-01-18 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Muhammad Avatāra: Salvation History, Translation, and the Making of Bengali Islam reveals the powerful role of vernacular translation in the Islamization of Bengal.Its focus is on examines the magnificent seventeenth-century Nabīvaṃśa of SaiyadSultān, who lived in Arakanese-controlled Chittagong to affirm the power of vernacular translation in the Islamization of Bengal. Drawing upon the Arabo-Persian Tales of the Prophets genre, the Nabīvaṃśa ("The Lineage of the Prophet") retells the life of the Prophet Muhammad for the first time to Bengalis in their mother-tongue. Saiyad Sultān lived in Arakanese-controlled Chittagong,in a period when Gauṛiya Vaiṣṇava missionary activity was at its zenith. This book delineates the challenges faced by the author in articulating the pre-eminence of Islam and its Arabian prophet in a place land where multiple religious affiliations were common, and when GauṛīyaVaiṣṇava missionary activity was at its zenith. Sultān played a pioneering role in setting into motion various lexical, literary, performative, theological, and, ultimately, ideological processes that led to the establishment of a distinctively Bengali Islam in East Bengal, while yet shaping a distinctively Bengali Islam. At the heart of this transformation of a people and their culture lay the persuasiveness of translation to refresh salvation history for a people onoin a new Islamic frontier. The Nabīvaṃśa not only kindled a veritable translation movement of Arabo-Persian Islamic literature into Bangla, but established the grammar of creative translation that was to become canonical for this regional tradition. This text-critical study lays bare the sophisticated strategies of translation used by a prominent early modern Muslim Bengali intellectual to invite others to his faith"--

Book Historical Dictionary of the Bengalis

Download or read book Historical Dictionary of the Bengalis written by Kunal Chakrabarti and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2013-08-22 with total page 605 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Bengali (Bangla) speaking people are located in the northeastern part of South Asia, particularly in Bangladesh and two states of India – West Bengal and Tripura. There are almost 246 million Bengalis at present, which makes them the fifth largest speech community in the world. Despite political and social divisions, they share a common literary and musical culture and several habits of daily existence which impart to them a distinct identity. The Bengalis are known for their political consciousness and cultural accomplishments The Historical Dictionary of the Bengalis provides an overview of the Bengalis across the world from the earliest Chalcolithic cultures to the present. This is done through a chronology, an introductory essay, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 750 cross-referenced dictionary entries on politicians, educators and entrepreneurs, leaders of religious and secular institutions, writers, painters, actors and other cultural figures, and more generally, on the economy, education, political parties, religions, women and minorities, literature, art and architecture, music, cinema and other major sectors. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the Bengalis.

Book  Yogini  in South Asia

    Book Details:
  • Author : István Keul
  • Publisher : Routledge
  • Release : 2013-07-18
  • ISBN : 1135045828
  • Pages : 279 pages

Download or read book Yogini in South Asia written by István Keul and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-07-18 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In different stages in the history of South Asian religions, the term yoginī has been used in various contexts to designate various things: a female adept of yoga, a female tantric practitioner, a sorceress, a woman dedicated to a deity, or a certain category of female deities. This book brings together recent interdisciplinary perspectives on the medieval South Asian cults of the Yoginis, such as textual-philological, historical, art historical, indological, anthropological, ritual and terminological. The book discusses the medieval yoginī cult, as illustrated in early Śaiva tantric texts, and their representations in South Asian temple iconography. It looks at the roles and hypostases of yoginīs in contemporary religious traditions, as well as the transformations of yoginī-related ritual practices. In addition, this book systematizes the multiple meanings, and proposes definitions of the concept and models for integrating the semantic fields of ‘yoginī.’ Highlighting the importance of research from complementary disciplines for the exploration of complex themes in South Asian studies, this book is of interest to scholars of South Asian Studies and Religious Studies.

Book Prejudice  Identity and Well Being

Download or read book Prejudice Identity and Well Being written by Charles T. Hill and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-03-17 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This essential and timely text looks at the ways in which various identities are socially constructed by students, exploring and comparing multiple dimensions of diverse identities, and the various ways students try to fit in when faced with prejudice and discrimination. Based on more than 20 years of data collected from Multiple Identities Questionnaires, plus Self-Identity papers in the author’s Diverse Identities course, this book gives voice to the diverse and intersectional identities experienced by students at a formative time in their lives. Analyzing data from more than three thousand college students, the book gives a uniquely comprehensive overview of identity formation, stigma, prejudice, and discrimination, which are part of conflict around the world. Author Charles T. Hill asks to what extent the students have experienced prejudice or discrimination regarding each of their identities, their own prejudice and discrimination toward others of each identity, and the importance of each type of identity for their self-concept. Split into three sections: the first part of the book gives an overview of terminologies and theoretical concepts, the second part explores the multiple dimensions of each identity using data from the MIQ interspersed with quotes from Self-Identity papers, and the third part compares and combines the different types of identities. Introduced with a foreword by Professor Emeritus of Africana Studies James M. Jones, the book opens a space to help students and others explore their identities, realize that they are not alone in their struggles with prejudice, and accept themselves with pride in their identities. Featuring highlighted key concepts and self-reflection sections, as well as further reading, measures, and statistical results, this book is essential not only for undergraduate and graduate students in social psychology, health psychology, sociology, ethnic studies, and social work, but also for therapists, parents, teachers and practitioners running Diversity Training Programs for non-students.

Book Ernesto De Martino on Religion

Download or read book Ernesto De Martino on Religion written by Dr. Fabrizio M. Ferrari and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-09-11 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ernesto de Martino was a major critical thinker in the study of vernacular religions, producing innovative analyses of key concepts such as 'folklore', 'magic' and 'ritual'. His methodology stemmed from his training under the philosopher Benedetto Croce whilst his philosophical approach to anthropology borrowed from Marx and Gramsci. Widely celebrated in continental Europe, de Martino's contribution to the study of religion has not been fully understood in the Anglophone world though some of his works - 'Primitive Magic: the Psychic Powers of Shamans and Sorcerers' and 'The Land of Remorse: a Study of Southern Italian Tarantism' - have been translated. This volume presents a comprehensive overview of de Martino's life and work, the thinkers and theories which informed his writings, his contribution to the study of religions and the potential of his methodology for contemporary scholarship.

Book Disease  Religion and Healing in Asia

Download or read book Disease Religion and Healing in Asia written by Ivette M. Vargas-O'Bryan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-11-20 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent academic and medical initiatives have highlighted the benefits of studying culturally embedded healing traditions that incorporate religious and philosophical viewpoints to better understand local and global healing phenomena. Capitalising on this trend, the present volume looks at the diverse models of healing that interplay with culture and religion in Asia. Cutting across several Asian regions from Hong Kong to mainland China, Tibet, India, and Japan, the book addresses healing from a broader perspective and reflects a fresh new outlook on the complexities of Asian societies and their approaches to health. In exploring the convergences and collisions a society must negotiate, it shows the emerging urgency in promoting multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research on disease, religion and healing in Asia. Drawing on original fieldwork, contributors present their latest research on diverse local models of healing that occur when disease and religion meet in South and East Asian cultures. Revealing the symbiotic relationship of disease, religion and healing and their colliding values in Asia often undetected in healthcare research, the book draws attention to religious, political and social dynamics, issues of identity and ethics, practical and epistemological transformations, and analogous cultural patterns. It challenges the reader to rethink predominantly long-held Western interpretations of disease management and religion. Making a significant contribution to the field of transcultural medicine, religious studies in Asia as well as to a better understanding of public health in Asia as a whole, it will be of interest to students and scholars of Health Studies, Asian Religions and Philosophy.

Book Men Speak Out

    Book Details:
  • Author : Shira Tarrant
  • Publisher : Routledge
  • Release : 2013-02-11
  • ISBN : 1135127433
  • Pages : 343 pages

Download or read book Men Speak Out written by Shira Tarrant and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-02-11 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Men Speak Out: Views on Gender, Sex, and Power, Second Edition highlights new essays on pornography, pop culture, queer identity, Muslim masculinity, and the war on women. With personal candor and political insight, this collection of diverse authors explores sex work, digital activism, incarceration, domestic violence, surviving incest, and standing firmly as male allies facing the backlash against women’s reproductive rights. Featuring eleven new essays and six revised thematic sections, this second edition of a favorite anthology continues to encourage robust discussion and vibrant debate about masculinity and the possibilities for progressive change. The contemporary, compelling essays in Men Speak Out appeal to students, scholars, activists, and everyday readers.

Book My Thoughts

Download or read book My Thoughts written by Ferrari King and published by Lord Zeus. This book was released on 2024-05-03 with total page 93 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is some random stuff I wrote a long time ago. I may not support everything I wrote back then.

Book Religion  Devotion and Medicine in North India

Download or read book Religion Devotion and Medicine in North India written by Fabrizio M. Ferrari and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2014-11-20 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines notions of health and illness in North Indian devotional culture, with particular attention paid to the worship of the goddess Sitala, the Cold Lady. Consistently portrayed in colonial and postcolonial literature as the ambiguous 'smallpox goddess', Sitala is here discussed as a protector of children and women, a portrayal that emerges from textual sources as well as material culture. The eradication of smallpox did not pose a threat to Sitala and her worship. She continues to be an extremely popular goddess. Religion, Devotion and Medicine in North India critically examines the rise and affirmation of the 'smallpox myth' in India and beyond, and explains how Indian narratives, ritual texts and devotional songs have celebrated Sitala as a loving mother who protects her children from the effects, and the fear, of poxes, fevers and infantile disorders but also all sorts of new threats (such as global pandemics, addictions and environmental catastrophes). The book explores a wide range of ritual and devotional practices, including scheduled festivals, songs, vows, pageants, austerities, possession, animal sacrifices and various forms of offering. Built on extensive fieldwork and a close textual analysis of sources in Sanskrit and vernacular languages (Hindi, Bhojpuri and Bengali) as well as on a rich bibliography on the struggle against smallpox in colonial and post-colonial India, the book reflects on the ambiguous nature of Sitala as a phenomenon largely dependent on the enduring fascination with the exotic, and the horrific, that has pervaded public renditions of Indian culture in indigenous fiction, colonial reports, medical literature and now global culture. To aid study, the volume includes images, web links, appendixes and a filmography.

Book Early Church Understandings of Jesus as the Female Divine

Download or read book Early Church Understandings of Jesus as the Female Divine written by Sally Douglas and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-05-19 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Central to debates about Jesus is the issue of whether he uniquely embodies the divine. While this discussion continues unabated, both those who affirm and those who dismiss, Jesus' divinity regularly eclipse the reality that in many of the earliest strands of the Christian tradition when Jesus' divinity is proclaimed, Jesus is imaged as the female divine. Sally Douglas investigates these early texts, excavates the motivations for imaging Jesus as Woman Wisdom and the complex reasons that this began to be suppressed in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. The work concludes with an exploration of the powerful implications of engaging with the ancient proclamation of Jesus-Woman Wisdom in contemporary context.

Book Health and Religious Rituals in South Asia

Download or read book Health and Religious Rituals in South Asia written by Fabrizio Ferrari and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2011-03-07 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on original fieldwork, this book develops a fresh methodological approach to the study of indigenous understandings of disease as possession, and looks at healing rituals in different South Asian cultural contexts. Contributors discuss the meaning of 'disease', 'possession' and 'healing' in relation to South Asian religions, including Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism and Sikhism, and how South Asians deal with the divine in order to negotiate health and wellbeing. The book goes on to look at goddesses, gods and spirits as a cause and remedy of a variety of diseases, a study that has proved significant to the ethics and politics of responding to health issues. It contributes to a consolidation and promotion of indigenous ways as a method of understanding physical and mental imbalances through diverse conceptions of the divine. Chapters offer a fascinating overview of healing rituals in South Asia and provide a full-length, sustained discussion of the interface between religion, ritual, and folklore. The book presents a fresh insight into studies of Asian Religion and the History of Medicine.