Download or read book Landscape Ritual and Identity among the Hyolmo of Nepal written by Davide Torri and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-03-20 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyses the social, political and religious life of the Hyolmo people of Nepal. Highlighting patterns of change and adaptation, it addresses the Shamanic-Buddhist interface that exists in the animated landscape of the Himalayas. Opening with an analysis of the ethnic revival of Nepal, the book first considers the Himalayan religious landscape and its people. Specific attention is then given to Helambu, home of the Hyolmo people, within the framework of Tibetan Buddhism. The discussion then turns to the persisting shamanic tradition of the region and the ritual dynamics of Hyolmo culture. The book concludes by considering broader questions of Hyolmo identity in the Nepalese context, as well as reflecting on the interconnection of landscape, ritual and identity. Offering a unique insight into a fascinating Himalayan culture and its formation, this book will be of great interest to scholars of indigenous peoples and religion across religious studies, Buddhist studies, cultural anthropology and South Asian studies.
Download or read book Landscape Religion and the Supernatural written by Matthias Egeler and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first study to tackle the relationship between landscape and religion in-depth. Author Matthias Egeler overviews previous theories of the relationship between landscape and religion and then pushes this theorizing further with a rich case study: the supernatural landscape of the Icelandic Westfjords. There, religion and the supernatural--from churches to elf hills--are ubiquitous in the landscape and, as Egeler shows, this example sheds entirely new light on core aspects of the relationship between landscape, religion, and the supernatural.
Download or read book Dealing with Disasters written by Diana Riboli and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-11-09 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Providing a fresh look at some of the pressing issues of our world today, this collection focuses on experiential and ritualized coping practices in response to a multitude of environmental challenges—cyclones, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, earthquakes, warfare and displacements of peoples and environmental resource exploitation. Eco-cosmological practices conducted by skilled healing practitioners utilize knowledge embedded in the cosmological grounding of place and experiences of place and the landscapes in which such experience is encapsulated. A range of geographic case studies are presented in this volume, exploring Asia, Europe, the Pacific, and South America. With special reference throughout to ritual as a mode of seeking the stabilization, renewal, and continuity of life processes, this volume will be of particular interest to readers working in shamanic and healing practices, environmental concerns surrounding sustainability and conservation, ethnomedical systems, and religious and ritual studies.
Download or read book World of Worldly Gods written by Kelzang T. Tashi and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In World of Worldly Gods, Kelzang T. Tashi offers the first comprehensive examination of the tenacity of Shamanic Bon practices, as they are lived and contested in the presence of an invalidating force: Buddhism. Through a rich ethnography of Goleng and nearby villages in central Bhutan, Tashi investigates why people, despite shifting contexts, continue to practice and engage with Bon, a religious practice that has survived over a millennium of impatience from a dominant Buddhist ecclesiastical structure. Against the backdrop of long-standing debates around practices unsystematically identified as 'bon', this book reframes the often stale and scholastic debates by providing a clear and succinct statement on how these practices should be conceived in the region. Tashi argues that the reasons for the tenacity of Bon practices and beliefs amid censures by the Buddhist priests are manifold and complex. While a significant reason for the persistence of Bon is the recency of formal Buddhist institutions in Goleng, he demonstrates that Bon beliefs are so deeply embedded in village social life that some Buddhists paradoxically feel it necessary to reach some kind of accommodation with Bon priests. Through an analysis of the relationship between Shamanic Bon and Buddhism, and the contemporary dynamics of Bhutanese society, this book tackles the longstanding concern of anthropology: cultural persistence and change. It discusses the mutual accommodation and attempted amalgamation of Buddhism and Bon, and offers fresh perspectives on the central distinguishing features of Great and Little Traditions.
Download or read book The Shamaness in Asia written by Davide Torri and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-10-08 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book concentrates on female shamanisms in Asia and their relationship with the state and other religions, offering a perspective on gender and shamanism that has often been neglected in previous accounts. An international range of contributors cover a broad geographical scope, ranging from Siberia to South Asia, and Iran to Japan. Several key themes are considered, including the role of bureaucratic established religions in integrating, challenging and fighting shamanic practices, the position of women within shamanic complexes, and perceptions of the body. Beginning with a chapter that places the shamaness at the centre of the discussion, chapters then approach these issues in a variety of ways, from historically informed accounts, to presenting the findings of extensive ethnographic research by the authors themselves. Offering an important counterbalance to male dominated accounts of shamanism, this book will be of great interest to scholars of Indigenous Peoples across Religious Studies, Anthropology, Asian Studies, and Gender Studies.
Download or read book South Asian Gothic written by Katarzyna Ancuta and published by University of Wales Press. This book was released on 2021-11-15 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first attempt to theorise South Asian Gothic production as a common cultural landscape, taking into account both the historical perspective and the variety of media texts. The volume consists of fifteen chapters by experts in film, literature and cultural studies of South Asia, representing the diversity of the region and a number of ways in which Gothic manifests in contemporary South Asian cultures. Gothic in South Asia can be read as a distinctive aesthetic, narrative practice, or a process of signification, where conventional Gothic tropes and imagery are assessed anew and global forms are consumed, appropriated, translated, transformed or resisted. The volume investigates South Asian Gothic as a local variety of international Gothic and part of the transnational category of globalgothic, contributing to the ongoing discussion on the need to de-westernise Gothic methodologies and ensure that Gothic scholarship remains relevant in the culturally-diverse modern world.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Global Drug History written by Paul Gootenberg and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022 with total page 721 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This essay reveals how a global "New Drug History" has evolved over the past three decades, along with its latest thematic trends and possible next directions. Scholars have long studied drugs, but only in the 1990s did serious archival and global study of what are now illicit drugs emerge, largely from the influence of the anthropology of drugs on history. A series of key interdisciplinary influences are now in play beyond anthropology, among them, commodity and consumption studies, sociology, medical history, cultural studies, and transnational history. Scholars connect drugs and their changing political or cultural status to larger contexts and epochal events such as wars, empires, capitalism, modernization, or globalizing processes. As the field expands in scope, it may shift deeper into non-western perspectives, a fluid historical definition of drugs; environmental concerns; and research on cannabis and opiates sparked by their current transformations or crises"--
Download or read book The Tradition of Everlasting B n written by and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-08-15 with total page 844 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An annotated translation of five key texts of the Everlasting (Yungdrung) Bön school selected by the late H. H. Menri Trizin Rinpoché that includes scriptural teachings, a root tantra based on revealed teachings of the unconditioned absolute, a canonical commentary on the root tantra, an exposition of the Yungdrung tantric system, and the oral instructions on Bön meditation practices associated with experiencing the nature of the mind, the Great Perfection systems. This authoritative annotated translation of five key texts of Everlasting (Yungdrung) Bön by Marc des Jardins opens up a relatively unknown tradition that, since the arrival of Buddhism in Tibet, has undergone great transformations in its philosophy, doctrinal teachings, and meditative practices. Each text represents an important aspect of the tradition. The first text, by Drogön Azha Lodrö Gyaltsen (1198–1263), presents the grounds and paths of the Greater Vehicle of the Bön tradition and represents the philosophical ideology of its teachings based on the scriptures contained in the Bön canon. The second text is a short root tantra attributed to revealed teachings from Kuntu Zangpo, the personification of the unconditioned absolute. The third text is a commentary on this root tantra attributed to Drenpa Namkha (fl. eighth century), a Bönpo sage contemporary with Padmasambhava. The fourth text, by Nyamé Sherap Gyaltsen (1356–1415), presents a general exposition of the tantric system according to Yungdrung Bön. The final text, by Drutön Gyalwa Yungdrung (1242–90), pertains to the oral instructions on the meditation practices of Bön, especially on the cycle of practices associated with experiencing the nature of the mind, the Great Perfection systems. All five texts have been selected by the late H. H. Menri Trizin Rinpoché, Lungtok Tenpai Nyima (1927–2017), the thirty-third abbot of Menri Monastery, the central institution of the Yungdrung Bön school.
Download or read book Buddhism and the Dynamics of Transculturality written by Birgit Kellner and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2019-10-08 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For over 2500 years, Buddhism was implicated in processes of cultural interaction that in turn shaped Buddhist doctrines, practices and institutions. While the cultural plurality of Buddhism has often been remarked upon, the transcultural processes that constitute this plurality, and their long-term effects, have scarcely been studied as a topic in their own right. The contributions to this volume present detailed case studies ranging across different time periods, regions and disciplines, and they address methodological challenges as well as theoretical problems. In addition to casting a spotlight on topics as diverse as the role of trade contacts in the early spread of Buddhism, the hybrid nature of religious practices in Japan or Indo-Tibetan relations in Tibetan polemical literature, the individual papers jointly raise the question as to whether there might be something distinct about how Buddhism steers and influences forms of cultural exchange, and is in turn shaped by modalities of cultural interaction throughout Asian, as well as global, history. The volume is intended to demonstrate the need for investigating transcultural dynamics more closely in the study of Buddhism, and to suggest new avenues for Buddhist Studies.
Download or read book The World and All the Things upon It written by David A. Chang and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2016-06-01 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Modern Language Association’s Prize for Studies in Native American Literatures, Cultures, and Languages Winner of the American Historical Association’s Albert J. Beveridge Award Winner of NAISA's Best Subsequent Book Award Winner of the Western History Association's John C. Ewers Award Finalist for the John Hope Franklin Prize What if we saw indigenous people as the active agents of global exploration rather than as the passive objects of that exploration? What if, instead of conceiving of global exploration as an enterprise just of European men such as Columbus or Cook or Magellan, we thought of it as an enterprise of the people they “discovered”? What could such a new perspective reveal about geographical understanding and its place in struggles over power in the context of colonialism? The World and All the Things upon It addresses these questions by tracing how Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian people) explored the outside world and generated their own understandings of it in the century after James Cook’s arrival in 1778. Writing with verve, David A. Chang draws on the compelling words of long-ignored Hawaiian-language sources—stories, songs, chants, and political prose—to demonstrate how Native Hawaiian people worked to influence their metaphorical “place in the world.” We meet, for example, Ka?iana, a Hawaiian chief who took an English captain as his lover and, while sailing throughout the Pacific, considered how Chinese, Filipinos, Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans might shape relations with Westerners to their own advantage. Chang’s book is unique in examining travel, sexuality, spirituality, print culture, gender, labor, education, and race to shed light on how constructions of global geography became a site through which Hawaiians, as well as their would-be colonizers, perceived and contested imperialism, colonialism, and nationalism. Rarely have historians asked how non-Western people imagined and even forged their own geographies of their colonizers and the broader world. This book takes up that task. It emphasizes, moreover, that there is no better way to understand the process and meaning of global exploration than by looking out from the shores of a place, such as Hawai?i, that was allegedly the object, and not the agent, of exploration.
Download or read book Buddhism and the Dynamics of Transculturality written by Birgit Kellner and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2019-10-08 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For over 2500 years, Buddhism was implicated in processes of cultural interaction that in turn shaped Buddhist doctrines, practices and institutions. While the cultural plurality of Buddhism has often been remarked upon, the transcultural processes that constitute this plurality, and their long-term effects, have scarcely been studied as a topic in their own right. The contributions to this volume present detailed case studies ranging across different time periods, regions and disciplines, and they address methodological challenges as well as theoretical problems. In addition to casting a spotlight on topics as diverse as the role of trade contacts in the early spread of Buddhism, the hybrid nature of religious practices in Japan or Indo-Tibetan relations in Tibetan polemical literature, the individual papers jointly raise the question as to whether there might be something distinct about how Buddhism steers and influences forms of cultural exchange, and is in turn shaped by modalities of cultural interaction throughout Asian, as well as global, history. The volume is intended to demonstrate the need for investigating transcultural dynamics more closely in the study of Buddhism, and to suggest new avenues for Buddhist Studies.
Download or read book Defend the Sacred written by Michael D. McNally and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-14 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In 2016, thousands of people travelled to North Dakota to camp out near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation to protest the construction of an oil pipeline that is projected to cross underneath the Missouri River a half mile upstream from the Reservation. The Standing Rock Sioux consider the pipeline a threat to the region's clean water and to the Sioux's sacred sites (such as its ancient burial grounds). The encamped protests garnered front-page headlines and international attention, and the resolve of the protesters was made clear in a red banner that flew above the camp: "Defend the Sacred". What does it mean when Native communities and their allies make such claims? What is the history of such claim-making, and why has this rhetorical and legal strategy - based on appeals to religious freedom - failed to gain much traction in American courts? As Michael McNally recounts in this book, Native Americans have repeatedly been inspired to assert claims to sacred places, practices, objects, knowledge, and ancestral remains by appealing to the discourse of religious freedom. But such claims based on alleged violations of the First Amendment "free exercise of religion" clause of the US Constitution have met with little success in US courts, largely because Native American communal traditions have been difficult to capture by the modern Western category of "religion." In light of this poor track record Native communities have gone beyond religious freedom-based legal strategies in articulating their sacred claims: in (e.g.) the technocratic language of "cultural resource" under American environmental and historic preservation law; in terms of the limited sovereignty accorded to Native tribes under federal Indian law; and (increasingly) in the political language of "indigenous rights" according to international human rights law (especially in light of the 2007 U.N. Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples). And yet the language of religious freedom, which resonates powerfully in the US, continues to be deployed, propelling some remarkably useful legislative and administrative accommodations such as the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Reparation Act. As McNally's book shows, native communities draw on the continued rhetorical power of religious freedom language to attain legislative and regulatory victories beyond the First Amendment"--
Download or read book The Rise of Ethnic Politics in Nepal written by Susan I. Hangen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-12-04 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The relationship between ethnic politics and democracy presents a paradox for scholars and policy makers: ethnic politics frequently emerge in new democracies, and yet are often presumed to threaten these new democracies. As ethnic politics is becoming increasingly central to Nepali politics, this book argues it has the potential to strengthen rather than destabilize democracy. Drawing on years of ethnographic fieldwork, Susan Hangen focuses on the ethnic political party Mongol National Organization (MNO), which consists of multiple ethnic groups and has been mobilizing support in rural east Nepal. By investigating the party’s discourse and its struggles to gain support and operate within a village government, the book provides a window onto the processes of democratization in rural Nepal in the 1990s. This work presents a more nuanced understanding of how ethnic parties operate on the ground, arguing that ethnic parties overlap considerably with social movements, and that the boundary between parties and movements should be reconceptualised. The analysis demonstrates that ethnic parties are not antithetical to democracy and that democratization can proceed in diverse and unexpected ways. Providing an in-depth discussion of the indigenous nationalities movement, one of Nepal’s most significant social movements, this work will be of great interest to scholars and students of Asian Politics, South Asian Studies, and Political Anthropology.
Download or read book Dealing with Disasters written by Diana Riboli and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 2021-11-24 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Providing a fresh look at some of the pressing issues of our world today, this collection focuses on experiential and ritualized coping practices in response to a multitude of environmental challenges—cyclones, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, earthquakes, warfare and displacements of peoples and environmental resource exploitation. Eco-cosmological practices conducted by skilled healing practitioners utilize knowledge embedded in the cosmological grounding of place and experiences of place and the landscapes in which such experience is encapsulated. A range of geographic case studies are presented in this volume, exploring Asia, Europe, the Pacific, and South America. With special reference throughout to ritual as a mode of seeking the stabilization, renewal, and continuity of life processes, this volume will be of particular interest to readers working in shamanic and healing practices, environmental concerns surrounding sustainability and conservation, ethnomedical systems, and religious and ritual studies.
Download or read book Frog Hymns and Rain Babies written by Gautamavajra Vajrācārya and published by Marg Publications. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the influence of monsoons on the art, literature, and culture of India and the South Asian region.
Download or read book Indigenous Religion s written by Siv Ellen Kraft and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-06-24 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What counts as 'indigenous religion' in today ́s world? Who claims this category? What are the processes through which local entities become recognisable as 'religious' and 'indigenous'? How is all of this connected to struggles for power, rights and sovereignty? This book sheds light on the contemporary lives of indigenous religion(s), through case studies from Sápmi, Nagaland, Talamanca, Hawai`i, and Gujarat, and through a shared focus on translations, performances, mediation and sovereignty. It builds on long term case-studies and on the collaborative comparison of a long-term project, including shared fieldwork. At the center of its concerns are translations between a globalising discourse (indigenous religion in the singular) and distinct local traditions (indigenous religions in the plural). With contributions from leading scholars in the field, this book is a must read for students and researchers in indigenous religions, including those in related fields such as religious studies and social anthropology.
Download or read book Himalayan Herders written by Naomi Hawes Bishop and published by Thomson Learning. This book was released on 2002 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
