Retheorizing Religion in Nepal

by Grieve, Gregory Price

• ISBN13: 9781403974341
• ISBN10: 1403974349
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-10-17
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Retheorizing Religion in Nepal is an engaging and thought-provoking study of religion in South Asia, with important insights for the study of religion and culture more broadly conceived. Grieve uses ethnographic material as well as postsctructuralist and postcolonialist approaches to critique and expand religious studies as a discipline.

Author Biography

Gregory Price Grieve is Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He has published articles in Numen, Culture, Theory and Critique, Journal of Material Religion, and Studies in Nepalese History and Society.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	ix
Series Editor's Preface	xi
Acknowledgments	xiii
Transcriptual Key	xv
Transliteration	xvii
Epigraph	xix
Introduction Preparing the Materials: Prolegomenon for a Study of Prosaic Religion	1	(26)
Part I Tradition, Modernity, and the Challenge of Prosaic Hinduism
Framing the Study: Theorizing the Histories of Tradition in Bhaktapur, Nepal	27	(22)
Laying Down the Grid: Cosmology and the Place of Tradition in Bhaktapur, Nepal	49	(20)
Part II Prosaic Religion and the Construction of Lived Worlds
Sketching the Central Point: Cadastral God-Images and the Politics of Scriptural Mediation	69	(18)
Illustrating Samsara: Religious ``Recipes'' for Making a Prosaic Lived World	87	(16)
Performing Prosaic Tantra: Jhinjan Minjan Danigu's Animating Affect and Social Critique of Religious Experience	103	(12)
Bringing a Forged Mandala to Life: The Cow Procession and the Improvisation of Cadastral Generative Matrixes	115	(16)
Conclusion Detailing the Material: A Strategy for Mediating Religion (Dharma) beside the Book	131	(8)
Notes	139	(10)
Bibliography	149	(20)
Index	169