Description
The Routledge Handbook of Material Religion places objects and bodies at the center of scholarly studies of religious life and practice.
Propelling forward the study of material religion, the Handbook first reveals the deep philosophical roots of its key categories and then advances new critical analytics, such as queer materialities, inescapable material entanglements, and hyperobjects that explode the small-scale personal view on religions.
The Handbook comprises thirty chapters, written by an international team of contributors who offer a global perspective of religious pasts and presents, divided into four thematic parts:
- Genealogies of Material Religion
- Materializing the Terms of the Study of Religion
- Entanglements, Entrapment, Escaping
- Hyperobjects, or How Ginormous Things Affect Religions
In these four parts, the study of material religion is redirected towards systematic, critical interrogations of the imbrication of religious structures of power with racial, economic, political, and gendered forms of domination.
From Spinoza窶冱 political theology to African philosophies of ubuntu; from the queer materialities of Mesoamerican religion to the Satanic Temple of the United States; from Islamic love and sacrifice in human-animal entanglements to Shia militants窶� attachment to weaponry; from epidemic cataclysm in Latin America to vast infrastructures and the gathering of millions in India窶冱 Kumbh Mela, the study of material religion proves to be the study par excellence of the human condition.
The Handbook is essential reading for students and researchers in religious studies, anthropology, history, and media studies, and will also be of interest to those in related fields such as archeology, sociology, and philosophy.
Table of Contents
Editors' Introduction: The Pasts, Presents, and Futures of the Study of Material Religion, Pooyan Tamimi Arab, Jennifer Scheper Hughes, S. Brent Rodríguez-Plate Part I: Genealogies of Material Religion 1.1 Spinoza: Arch-Father of the Material-Religion Approach, Pooyan Tamimi Arab 1.2 Material Theories in Japanese Buddhism: What Kﾅｫkai and Dﾅ紅en Thought About Things, Pamela D. Winfield 1.3 Gender, Ritual, and Dancing Images: Jane E. Harrison窶冱 Aesthetic Approaches to the Materiality of Religion, Ulrike Brunotte 1.4 The Philosophy of Ubuntu and Material Religion in Africa: Engaging Henry Rowley窶冱 Mid-Nineteenth-Century Perspective on the Materiality of Religion, Kapya John Kaoma 1.5 Mesoamerican Nightlife and the Queer Materialities of Religion, Xiomara Verenice Cervantes-Gómez 1.6 Comparison after Materiality, Johan Strijdom Part II: Materializing the Terms of the Study of Religion 2.1 Books in Religious Studies: From Relentless Textualism to Embodied Practices, Katja Rakow 2.2 Of Manuscripts That Can窶冲 Be Read and Roads That Can窶冲 Be Seen: Historical Matters among Chams in Cambodia, Emiko Stock 2.3 The Recursivity of the Fetish
Roger Sansi 2.4 Animism? Animated? Ensouled? The Active Lives of Balinese Masks, Laurel Kendall and Ni Wayan Pasek Ariati 2.5 "Brainsmithing" African Material Religion, Allen F. Roberts and Mary "Polly" Nooter Roberts 2.6 Crossing Heritage: Material Religion at the Humboldt Forum, Duane Jethro 2.7 Material God Mengdu: A Symbol and Real Presence, Yohan Yoo 2.8 Three Sacred Mouthfuls: Transformed and Transformative Materiality of Sacred Food in Hindu Publics, Tulasi Srinivas 2.9 Dark Mirroring: The Satanic Temple窶冱 Queer Material Religion, Sharday C. Mosurinjohn Part III: Entanglements, Entrapments, Escaping 3.1 The Entanglements of Religion and Things, Ian Hodder 3.2 Measuring Entanglement in Material Traces of Ritualized Interaction: Preferential Attachment in a Prehistoric Petroglyph Distribution, Tom Froese and Emiliano Gallaga Murrieta 3.3 "Disentangling" as an Everyday Practice: Material, Visual, Sacred, and Commodity features of "Puja Things", Vineeta Sinha 3.4 Broken Buddhas: Reflections on (Im)Materiality and Impermanence, S. Romi Mukherjee 3.5 Buddhist Practice, Recreation, and Fun: Entanglements of Popular Culture and Material Religion, Inken Prohl 3.6 Christmas Gifts at the Turn of the Twentieth Century in Santiago, Chile: From a Gift Economy to Commodity, Olaya Sanfuentes 3.7 The Jewel of Men: Weaponry as Material Religion among Muslim Communities, Younes Saramifar 3.8 Human-Animal Entanglements and the Anthropology of Sacrifice: Practicing Qurbani in Mumbai, Shaheed Tayob 3.9 Borrando La Frontera: Ana Teresa Fernández窶冱 Transborder Communion, Barbara Sostaita Part IV: Hyperobjects, or How Ginormous Things Affect Religions 4.1 The Erie Canal and the Birth of American Religion: Infrastructure as Hyperobject, S. Brent Rodríguez-Plate 4.2 The Kumbh Melﾄ� as Hyperobject: Sound, Scale, Nation, Environment, Amanda Lucia 4.3 Sonic Religion: The Analysis of Atmospheric Half-Things, Patrick Eisenlohr 4.4 Mortandad as Hyperobject: Colonial Death Worlds and Epidemic Cataclysm in Las Américas, Jennifer Scheper Hughes 4.5 Virus as Hyperobject: Early Atlantic World Jews and Yellow Fever Epidemics, Laura Arnold Leibman 4.6 On Human Extinction, Evander Price. Index
