Culture, Religion, and Home-making in and Beyond South Asia explores how the idea of the home is repurposed or re-envisioned in relation to experiences of modernity, urbanization, conflict, migration and displacement. It considers how these processes are reflected in rituals, beliefs and social practices. It explores the processes by which "home" may be constructed and how relocations often result in either the replication or rejection of traditional homes and identities. Ponniah examines the various contestations surrounding the categories of "home" and "religion," including interfaith families, urban spaces, and sacred places.
James Ponniah is an assistant professor in the department of Christian studies at the University of Madras. He is the author of The Dynamics of Folk Religion in Society: Pericentralisation as Deconstruction of Sanskritisation (2011) and editor of Committed to the Church and the Country (2013) and Identity, Difference and Conflict: Postcolonial Critique (2013). His areas of research include popular Catholicism & Dalit Christianity.
"A book so rich in theory and methodology, illuminated by case studies, will appeal to a broad readership far beyond South Asia, just as the title claims." --Richard Fox Young, Timby Associate Professor of History of Religions, Princeton Theological Seminary "This book explores concepts of home across three genders, multiple religions, and many specific places, from Sri Lanka to China and Japan, from Mumbai to Arunachal Pradesh. A conceptual and expansive tour de force, this book examines the aftermath of colonialism and war, and strategies for negotiating domesticity in light of food, interfaith marriage, and religious identity." --Christopher Key Chapple, Doshi Professor of Indic and Comparative Theology, Loyola Marymount University "The essays in this wide-ranging, evocative book explore processes of homemaking across a plethora of contexts. Collectively, these fascinating chapters reveal the many ways people come to manufacture a sense of home across religious, cultural, historical, and geographical register." --Tracy Pintchman, Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the International Studies Program, Loyola University of Chicago "The book is a welcome collection of empirical studies on religion and space and in particular on the role of the idea of 'home' in South Asia, in diasporas, in the experience of women, and in literary texts. The book illustrates that sacredness of space and home is constructed by human agency as part of social and cultural processes and is ever changing." --Knut A. Jacobsen, Professor of Religion, University of Bergen, Norway
