Retheorizing Religion in Nepal [Paperback]

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 poststructuralist and postcolonialist approaches to critique and expand religious studies as a discipline.Introduction: Preparing the Materials: Prolegomenon for a Study of Prosaic Religion Part I: Tradition, Modernity, and the Challenge of Prosaic Hinduism Framing the Study: Theorizing the Histories of Tradition in Bhaktapur, Nepal Laying Down the Grid: Cosmology and the Place of Tradition in Bhaktapur, Nepal Part II: Prosaic Religion and the Construction of Lived Worlds Sketching the Central Point: Cadastral God-Images and the Politics of Scriptural Mediation Illustrating Samsara: Religious 'Recipes' for Making a Prosaic Lived World Performing Prosaic Tantra: Jhinjan Minjan Danigu's Animating Affect and Social Critique of Religious Experience Bringing a Forged Mandala to Life: The Cow Procession and the Improvisation of Cadastral Generative Matrixes Conclusion: Interrupted by Ornament: Looking Back at Prosaic Religion in Bhaktapur, Nepal

Grieve brings a refreshing new approach to the much-vexed question of the sorts of questions that one can ask of the logic of other peoples' rituals. He approaches the theoretical issues from the bottom up, by going there and talking to people, instead of writing his opinion in response to the opinions of other people here (or, for that matter, there). He has brought a particular inflection to the big generalizations, and this is a great relief. He knows a great deal about Bhaktapur, and his book about it is rich in data and persuasive insights. - Wendy Doniger, Mircea Eliade Professor of the History of Religions at the University of Chicago, and author of Other Peoples' Myths: The Cave of Echoes

Blending ethnographic detail from the field with critical and theoretically-inflS‹