Cover: The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religion and Materiality by Vasudha Narayanan

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religion and Materiality

The Wiley Blackwell Companions to Religion series presents a collection of the most recent scholarship and knowledge about world religions. Each volume draws together newly commissioned essays by distinguished authors in the field, and is presented in a style which is accessible to undergraduate students, as well as scholars and the interested general reader. These volumes approach the subject in a creative and forward‐thinking style, providing a forum in which leading scholars in the field can make their views and research available to a wider audience..

Published

The Blackwell Companion to Judaism
Edited by Jacob Neusner and Alan J. Avery‐Peck

The Blackwell Companion to Sociology of Religion
Edited by Richard K. Fenn

The Blackwell Companion to the Hebrew Bible
Edited by Leo G. Perdue

The Blackwell Companion to Postmodern Theology
Edited by Graham Ward

The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism
Edited by Gavin Flood

The Blackwell Companion to Protestantism
Edited by Alister E. McGrath and Darren C. Marks

The Blackwell Companion to Modern Theology
Edited by Gareth Jones

The Blackwell Companion to Religious Ethics
Edited by William Schweiker

The Blackwell Companion to Christian Spirituality
Edited by Arthur Holder

The Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion
Edited by Robert A. Segal

The Blackwell Companion to the Qur’ān,Second Edition
Edited by Andrew Rippin

The Blackwell Companion to Contemporary Islamic Thought
Edited by Ibrahim M. Abu‐Rabi‛

The Blackwell Companion to the Bible and Culture
Edited by John F. A. Sawyer

The Blackwell Companion to Catholicism
Edited by James J. Buckley, Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt,and Trent Pomplun

The Blackwell Companion to Eastern Christianity
Edited by Ken Parry

The Blackwell Companion to the Theologians
Edited by Ian S. Markham

The Blackwell Companion to the Bible in English Literature
Edited by Rebecca Lemon, Emma Mason, John Roberts, and Christopher Rowland

The Blackwell Companion to the New Testament
Edited by David E. Aune

The Blackwell Companion to Nineteenth Century Theology
Edited by David Fergusson

The Blackwell Companion to Religion in America
Edited by Philip Goff

The Blackwell Companion to Jesus
Edited by Delbert Burkett

The Blackwell Companion to Paul
Edited by Stephen Westerholm

The Blackwell Companion to Religion and Violence
Edited by Andrew R. Murphy

The Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics,Second Edition
Edited by Stanley Hauerwas and Samuel Wells

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Pastoral Theology
Edited by Bonnie J. Miller McLemore

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religion and Social Justice
Edited by Michael D. Palmer and Stanley M. Burgess

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Chinese Religions
Edited by Randall L. Nadeau

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to African Religions
Edited by Elias Kifon Bongmba

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Christian Mysticism
Edited by Julia A. Lamm

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to the Anglican Communion
Edited by Ian S. Markham, Barney Hawkins IV, Leslie Nuñez Steffensen and Justyn Terry

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Interreligious Dialogue
Edited by Catherine Cornille

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to East and Inner Asian Buddhism
Edited by Mario Poceski

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Latino/a Theology
Edited by Orlando O. Espín

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Ancient Israel
Edited by Susan Niditch

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Patristics
Edited by Ken Parry

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to World Christianity
Edited by Lamin Sanneh and Michael J. McClymond

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Politics and Religion in America
Edited by Barbara A. McGraw

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religion and Ecology
Edited by John Hart

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Political Theology,Second Edition
Edited by William T. Cavanaugh and Peter Scott

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religion and Materiality
Edited by Vasudha Narayanan

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Wisdom Literature
Edited by Samuel L Adams and Matthew Goff

The Wiley Blackwell Concise Companion to the Hadith
Edited by Daniel W. Brown

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Christian Martyrdom
Edited by Paul Middleton

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Zoroastrianism
Edited by Michael Stausberg and Yuhan Vevaina Forthcoming

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Islamic Spirituality
Edited by Vincent J. Cornell and Bruce B. Lawrence

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religious Diversity
Edited by Kevin Schilbrack

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Christianity, 2 Vols.
Edited by Nicholas A. Adams

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to the Old Testament Apocrypha & Pseudepigrapha
Edited by Randall D. Chesnutt

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion, Second Edition
Edited by Robert Segal

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religion and Materiality

Edited by

Vasudha Narayanan




No alt text required.

Acknowledgments

This volume is a product of several scholars who have all worked in the field of religion and materiality for a very long time. We wanted to collectively come up with a volume where the chapters have analytical depth and the book as a whole would have comparative breadth, cover multiple traditions, geographical foci, and time periods, in addition to showcasing diverse expressions of religious materiality. The result has been a set of chapters where the topics have been carefully researched, rigorously analyzed, and presented through a wide array of disciplinary lenses.

It is a pleasure to thank the many people who have made the production of this volume possible. Several people at Wiley helped in seeing this book through its many stages. I am particularly grateful to Rebecca Harkin for initially suggesting this idea, to Juliet Booker for all continued help, and to Rajalakshmi Nadarajan for her efficient and professional attention to all the details and diligent work in the last stages of the production.

Manuel Vásquez did the heavy lifting for the editorial work when the chapters started to come in. He has also written the introduction, highlighting the contributions of each chapter and skillfully connecting them with the cutting‐edge theoretical and methodological debates informing the turn to materiality in religious studies and, more broadly, in the humanities and social sciences. And finally, a big “thank you” to the many authors in this volume for their scholarship and for their patience during the several years it took to see this volume come out.

Vasudha Narayanan
Distinguished Professor, Religion
University of Florida

About the Editor

Vasudha Narayanan is Distinguished Professor of Religion at the University of Florida and a past President of the American Academy of Religion. She is an associate editor of the six‐volume Brill’s Encyclopedia of Hinduism (2009–2014). Her publications include numerous articles as well as several books namely The Vernacular Veda: Revelation, Recitation, and Ritual (1994), The Life of Hinduism (co‐edited with John Stratton Hawley, 2007), and Hinduism (2009). Her research has been supported by the John Simon Guggenheim Foundatiion; the Centre for Khmer Studies; the American Council of Learned Societies; National Endowment for the Humanities; the American Institute of Indian Studies/Smithsonian; and the Social Science Research Council.

Notes on Contributors

Nathaniel F. Barrett is a research fellow at the Institute of Culture and Society, University of Navarra (Pamplona, Spain). His current research focuses on the nature and evolution of affect, motivation, and enjoyment.

Jessica A. Boon Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, specializes in late medieval and early modern Christian culture, particularly Iberian spirituality and mysticism 1450–1550. Her first monograph is The Mystical Science of the Soul: Medieval Cognition in Bernardino de Laredo's Recollection Mysticism (University of Toronto Press, 2012). She publishes on Spanish mysticism, the history of science and spirituality, Passion devotion, Mariology, and theories of gender, pain, affect, materiality, and embodiment.

Thomas S. Bremer Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Rhodes College, is a historian of religions in the Americas. Much of his published work has focused on religion and tourism. His most recent book is Formed from This Soil: An Introduction to the Diverse History of Religion in America (Wiley, 2014).

Heidi A. Campbell is Professor of Communication and affiliate faculty in Religious Studies at Texas A&M University. She is director of the Network for New Media, Religion and Digital Culture Studies and author of over 90 articles and books on new media, religion, and digital culture including When Religion Meets New Media (Routledge 2010), Digital Religion (Routledge 2013) and Networked Theology (Baker Academic 2016).

David Carrasco is a Mexican‐American historian of religions who explores the question ‘Where is your sacred place’ in his research and writing on Mesoamerican cultures and the Mexican‐American borderlands. His studies with Mircea Eliade, Charles Long, and Paul Wheatley led him to study the rise of primary urban generation in Mesoamerica and the role of ceremonial centres in the Aztec empire and their transformations during the Gran Encuentro with Spanish imperialism between 1517 and 1810. He is the director of the Moses Mesoamerican Archive at Harvard University and the recipient of the Mexican Order of the Aztec Eagle.

Simon Coleman is Chancellor Jackman Professor at the University of Toronto, and co‐editor of the journal Religion and Society: Advances in Research. His research interests include Pentecostalism, pilgrimage, cathedrals, urban religion, and religious infrastructures, and he has carried out fieldwork in Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Nigeria. Recent books include The Anthropology of Global Pentecostalism and Evangelicalism (2015, NYU Press, co‐edited with Rosalind Hackett) and Pilgrimage and Political Economy (2018, Berghahn, co‐edited with John Eade).

Louise Connelly is a Senior E‐Learning Developer at the University of Edinburgh. Her research interests include social media, virtual worlds, and Buddhist communities and identity online. Her publications include ‘Virtual Buddhism: Buddhist Ritual in Second Life’ in Digital Religion: Understanding Religious Practice in New Media Worlds, H. Campbell (ed.) (Routledge, 2013) and ‘Virtual Buddhism: Online Communities, Sacred Places and Objects’ in The Changing World Religion Map, S. Brunn (ed.) (Springer, 2015).

John Eade is Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Roehampton, Visiting Professor at Toronto University and a member of the Migration Research Unit, UCL. His research interests focus on urban ethnicity, identity politics, global migration and pilgrimage. Relevant publications include the co‐edited volumes Contesting the Sacred (1991), Reframing Pilgrimage (2004), International Perspectives on Pilgrimage Studies (2015), and New Pathways in Pilgrimage Studies (2017).

Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger is Professor of Religion in the Department of Religion at Emory University. Her theoretical interests include performance, vernacular religion, and gender. She received a John Simon Guggenheim and Summer National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships in 2014–2015 to support research and writing for her book Material Acts in Everyday Hindu Worlds (in press, SUNY Press). Her publications include: an introductory textbook, Everyday Hinduism (2015); When the World Becomes Female: Possibilities of a South Indian Goddess (2013); In Amma's Healing Room: Gender and Vernacular Islam in South India (2006); Gender and Genre in the Folklore of Middle India (1996); and two edited volumes, Oral Epics in India (1989) and Boundaries of the Text: Epic Performances in South and Southeast Asia (1991).

Banu Gökarıksel is Associate Professor of Geography and Global Studies and the Royster Distinguished Professor at the Graduate School of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She served as the co‐editor of the Journal of Middle East Women's Studies (2014–2018) and is the recipient of the 2018 American Association of Geographers Enhancing Diversity Award and the 2017 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Chapman Family Teaching Award. Her research analyses the politics of everyday life and questions of religion, secularism, and gender with a focus on bodies and urban space.

Rosalind I.J. Hackett is Distinguished Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Tennessee. In fall 2018, she was the Gerardus van der Leeuw Fellow, Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Groningen. Her recent (co‐edited) books are Displacing the State: Religion and Conflict in Neoliberal Africa (2012), New Media and Religious Transformations in Africa (2015), and The Anthropology of Global Pentecostalism and Evangelicalism (2015). She is an Honorary Life Member of the International Association for the History of Religions (IAHR).

Knut A. Jacobsen is Professor of the Study of Religions at the University of Bergen, Norway and author and editor of many books and numerous articles in journals and edited volumes on Sāṃkhya and Yoga, and on various aspects on religions of South Asia and in the South Asian diasporas. He is the author of Prakṛti in Sāṃkhya‐Yoga: Material Principle: Religious Experience, Ethical Implications (Peter Lang, 1999), Kapila: Founder of Sāṃkhya and Avatāra of Viṣṇu (Munshiram Manoharlal, 2008), Pilgrimage in the Hindu Tradition: Salvific Space (Routledge, 2013), and Yoga in Modern Hinduism: Hariharānanda Āraṇya and Sāṃkhyayoga (Routledge, 2018) and editor of Routledge Handbook of Contemporary India (Routledge, 2016). Jacobsen is the founding Editor‐in‐Chief of the six volumes Brill's Encyclopedia of Hinduism (Brill, 2009–2015) and the Brill's Encyclopedia of Hinduism Online.

Greg Johnson is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Johnson’s research focuses upon the intersection of Indigenous traditions and law in American Indian and Native Hawaiian contexts. Recent publications include Sacred Claims: Repatriation and Living Tradition (University of Virginia Press 2007), Handbook of Indigenous Religion(s) (Brill 2017), edited with Siv Ellen Kraft, and Irreverence and the Sacred: Critical Studies in the History of Religions (Oxford 2018), edited with Hugh B. Urban.

Paul Christopher Johnson is Professor of History and of Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan, and Co‐Editor of the journal, Comparative Studies in Society and History. He wrote Secrets, Gossip, and Gods: The Transformation of Brazilian Candomblé (Oxford 2002), Diaspora Conversions: Black Carib Religion and the Recovery of Africa (California 2007), and Ekklesia: Three Inquiries on Church and State (Chicago 2018), with Winnifred F. Sullivan and Pamela E. Klassen, and edited Spirited Things: The Work of ‘Possession’ in Afro‐Atlantic Religions (Chicago 2014). He is completing a new book, Automatic Religion: Nearhuman Agents of Brazil and France.

Sylvester A. Johnson is Associate Professor of African American Studies and Religious Studies at Northwestern University. He researches religion, race, empire, and sexuality in the Atlantic world and the relationship between humans and intelligent machines. He recently authored African American Religions, 1500–2000: Colonialism, Democracy, and Freedom (Cambridge University Press 2015).

Harshita Mruthinti Kamath is Visweswara Rao and Sita Koppaka Assistant Professor in Telugu Culture, Literature and History at Emory University. Her research focuses on the textual and performance traditions of Telugu‐speaking South India in conversation with theoretical discourses on gender and sexuality in South Asia. She is the author of Impersonations: The Artifice of Brahmin Masculinity in South Indian Dance (2019). She has also co‐translated the sixteenth‐century classical Telugu text Parijatapaharanamu (Theft of a Tree) with Velcheru Narayana Rao, which will be published as part of the Murty Classical Library of India (Harvard University Press).

Gwynn Kessler is an Associate Professor in the Department of Religion at Swarthmore College. She is the author of Conceiving Israel: The Fetus in Rabbinic Narratives, and she is currently working on a monograph about queer theory and rabbinic literature.

David Morgan is Professor of Religious Studies at Duke University. He is author of several books, including The Forge of Vision: A Visual History of Modern Christianity (2015), The Sacred Gaze (2005), and Visual Piety (1998). He is an editor of the journal Material Religion, and co‐edits a book series on ‘Research in Material Religion’ published by Bloomsbury. His latest book is Images at Work: The Material Culture of Enchantment (2018).

Anne Murphy is Associate Professor in the Department of Asian Studies and co‐Director, Centre for India and South Asia Research, at the University of British Columbia. Her research concerns the vernacular literary and religious traditions of the Punjab region (India and Pakistan) in the early modern and modern periods, with a current focus on the history of the Punjabi language and its cultural production. Past research has addressed memory, history and representation; trauma and representation; material culture and its intersection with textual representations; and religious cultures in interaction.

Patrick Olivelle is Professor Emeritus, University of Texas at Austin and past President of the American Oriental Society. The author of over 30 books and 50 articles, his books have won awards from the American Academy of Religion and the Association of Asian Studies. His major publications include: Hindu Law: A New History of Dharmaśāstra (2018), Reader on Dharma: Classical Indian Law (2016), King, Governance, and Law in Ancient India (2013), Viṣṇu's Code of Law (2009), The Life of the Buddha (2008), Manu's Code of Law (2005), Upaniṣads (1996), and Ārama System (1993).

Kevin Lewis O'Neill is a Professor in the Department for the Study of Religion and Director of the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies at the University of Toronto. He is the author of City of God (California 2010), Secure the Soul (California 2015), and Hunted (Chicago 2019).

Terje Østebø received his Ph.D. in the History of Religion from Stockholm University, and is currently the Chair of the Department of Religion and an Associate Professor at the Center for African Studies and the Department of Religion, University of Florida. His research interests are Islam in contemporary Ethiopia, Islam, politics, and Islamic reformism in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa, as well as Salafism in Africa. He has lived in Ethiopia for six years, and has extensive field‐research experience. Important publications include: Muslim Ethiopia: The Christian Legacy, Identity Politics, and Islamic Reformism (co‐edited with Patrick Desplat), (Palgrave‐Macmillan 2013); Localising Salafism: Religious Change among Oromo Muslims in Bale, Ethiopia (Brill 2012)

Elaine A. Peña is an Associate Professor of American Studies at the George Washington University. She is currently a Visiting Scholar in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. Her research has been published widely in journals such as e‐misférica, American Literary History, and The Drama Review. She is the author of Performing Piety: Making Space Sacred with the Virgin of Guadalupe and the editor of Ethno‐Techno: Writings on Performance, Activism, and Pedagogy with Guillermo Gómez‐Peña.

Anna L. Peterson is a Professor in the Department of Religion at the University of Florida. Her research and teaching areas include social, environmental, and animal ethics. Her recent books include Being Human: Beasts and Boundaries in Nature Ethics (Columbia, 2013) and the edited volume Religion and Ecological Crisis: The Lynn White Thesis at 50 (Routledge, 2016). Her most recent book is Cats and Conservationists: The Debate Over Who Owns the Outdoors, co‐authored with Dara Wald (Purdue 2020). Her current research explores the place of practice in ethical theory.

Andrea Marion Pinkney is an Associate Professor at McGill University, in Montreal. Her current research interests include infrastructure and religious tourism in India, Hindu scriptural heritage in contemporary India (Uttarakhand māhātmya); and prasāda in the classical and contemporary religious traditions of North India. Her other research interests include Sikh Studies, contemporary Buddhism in Southeast Asia, and religious studies as an academic discipline in Asia.

S. Brent Plate is a writer, editor, and part time college professor whose books include A History of Religion in 5½ Objects, Blasphemy: Art that Offends, and Religion and Film: Cinema and the Re‐Creation of the World. His essays have been published in Newsweek.com, The Christian Century, The Islamic Monthly, and elsewhere. He is President of the Association for Religion and Intellectual Life/ Crosscurrents, and holds a visiting appointment at Hamilton College, NY.

Kay A. Read Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies (DePaul University), holds degrees in Art (University of Illinois, 1969), Religious Studies (University of Colorado, 1982); and History of Religions (University of Chicago, 1983, 1991). Her interests include Mesoamerican cosmology, mythology, imagery, sacrifice, time, comparative ethics and the interface of religion, nature and culture.

Steven J. Rosen (Satyaraja Dasa) is a practitioner/scholar and an internationally acclaimed author. He is the founding editor of the Journal of Vaishnava Studies and associate editor of Back to Godhead magazine. His 30‐plus books include Essential Hinduism (Rowman & Littlefield), Krishna's Other Song: A New Look at the Uddhava Gita (Praeger‐Greenwood); and Sri Chaitanya's Life and Teachings: The Golden Avatara of Divine Love (Lexington Books).

Victoria L. Rovine is Professor of Art History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research focuses on clothing and textiles in Africa, with particular attention to innovations in forms and meanings across cultures. She has published two books: Bogolan: Shaping Culture through Cloth in Contemporary Mali (Indiana University Press, 2008), and African Fashion, Global Style: Histories, Innovations, and Ideas You Can Wear (Indiana University Press, 2015). Her current research is focused on colonial‐era French West Africa.

A. Whitney Sanford is a professor in the Religion Department at the University of Florida. She is currently conducting ethnographic research on the Florida rivers, exploring human attachment to place and water, for a book tentatively entitled ‘River People of Florida’. Her books include Living Sustainably: What Intentional Communities Can Teach Us About Democracy, Simplicity, and Nonviolence (University Press of Kentucky, 2017), Growing Stories from India: Religion and the Fate of Agriculture (University Press of Kentucky, 2012) and Singing Krishna: Sound Becomes Sight in Paramanand's Poetry (SUNY 2008).

Anna J. Secor is Professor of Geography at the University of Kentucky. Her research focuses on theories of space, politics, and subjectivity. She is author of over 30 articles and book chapters. Her work develops ideas of topology in geography by engaging the texts of Lacan, Deleuze, and Agamben. Her research on Islam, state, and society in Turkey has been funded by the National Science Foundation. Recently, she has completed a collaborative NSF‐funded project with Banu Gökarıksel (UNC) on the production and consumption of Islamic fashions in Turkey, and currently she and Gökarıksel are collaborating on another NSF‐funded project on the role of religion in public life in Turkey.

Manuel A. Vásquez is an independent scholar who has published extensively in the fields of religion in the Americas, globalization, transnational migration, and method and theory. His works include The More than Belief: A Materialist Theory of Religion (2011), which has been the focus of symposia in Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Religion, and Religion and Society: Advances in Research.

Robin M. Wright is associate professor in the Department of Religion at the University of Florida. Research and fieldwork have focused on Indigenous religious traditions in South America and more broadly, the Americas and the world. He is the author of Mysteries of the Jaguar Shamans of the Northwest Amazon (2013) and Cosmos, Self, and History in Baniwa Religion: For Those Unborn (1998).