scholarly journals Digressions on Polytropy: An Exploration of Religious Eclecticism in Eurasia

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 139-164
Author(s):  
Dionigi Albera
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
The South ◽  
Religious Orientations ◽  
Promising Tool ◽  
Opposite Pole ◽  
Abrahamic Religions ◽  
The Mediterranean

The anthropologist Michael Carrithers introduced the notion of polytropy in the field of the study of religion, proposing that this notion (deriving from the Greek poly, ‘many’, and tropos, ‘turning’) may account for the eclecticism and fluidity of South Asian religious life. The exploration effectuated in the article suggests that the notion of polytropy could offer a promising tool for capturing some important features of religiosity in other Asiatic contexts, too, as well as in the Mediterranean. Polytropic trends appear in different religious contexts, from the fuzzy Chinese situation, where religious affiliations are very limited in their scope and relevance, to the South Asian contexts, in which religious orientations coalesce around the multivocal concept of dharma, to the tightly structured Abrahamic religions in the Mediterranean with their strong confessionalism. Polytropy is associated with a practical mode of religiosity and is linked to a particular conception of believing in which the believer tends to multiply the transactions with different supra-mundane partners. This orientation is distinct from religious styles that are based on a discursive and scriptural approach and/or on the cultivation of oneself, which often display a tendency towards unity, coherence and continuity. This permits identifying an opposite pole with respect to polytropy, which I define as monotropy.

scholarly journals Ginān as Tafsīr Literature: The Exegetical Dimensions of a Tradition

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 88-107
Author(s):  
Stephen Cúrto
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
Central Element ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
The South ◽  
Congregational Life ◽  
Special Place ◽  
Devotional Life ◽  
Formed Part ◽  
Exegetical Tradition

The Ginān tradition form a special place in devotional and religious life in the Shia Imami Ismaili Tariqah. Ginānrecitations are ubiquitous in Ismā’īlī devotional life; played in homes, cars, and recited in Jamatkhana on auspicious religious occasions. Ginān recitation likewise comprise a central element of the congregational life of the Shia Imami Ismaili community within Jamā‘atKhāna. The vast corpus of the Ginān literature has long formed part of the spiritual heritage of the South-Asian Ismā’īlī community, and especially in Sindhi, Khoja and Gujarati South Asian communities. This study uses the genre of the Ginān to critically engage the boundary frameworks that can be considered tafsīrliterature and argues that the ginānic narrative are not only communal ‘liturgical’, but highly exegetical and theologically complex examples of a Subcontinent vernacular Shī’ī exegetical tradition.

Labels, Histories, Politics: Indian/South Asian Dance on the Global Stage

2008 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
AVANTHI MEDURI
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
First Century ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The South ◽  
Global Networks ◽  
Indian Nation ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Uk

In this paper, I discuss issues revolving around history, historiography, alterity, difference and otherness concealed in the doubled Indian/South Asian label used to describe Indian/South Asian dance genres in the UK. The paper traces the historical genealogy of the South Asian label to US, Indian and British contexts and describes how the South Asian enunciation fed into Indian nation-state historiography and politics in the 1950s. I conclude by describing how Akademi: South Asian Dance, a leading London based arts organisation, explored the ambivalence in the doubled Indian/South Asian label by renaming itself in 1997, and forging new local/global networks of communication and artistic exchange between Indian and British based dancers and choreographers at the turn of the twenty-first century.

Heritage

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Omar Shaikh ◽  
Stefano Bonino
Keyword(s):  
Facial Expressions ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Online Video ◽  
The South ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The Public ◽  
Video Footage ◽  
Community Heritage ◽  
Personal Accounts ◽  
The Way

The Colourful Heritage Project (CHP) is the first community heritage focused charitable initiative in Scotland aiming to preserve and to celebrate the contributions of early South Asian and Muslim migrants to Scotland. It has successfully collated a considerable number of oral stories to create an online video archive, providing first-hand accounts of the personal journeys and emotions of the arrival of the earliest generation of these migrants in Scotland and highlighting the inspiring lessons that can be learnt from them. The CHP’s aims are first to capture these stories, second to celebrate the community’s achievements, and third to inspire present and future South Asian, Muslim and Scottish generations. It is a community-led charitable project that has been actively documenting a collection of inspirational stories and personal accounts, uniquely told by the protagonists themselves, describing at first hand their stories and adventures. These range all the way from the time of partition itself to resettling in Pakistan, and then to their final accounts of arriving in Scotland. The video footage enables the public to see their facial expressions, feel their emotions and hear their voices, creating poignant memories of these great men and women, and helping to gain a better understanding of the South Asian and Muslim community’s earliest days in Scotland.

(Un)Settling Imagined Lands

2019 ◽  
pp. 174-208
Author(s):  
Kakali Bhattacharya
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Asian Women ◽  
South Asian Women ◽  
The South ◽  
Global North ◽  
Research Praxis ◽  
Global Agenda ◽  
Academic Discourses

De/colonial methodologies and ontoepistemologies have gained popularity in the academic discourses emerging from Global North perspectives over the last decade. However, such perspectives often erase the broader global agenda of de/colonizing research, praxis, and activism that could be initiated and engaged with beyond the issue of land repatriation, as that is not the only agenda in de/colonial initiatives. In this chapter, I coin a framework, Par/Des(i), with six tenets, and offer three actionable methodological turns grounded in transnational de/colonial ontoepistemologies. I locate, situate, and trace the Par/Des(i) framework within the South Asian diasporic discourses and lived realities as evidenced from my empirical work with transnational South Asian women, my community, and my colleagues. Therefore, I offer possibilities of being, knowing, and enacting de/colonizing methodologies in our work, when engaging with the Par/Des(i) framework, with an invitation for an expanded conversation.

scholarly journals Taxonomic revision of the South Asian River dolphins ( Platanista ): Indus and Ganges River dolphins are separate species

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gill T. Braulik ◽  
Frederick I. Archer ◽  
Uzma Khan ◽  
Mohammad Imran ◽  
Ravindra K. Sinha ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
Taxonomic Revision ◽  
Ganges River ◽  
The South ◽  
Separate Species

Insulating Peace: Managerial Coordination in Durable Security Complexes

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Konstantinos Travlos
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
Regional Security ◽  
Collective Intentionality ◽  
South American ◽  
Proof Of Concept ◽  
The South ◽  
Mapping Tool ◽  
Region I ◽  
The Face ◽  
Future Evaluation

Abstract I argue that insulation via managerial coordination is a key element in any explanation about the formation of political regions among states. The key role it plays is as a tool for the maintenance of intra-regional pacific relations in the face of diffusion and contagion processes, resulting from continued security linkages with excluded extra-regional states. In order to explore these dynamics, I propose a new reconceptualization of the concept of managerial coordination based on the basic framework concept mapping tool. This leads to clarity about what managerial coordination does as a dimension of insulation. It also necessitates a revamp of the scale of interstate managerial coordination as a measuring instrument of the intensity of collective intentionality toward insulation among the members of a region. I then map the region concept of durable security complex (DSC) as the scope for the enactment of managerial coordination, based on a review of existing region concepts in the new regionalist literature. I then conduct an ideographic proof-of-concept exercise on three DSCs in the presence or absence of managerial coordination. These are the Scandinavian states, the South Asian regional security complex, and the South American Norther Tier local hierarchy. The exercise provides indicators for a number of theoretical propositions worthy of future evaluation.

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