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Papers by Stephen Christopher
Implicit Religion, 2024
This article analyzes the irreducibility of spiritual branding, theologies of self-divi... more This article analyzes the irreducibility of spiritual branding, theologies of self-divinity and the business practices of a global esoteric company. Based on fieldwork with the Modern Mystery School (MMS) in Tokyo, I show how initiates, by purchasing an ascending syllabus of esoteric courses, recognize their own divinity and parlay this recognition into a spiritual brand that helps them market to their own clientele niche. The spiritual transformation of recognizing one’s transcendent individual royalty is necessarily monetized as Adepts transition from paying clients to income-generating spiritual therapists. Parallel to this, top leadership have consciously fused MMS as an ancient hermetic lineage with a modern-day entertainment company, fashion company and lifestyle magazine. This has given MMS in Japan a recognizable public aesthetic which, combined with teachings about opposite but complementary Divine Masculinity and Femininity, advances gender normative ideologies often experienced by followers as spiritual alternativity. This article theorizes the intertwined relationship of other-worldly self-branding and this-worldly business acumen without reifying the binary between religion and economy or reducing meaningful spiritual transformation to corporate profit.
Implicit Religion, 2024
What are the co-making processes that blur the boundaries between religion and economy? How can w... more What are the co-making processes that blur the boundaries between religion
and economy? How can we move past misleading metaphors and
analogies that reify the false distinction between sacred and secular
or that frame religion as pure essences corrupted by financialization?
Inspired by McLaughlin et al.’s (2020) call for increased attention to the
“corporate form of religion,” we outline how common social structural
and aspirational elements undergird shared processes of both religionmaking
and corporation-making. Drawing on ethnographic and historical
data from contributing authors to this Special Issue, we hypothesize
that the reification of religion and business is context dependent, benefits
regimes of power, and is open to contestation; and that some intentional
communities, purposeful or not, have from their inception been understood
as neither religious nor corporate. We marshal global data from diverse
case studies to explore the modes of relatedness between religions
and corporations, on the one hand, and the context-specific boundarymaking
practices that reify a false binary, on the other.
Contemporary Buddhism, 2024
This article analyses how spiritual tourism and the corporate form of religion are contributing t... more This article analyses how spiritual tourism and the corporate form of religion are contributing to the rapid spread of Tibetan Buddhism in Vietnam. Specifically, we place the newly established Samten Hills, a Buddhist luxury resort, in two scholarly contexts. First: ecological discourses about Đà Lạt. Once a French hill station, Đà Lạt in the Central Highlands is famous for natural beauty and spiritual possibilities. Samten Hills is dedicated as a Drikung Kagyu spiritual area, and many of the resident monks are from Ladakh (North India). We highlight the transposition of Ladakhi Buddhist branding to a novel Vietnamese context. Through tour packages, advertising, spiritual practices, camping, and discourses about Buddhist mountain hierophanies, we consider this new iteration of spiritual tourism. Second: a spiritual business model that blurs the distinction between economic and religious activity and negotiates state surveillance. With Vietnam Federation of United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Associations (VFUA) and Guinness recognition and plans to construct a 2000-person Buddhist university, Samten Hills is the most public-facing, large-scale Vajrayana site in Southeast Asia. We analyse Samten Hills’ operational model – a for-profit business licence allied with discourses of heritage preservation and regional tourism initiatives but concealing Tibetan Buddhist practices – as an increasingly popular strategy for navigating state surveillance of religious activity.
Dictionary of Contemporary Esotericism. Brill Esotericism Reference Library, 2024
The Modern Mystery School The Modern Mystery School (MMS) is an esoteric seminar company that tra... more The Modern Mystery School The Modern Mystery School (MMS) is an esoteric seminar company that transmits the knowledge of King Salomon's unbroken lineage to followers who pay to advance through an ascending spiritual syllabus. It is arguably the world's most financialized contemporary magic order. In MMS self-fashioning, there are seven Mystery Schools in the world and MMS is the only one that advocates "no more secrets" and publicly recruits adepts. MMS, formerly known as the Rocky Mountain Mystery School (RMMS), was founded in 1997 by the Icelander Gudni Gudnason. His mytho-biography includes a childhood spent on the astral plane, an early adulthood in London studying Kabbalah, magic and alchemy in an underground bunker of the nineteenth-century British secret society the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (GD), and a sojourn to a remote Tibetan monastery (once the residence of Moses) where he studied martial arts and air-bending. Founder Gudni is a Sovereign Ipsissimus (a title derived from GD), a Guardian of the Holy Grail, an initiated Celtic Medicine Man, a Viking shaman, a Druid priest, a Knight Templar and an Egyptian high priest. His spiritual achievements are matched by secular ones, which in his public biography include being the recipient of several PhDs, an award-winning poet, philanthropist, actor, producer and co-founder of Aurora Borealis Entertainment Corporation.
Religious Studies in Japan, 2024
This article analyzes how the Modern Mystery School (MMS), a transnational business specializing ... more This article analyzes how the Modern Mystery School (MMS), a transnational business specializing in Western esotericism, has adapted to Japan’s spiritual landscape over the past two decades. Specific beliefs, practices, and social structures have been dialectically constructed at the West/East interface. Secret teachings in the lineage of King Salomon and Jesus Christ, closely aligned with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and the Theosophical Society, are now innovated in Tokyo and adapted to the Japanese marketplace of spiritual therapies. Although developed in Scandinavia and North America by the Icelandic founder Gudni Gudnason, the transnationalism of MMS calls into question the strict reification of Western esotericism. While MMS teachings promote a diffusionist model of Western esotericism as radiating to the East, the ethnographic picture is more complex. The innovations made by Founder Gudni to localize MMS cosmology in Japanese geography, and the agentive role of Japanese followers, are placed in the context of a group that is irreducibly both a for-profit business and a “spiritual path.” MMS remains one of the largest and most stable spiritual seminar companies in Japan. This article draws on fieldwork conducted between 2021–2023 with the permission of MMS leaders and consent from all interviewees in accordance with ethical standards for qualitative research.
Journal of Tribal Intellectual Collective India, 2023
This special issue bring together scholars and activists working at the intersections of tribal s... more This special issue bring together scholars and activists working at the intersections of tribal studies and ecology, drawing primarily from the fields of sustainability studies, political ecology and anthropology. Our contribution stems from a 2022 workshop, hosted at the University of Copenhagen’s Centre for Applied Ecological Thinking (CApE), which brought together academics and NGOs with varied backgrounds. Over three days, we discussed what we will here begin to call ‘tribal ecologies’ on contemporary India. In this introduction, we bring theoretical specificity to tribal ecologies and consider its applicability at different scales of analysis—from the local ethnographic encounters of tribal communities with the Indian state to the transnational mobilization of indigenous rights through international institutions. The goal is to carve out an emergent field of study that is equally applicable to academics and NGO practitioners working among tribal communities.
Journal of Tribal Intellectual Collective India, 2023
In this article, we extend the idea of tribal ecology outlined in the Introduction to a range of ... more In this article, we extend the idea of tribal ecology outlined in the Introduction to a range of contemporary ethnographic issues. Tribal ecology as an idea helps us to understand both the micro and macro-transformations of the contemporary climate crisis because it provides a window onto histories of ecological knowledge, cultural change, and agroecological adaptation. Tribal communities are often frontline communities in terms of their vulnerability to climate change impacts. They have also been direct subjects of developmental discourses going back to the imperial era. Accordingly, our contributions span multiple fields and epistemic perspectives, including an Indigenous sociological view, historical, anthropological, and the efforts of a Danish NGO (iiINTERest).
Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 2023
The Database of Religious History is a large-scale digital humanities project dedicated to captur... more The Database of Religious History is a large-scale digital humanities project dedicated to capturing scholarly perspectives on the history of religious groups across the globe. Analysis of the current state of the data shows a remarkable consistency between a taxonomic tree generated from the entries submitted by our expert contributors and larger assumptions within religious studies as they pertain to the similarities and differences between religious groups. Additionally, there is broad agreement between how experts answer questions and the tags they use to categorize their own entries, demonstrating a consistency between top-down and bottom-up approaches to describing religious groups. We see both of these results as affirming a commensurable understanding of the category of religion while demonstrating the value of these types of large-scale quantitative analyses for answering larger questions within the field.
HIMALAYA, 2023
This Introduction provides the first exhaustive overview of the range of ethnographic and histori... more This Introduction provides the first exhaustive overview of the range of ethnographic and historical research on Gaddis. Beginning with late 19th-century colonial efforts to pin down, in a manner characteristic of the period, the elusive structure of Gaddi society, we trace the trajectory of research in numerous Gaddi communities in western Himachal Pradesh over the last seventy years. We highlight several areas of substantial research at the intersection of politics, religion, gender and economy, and how these shape contemporary disputes about cultural identity. These disputes can be best summarized as the question: 'Who counts as a Gaddi?' Of course, the historic identity of Gaddis as the preeminent sheep and goat herding pastoralists of the region looms large, even as transhumant pastoralism itself declines, for herein lies the ideological roots of contemporary social divisions and exclusion. We also highlight how the diversity of ethnographic vantage points brought together in this Special Issue help to dispel lingering assumptions of Gaddi cultural and political uniformity across the region, as each in different ways illuminates the connections between Gaddis, their neighbors, and the state.
HIMALAYA, 2023
This article analyzes the tribal aspirations of Sippis, traditionally a wool shearing caste close... more This article analyzes the tribal aspirations of Sippis, traditionally a wool shearing caste closely associated with Gaddis. Sippis have different administrative classifications across three districts in Himachal Pradesh and Jammu. In most contexts, they self identify as part of the Gaddi tribe. In this regard, they are not alone; four other caste groups, partially integrated into Gaddi life, make similar claims of tribal belonging. They argue that Gaddis are a caste heterogeneous tribal community with entrenched forms of casteism and ritual exclusion. Some identify with the neologism "Scheduled Tribe Dalit" to reflect their intersectionality as both marginalized Dalits and tribal people. Sippis, however, demand tribal inclusion along different ideological lines, often de-emphasizing tribal casteism, and emphasizing status equivalence with Gaddi Rajputs and Brahmins. Sippis generally reject their subordination as landless peasants and unfree clients under patronage exploitation, a narrative central to many other self identifying Gaddi Dalits. In doing so, Sippis separate themselves from other Gaddi identifying caste groups as they appeal for Scheduled Tribe status in Kangra. Based on 22 months of fieldwork, I analyze the ideologies of Sippi exceptionalism in the domains of pilgrimage, ritual practice, vocational lifestyle, and belief. The widespread recognition of Sippis as the highest status group among Scheduled Caste Gaddis, both in terms of self stylization and tribal social acceptance, accounts for villages where lower status groups have legally changed their caste certificates to become Sippi. Attention to how reservation shapes spirituality has broader implications for the anthropology of affirmative action across South Asia.
Journal of Buddhist Ethics, 2023
The edited volume 'Buddhism under Capitalism' explores how global capitalism is the predominant m... more The edited volume 'Buddhism under Capitalism' explores how global capitalism is the predominant mode of economic relations structuring Buddhist institutions and practices. The lingering popularity of the image of the anti-materialistic monk meditating in solitude is supplanted by more ethnographic representations of how Buddhists are imbricated in daily life
and produce economic value. Buddhism as world-abnegating is replaced
with Buddhism as practices of everyday merit-making aimed at improving
the material conditions to advance the Dharma. Such a view theorizes Buddhist practices within different sociocultural and economic milieus and corrects a Western misconstrual of Buddhism as foremost a mindfulness philosophy.
Tibetan Review, 2023
In this article, we provide an overview to Samten Hills, which boasts the Guinness Record world’s... more In this article, we provide an overview to Samten Hills, which boasts the Guinness Record world’s largest Tibetan Prayer wheel. The spiritual resort was built for years in relative obscurity, outside of media attention. A mountain top in Lam Dong Province was cleared, official permissions were granted, South Asian artisans were invited to reproduce Tibetan monastic architecture, and Drikung Kagyu monks from Lamayuru Monastery in Ladakh were granted residency. It was only a few months before the inauguration in February and March 2023 that Samten Hills first released promotional videos and opened a website to register the inauguration events or to stay in the luxury villas or in tents scattered around the premises.
East Asian Journal of Popular Culture, 2023
Men have historically dominated the artistic production of cultural exotifications. This article ... more Men have historically dominated the artistic production of cultural exotifications. This article flips the script by analysing how two prominent female Japanese manga artists--Kuranishi and Shinsan Nameko--erotically illustrate Tibetan men, specifically Tibetan Buddhist monks. Through textual analysis and fieldwork conducted between 2019 and 2021, we show how their manga depictions of Tibetan young men, in particular monks, tend towards eroticization and sexual innuendo. This discursive and aesthetic trend in manga parallels ethnographic data on how Japanese women--facing unprecedented social precarity, seeking spiritual healing and self-transformation and desiring alternate masculinities--look elsewhere, outside of Japan and the perceived inadequacies of Japanese masculinities. We explore how liberative erotics, especially homoeroticism and love between boys, fuse with Buddhist and alternative spiritualities in yaoi and shōnen-ai genres and gesture towards a changing landscape of female desire.
Mapping Identity-Induced Marginalisation in India: Inclusion and Access in the Land of Unequal Opportunities, 2022
This chapter analyses how tribal casteism, black magic torment and state misrecognition shape Chr... more This chapter analyses how tribal casteism, black magic torment and state misrecognition shape Christian experience among a Scheduled Caste (SC) group called Hali. The lowest status group among Gaddis, a mixed-caste Scheduled Tribe (ST) in Himachal Pradesh, Halis face unique structural barriers as tribal-aspiring Dalits. They statistically trail high-caste Gaddis with respect to wealth, landownership, educational attainment and status employment. Denied ST reclassifications in Kangra, they are systematically outperformed in Himachal Pradesh's overly competitive SC quota. In several Chamba villages, they are residentially segregated on less arable and symbolically inferior downside land. They are prevented from entering some Gaddi temples or retaining lineage-based Brahmin family priests (kul purohit) to officiate over lifecycle and communal rituals. Thousands of Halis exist in bureaucratic limbo as officially registered Aryas, a legacy of early twentieth-century Arya Samaj conversions that not only failed to obliterate casteism but unintentionally stripped Halis of constitutionally mandated SC benefits. Hali traditional caste vocations-ploughing, removing animal carcasses and performing exorcisms-were hierarchically slotted as inferior to Gaddi Rajput shepherding. This led to communal restrictions on herding in sacred high-altitude Dhauladhar pasturelands dividing Chamba and Kangra. Compounding the absence of flock wealth, Halis lived subordinate to Gaddi Rajputs and Bhatt Brahmins within a system of unfree agricultural bondage (hāliprathā).
Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts, Cultural Histories, and Contemporary Contexts, 2022
The problem of tribal casteism – of Indian Scheduled Castes (SC) partially integrated into Schedu... more The problem of tribal casteism – of Indian Scheduled Castes (SC) partially
integrated into Scheduled Tribes (ST), facing discrimination without
constitutional protections as doubly subaltern – is nearly absent in
scholarship. The Halis of Kangra district, in the mountainous state of
Himachal Pradesh, are one such SC community. Although most identify
as Gaddi, the local tribe receiving coveted ST benefits, they are politically
misrecognized. Through house church ethnography, this article
explores how Hali sociopolitical liminality as tribal Dalits informs their
popular Protestantism. By closely attending to vernacular hermeneutics,
the sociopolitical context that shapes Hali textual ideologies, and
homiletic emphases on protection from malign Gaddi spirits, I argue that
Hali Protestants practise transgressive resignifications. The vocational
roots of Hali symbolic pollution (ploughing and exorcism) are proudly
reclaimed; Gaddi pastoralism, a contested terrain of caste exclusion, is
reimagined as privileging Halis; Christ as the ‘Giver of Help’ is invoked
as freedom from Gaddi spiritual affliction. These interpretive practices
parallel broader efforts to realign discursive and social power within the
Gaddi tribe.
International Journal of South Asian Studies, 2022
Popular images and scholarly analysis of Gaddis almost always focus on those living in Himachal P... more Popular images and scholarly analysis of Gaddis almost always focus on those living in Himachal Pradesh. Most Gaddis live in Bharmour, the tribal-reserved area of Chamba, with a migratory contingent settled in Kangra. Many differences resonate between Gaddis living in their tribal homeland and in Kangra—most politically salient, their distinct histories of tribal classification and the ongoing disenfranchisement of Scheduled Caste (SC) Gaddis from tribal recognition in Kangra. This article examines one such SC group, Sippis, who have three political classifications (SC, ST, STO) based on locality and are actively petitioning for a fourth category (STD). I focus on the experiences of Sippis in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), where the state government classifies Sippis as an independent tribe culturally allied but juridically distinct from Gaddis. I show how reservation categories and ethnoreligious Othering have redrawn aspects of Gaddi sociality and created novel conditions for tribal Dalit belonging.
Caste, COVID-19, and Inequalities of Care: Lessons from South Asia, 2022
This chapter analyses the positionality of Halis—former bonded labourers, ploughers and animal c... more This chapter analyses the positionality of Halis—former bonded
labourers, ploughers and animal carcass removers—who constitute the most subordinated Scheduled Caste (SC) community within the Gaddi tribal orbit. For many
Halis, the struggle for Scheduled Tribe (ST) recognition begins with legally undoing
their ancestral conversion to the Ayra Samaj. In the early twentieth century, many
Halis officially replaced their caste name with ‘Arya’ or ‘Gaddi Arya’ in the Revenue
Record in order to combat tribal casteism. For a time, they adopted the purifying techniques and caste-obliterating ideologies of the Arya Samaj. This strategy of upward caste mobility backfired, however, when Arya was classified as a forward caste and converted Halis were denied SC/ST benefits in the initial constitutional scheduling. Their official status as Aryas continues to deprive thousands of Halis of much-needed reservation protections. Through fieldwork data collected between 2014 and 16, I highlight the psychosocial anguish of many Halis as they waste inordinate amounts of time and resources bribing bureaucrats, negotiating with state administrators, excavating the archive for non-existent property documents, and being exploited by lawyers—all in the pursuit of restoring their Hali caste name to qualify for SC benefits. Many Halis—non-literate village scratch farmers—are defeated by feelings of worthlessness and inadequacy. Their struggle is further complicated by a desire to
ascend the escalator of state recognition from forward caste Aryas to SC Halis to
ST Gaddi Dalits. Based on 16 months of ethnographic fieldwork, I argue that state
(mis)recognition can drive marginalization and coarsen psychosocial wellbeing.
Caste, COVID-19, and Inequalities of Care: Lessons from South Asia, 2022
This book explores how identity-based discriminations contribute to health disparities and impede... more This book explores how identity-based discriminations contribute to health disparities and impede well-being. In doing so, it both draws from and extends the robust anthropological literature on how social suffering shapes health outcomes, specifically during the COVID-19 pandemic.
An entry on MMS for the Database of Religious History at the University of British Columbia
Social Science Journal Japan , 2021
Wadhwa’s monograph will be of interest to scholars of the Indian diaspora, the largest diaspora i... more Wadhwa’s monograph will be of interest to scholars of the Indian diaspora, the largest diaspora in the world. Although the diaspora is well researched in places like South Africa, Fiji, Mauritius, and the West (Vertovec 2000), there is a scholarly gap in our understanding of Indians in East Asia. It will also be of interest to anthropologists working on Japanese multiculturalism and the production of ethnic enclaves like the Little India in Tokyo’s Nishi-Kasai. Her analysis effectively avoids both victimising Indian diasporans as racialised minorities and over-exaggerating their ease of integration into a purportedly multicultural, immigrant nation. She avoids overstating Japanese heterogeneity and transparently reckons with the sense of lonely fatigue that Indians, and other struggling migrant communities, face when integrating into Japanese social life and work culture. Moreover, Wadhwa’s conversational writing style and emphasis on ethnographic description will appeal to undergraduate students. I have integrated her monograph into my Introduction to India syllabus at Tokyo Metropolitan University for next semester. As the sole English-language monograph on Indians in Japan, it is a vital resource for the next generation of scholarship. Much more remains to be said about how South Asians factor into the Japanese cultural imaginary and the intertwining possible futures of Japan and India.
Implicit Religion, 2024
This article analyzes the irreducibility of spiritual branding, theologies of self-divi... more This article analyzes the irreducibility of spiritual branding, theologies of self-divinity and the business practices of a global esoteric company. Based on fieldwork with the Modern Mystery School (MMS) in Tokyo, I show how initiates, by purchasing an ascending syllabus of esoteric courses, recognize their own divinity and parlay this recognition into a spiritual brand that helps them market to their own clientele niche. The spiritual transformation of recognizing one’s transcendent individual royalty is necessarily monetized as Adepts transition from paying clients to income-generating spiritual therapists. Parallel to this, top leadership have consciously fused MMS as an ancient hermetic lineage with a modern-day entertainment company, fashion company and lifestyle magazine. This has given MMS in Japan a recognizable public aesthetic which, combined with teachings about opposite but complementary Divine Masculinity and Femininity, advances gender normative ideologies often experienced by followers as spiritual alternativity. This article theorizes the intertwined relationship of other-worldly self-branding and this-worldly business acumen without reifying the binary between religion and economy or reducing meaningful spiritual transformation to corporate profit.
Implicit Religion, 2024
What are the co-making processes that blur the boundaries between religion and economy? How can w... more What are the co-making processes that blur the boundaries between religion
and economy? How can we move past misleading metaphors and
analogies that reify the false distinction between sacred and secular
or that frame religion as pure essences corrupted by financialization?
Inspired by McLaughlin et al.’s (2020) call for increased attention to the
“corporate form of religion,” we outline how common social structural
and aspirational elements undergird shared processes of both religionmaking
and corporation-making. Drawing on ethnographic and historical
data from contributing authors to this Special Issue, we hypothesize
that the reification of religion and business is context dependent, benefits
regimes of power, and is open to contestation; and that some intentional
communities, purposeful or not, have from their inception been understood
as neither religious nor corporate. We marshal global data from diverse
case studies to explore the modes of relatedness between religions
and corporations, on the one hand, and the context-specific boundarymaking
practices that reify a false binary, on the other.
Contemporary Buddhism, 2024
This article analyses how spiritual tourism and the corporate form of religion are contributing t... more This article analyses how spiritual tourism and the corporate form of religion are contributing to the rapid spread of Tibetan Buddhism in Vietnam. Specifically, we place the newly established Samten Hills, a Buddhist luxury resort, in two scholarly contexts. First: ecological discourses about Đà Lạt. Once a French hill station, Đà Lạt in the Central Highlands is famous for natural beauty and spiritual possibilities. Samten Hills is dedicated as a Drikung Kagyu spiritual area, and many of the resident monks are from Ladakh (North India). We highlight the transposition of Ladakhi Buddhist branding to a novel Vietnamese context. Through tour packages, advertising, spiritual practices, camping, and discourses about Buddhist mountain hierophanies, we consider this new iteration of spiritual tourism. Second: a spiritual business model that blurs the distinction between economic and religious activity and negotiates state surveillance. With Vietnam Federation of United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Associations (VFUA) and Guinness recognition and plans to construct a 2000-person Buddhist university, Samten Hills is the most public-facing, large-scale Vajrayana site in Southeast Asia. We analyse Samten Hills’ operational model – a for-profit business licence allied with discourses of heritage preservation and regional tourism initiatives but concealing Tibetan Buddhist practices – as an increasingly popular strategy for navigating state surveillance of religious activity.
Dictionary of Contemporary Esotericism. Brill Esotericism Reference Library, 2024
The Modern Mystery School The Modern Mystery School (MMS) is an esoteric seminar company that tra... more The Modern Mystery School The Modern Mystery School (MMS) is an esoteric seminar company that transmits the knowledge of King Salomon's unbroken lineage to followers who pay to advance through an ascending spiritual syllabus. It is arguably the world's most financialized contemporary magic order. In MMS self-fashioning, there are seven Mystery Schools in the world and MMS is the only one that advocates "no more secrets" and publicly recruits adepts. MMS, formerly known as the Rocky Mountain Mystery School (RMMS), was founded in 1997 by the Icelander Gudni Gudnason. His mytho-biography includes a childhood spent on the astral plane, an early adulthood in London studying Kabbalah, magic and alchemy in an underground bunker of the nineteenth-century British secret society the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (GD), and a sojourn to a remote Tibetan monastery (once the residence of Moses) where he studied martial arts and air-bending. Founder Gudni is a Sovereign Ipsissimus (a title derived from GD), a Guardian of the Holy Grail, an initiated Celtic Medicine Man, a Viking shaman, a Druid priest, a Knight Templar and an Egyptian high priest. His spiritual achievements are matched by secular ones, which in his public biography include being the recipient of several PhDs, an award-winning poet, philanthropist, actor, producer and co-founder of Aurora Borealis Entertainment Corporation.
Religious Studies in Japan, 2024
This article analyzes how the Modern Mystery School (MMS), a transnational business specializing ... more This article analyzes how the Modern Mystery School (MMS), a transnational business specializing in Western esotericism, has adapted to Japan’s spiritual landscape over the past two decades. Specific beliefs, practices, and social structures have been dialectically constructed at the West/East interface. Secret teachings in the lineage of King Salomon and Jesus Christ, closely aligned with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and the Theosophical Society, are now innovated in Tokyo and adapted to the Japanese marketplace of spiritual therapies. Although developed in Scandinavia and North America by the Icelandic founder Gudni Gudnason, the transnationalism of MMS calls into question the strict reification of Western esotericism. While MMS teachings promote a diffusionist model of Western esotericism as radiating to the East, the ethnographic picture is more complex. The innovations made by Founder Gudni to localize MMS cosmology in Japanese geography, and the agentive role of Japanese followers, are placed in the context of a group that is irreducibly both a for-profit business and a “spiritual path.” MMS remains one of the largest and most stable spiritual seminar companies in Japan. This article draws on fieldwork conducted between 2021–2023 with the permission of MMS leaders and consent from all interviewees in accordance with ethical standards for qualitative research.
Journal of Tribal Intellectual Collective India, 2023
This special issue bring together scholars and activists working at the intersections of tribal s... more This special issue bring together scholars and activists working at the intersections of tribal studies and ecology, drawing primarily from the fields of sustainability studies, political ecology and anthropology. Our contribution stems from a 2022 workshop, hosted at the University of Copenhagen’s Centre for Applied Ecological Thinking (CApE), which brought together academics and NGOs with varied backgrounds. Over three days, we discussed what we will here begin to call ‘tribal ecologies’ on contemporary India. In this introduction, we bring theoretical specificity to tribal ecologies and consider its applicability at different scales of analysis—from the local ethnographic encounters of tribal communities with the Indian state to the transnational mobilization of indigenous rights through international institutions. The goal is to carve out an emergent field of study that is equally applicable to academics and NGO practitioners working among tribal communities.
Journal of Tribal Intellectual Collective India, 2023
In this article, we extend the idea of tribal ecology outlined in the Introduction to a range of ... more In this article, we extend the idea of tribal ecology outlined in the Introduction to a range of contemporary ethnographic issues. Tribal ecology as an idea helps us to understand both the micro and macro-transformations of the contemporary climate crisis because it provides a window onto histories of ecological knowledge, cultural change, and agroecological adaptation. Tribal communities are often frontline communities in terms of their vulnerability to climate change impacts. They have also been direct subjects of developmental discourses going back to the imperial era. Accordingly, our contributions span multiple fields and epistemic perspectives, including an Indigenous sociological view, historical, anthropological, and the efforts of a Danish NGO (iiINTERest).
Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 2023
The Database of Religious History is a large-scale digital humanities project dedicated to captur... more The Database of Religious History is a large-scale digital humanities project dedicated to capturing scholarly perspectives on the history of religious groups across the globe. Analysis of the current state of the data shows a remarkable consistency between a taxonomic tree generated from the entries submitted by our expert contributors and larger assumptions within religious studies as they pertain to the similarities and differences between religious groups. Additionally, there is broad agreement between how experts answer questions and the tags they use to categorize their own entries, demonstrating a consistency between top-down and bottom-up approaches to describing religious groups. We see both of these results as affirming a commensurable understanding of the category of religion while demonstrating the value of these types of large-scale quantitative analyses for answering larger questions within the field.
HIMALAYA, 2023
This Introduction provides the first exhaustive overview of the range of ethnographic and histori... more This Introduction provides the first exhaustive overview of the range of ethnographic and historical research on Gaddis. Beginning with late 19th-century colonial efforts to pin down, in a manner characteristic of the period, the elusive structure of Gaddi society, we trace the trajectory of research in numerous Gaddi communities in western Himachal Pradesh over the last seventy years. We highlight several areas of substantial research at the intersection of politics, religion, gender and economy, and how these shape contemporary disputes about cultural identity. These disputes can be best summarized as the question: 'Who counts as a Gaddi?' Of course, the historic identity of Gaddis as the preeminent sheep and goat herding pastoralists of the region looms large, even as transhumant pastoralism itself declines, for herein lies the ideological roots of contemporary social divisions and exclusion. We also highlight how the diversity of ethnographic vantage points brought together in this Special Issue help to dispel lingering assumptions of Gaddi cultural and political uniformity across the region, as each in different ways illuminates the connections between Gaddis, their neighbors, and the state.
HIMALAYA, 2023
This article analyzes the tribal aspirations of Sippis, traditionally a wool shearing caste close... more This article analyzes the tribal aspirations of Sippis, traditionally a wool shearing caste closely associated with Gaddis. Sippis have different administrative classifications across three districts in Himachal Pradesh and Jammu. In most contexts, they self identify as part of the Gaddi tribe. In this regard, they are not alone; four other caste groups, partially integrated into Gaddi life, make similar claims of tribal belonging. They argue that Gaddis are a caste heterogeneous tribal community with entrenched forms of casteism and ritual exclusion. Some identify with the neologism "Scheduled Tribe Dalit" to reflect their intersectionality as both marginalized Dalits and tribal people. Sippis, however, demand tribal inclusion along different ideological lines, often de-emphasizing tribal casteism, and emphasizing status equivalence with Gaddi Rajputs and Brahmins. Sippis generally reject their subordination as landless peasants and unfree clients under patronage exploitation, a narrative central to many other self identifying Gaddi Dalits. In doing so, Sippis separate themselves from other Gaddi identifying caste groups as they appeal for Scheduled Tribe status in Kangra. Based on 22 months of fieldwork, I analyze the ideologies of Sippi exceptionalism in the domains of pilgrimage, ritual practice, vocational lifestyle, and belief. The widespread recognition of Sippis as the highest status group among Scheduled Caste Gaddis, both in terms of self stylization and tribal social acceptance, accounts for villages where lower status groups have legally changed their caste certificates to become Sippi. Attention to how reservation shapes spirituality has broader implications for the anthropology of affirmative action across South Asia.
Journal of Buddhist Ethics, 2023
The edited volume 'Buddhism under Capitalism' explores how global capitalism is the predominant m... more The edited volume 'Buddhism under Capitalism' explores how global capitalism is the predominant mode of economic relations structuring Buddhist institutions and practices. The lingering popularity of the image of the anti-materialistic monk meditating in solitude is supplanted by more ethnographic representations of how Buddhists are imbricated in daily life
and produce economic value. Buddhism as world-abnegating is replaced
with Buddhism as practices of everyday merit-making aimed at improving
the material conditions to advance the Dharma. Such a view theorizes Buddhist practices within different sociocultural and economic milieus and corrects a Western misconstrual of Buddhism as foremost a mindfulness philosophy.
Tibetan Review, 2023
In this article, we provide an overview to Samten Hills, which boasts the Guinness Record world’s... more In this article, we provide an overview to Samten Hills, which boasts the Guinness Record world’s largest Tibetan Prayer wheel. The spiritual resort was built for years in relative obscurity, outside of media attention. A mountain top in Lam Dong Province was cleared, official permissions were granted, South Asian artisans were invited to reproduce Tibetan monastic architecture, and Drikung Kagyu monks from Lamayuru Monastery in Ladakh were granted residency. It was only a few months before the inauguration in February and March 2023 that Samten Hills first released promotional videos and opened a website to register the inauguration events or to stay in the luxury villas or in tents scattered around the premises.
East Asian Journal of Popular Culture, 2023
Men have historically dominated the artistic production of cultural exotifications. This article ... more Men have historically dominated the artistic production of cultural exotifications. This article flips the script by analysing how two prominent female Japanese manga artists--Kuranishi and Shinsan Nameko--erotically illustrate Tibetan men, specifically Tibetan Buddhist monks. Through textual analysis and fieldwork conducted between 2019 and 2021, we show how their manga depictions of Tibetan young men, in particular monks, tend towards eroticization and sexual innuendo. This discursive and aesthetic trend in manga parallels ethnographic data on how Japanese women--facing unprecedented social precarity, seeking spiritual healing and self-transformation and desiring alternate masculinities--look elsewhere, outside of Japan and the perceived inadequacies of Japanese masculinities. We explore how liberative erotics, especially homoeroticism and love between boys, fuse with Buddhist and alternative spiritualities in yaoi and shōnen-ai genres and gesture towards a changing landscape of female desire.
Mapping Identity-Induced Marginalisation in India: Inclusion and Access in the Land of Unequal Opportunities, 2022
This chapter analyses how tribal casteism, black magic torment and state misrecognition shape Chr... more This chapter analyses how tribal casteism, black magic torment and state misrecognition shape Christian experience among a Scheduled Caste (SC) group called Hali. The lowest status group among Gaddis, a mixed-caste Scheduled Tribe (ST) in Himachal Pradesh, Halis face unique structural barriers as tribal-aspiring Dalits. They statistically trail high-caste Gaddis with respect to wealth, landownership, educational attainment and status employment. Denied ST reclassifications in Kangra, they are systematically outperformed in Himachal Pradesh's overly competitive SC quota. In several Chamba villages, they are residentially segregated on less arable and symbolically inferior downside land. They are prevented from entering some Gaddi temples or retaining lineage-based Brahmin family priests (kul purohit) to officiate over lifecycle and communal rituals. Thousands of Halis exist in bureaucratic limbo as officially registered Aryas, a legacy of early twentieth-century Arya Samaj conversions that not only failed to obliterate casteism but unintentionally stripped Halis of constitutionally mandated SC benefits. Hali traditional caste vocations-ploughing, removing animal carcasses and performing exorcisms-were hierarchically slotted as inferior to Gaddi Rajput shepherding. This led to communal restrictions on herding in sacred high-altitude Dhauladhar pasturelands dividing Chamba and Kangra. Compounding the absence of flock wealth, Halis lived subordinate to Gaddi Rajputs and Bhatt Brahmins within a system of unfree agricultural bondage (hāliprathā).
Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts, Cultural Histories, and Contemporary Contexts, 2022
The problem of tribal casteism – of Indian Scheduled Castes (SC) partially integrated into Schedu... more The problem of tribal casteism – of Indian Scheduled Castes (SC) partially
integrated into Scheduled Tribes (ST), facing discrimination without
constitutional protections as doubly subaltern – is nearly absent in
scholarship. The Halis of Kangra district, in the mountainous state of
Himachal Pradesh, are one such SC community. Although most identify
as Gaddi, the local tribe receiving coveted ST benefits, they are politically
misrecognized. Through house church ethnography, this article
explores how Hali sociopolitical liminality as tribal Dalits informs their
popular Protestantism. By closely attending to vernacular hermeneutics,
the sociopolitical context that shapes Hali textual ideologies, and
homiletic emphases on protection from malign Gaddi spirits, I argue that
Hali Protestants practise transgressive resignifications. The vocational
roots of Hali symbolic pollution (ploughing and exorcism) are proudly
reclaimed; Gaddi pastoralism, a contested terrain of caste exclusion, is
reimagined as privileging Halis; Christ as the ‘Giver of Help’ is invoked
as freedom from Gaddi spiritual affliction. These interpretive practices
parallel broader efforts to realign discursive and social power within the
Gaddi tribe.
International Journal of South Asian Studies, 2022
Popular images and scholarly analysis of Gaddis almost always focus on those living in Himachal P... more Popular images and scholarly analysis of Gaddis almost always focus on those living in Himachal Pradesh. Most Gaddis live in Bharmour, the tribal-reserved area of Chamba, with a migratory contingent settled in Kangra. Many differences resonate between Gaddis living in their tribal homeland and in Kangra—most politically salient, their distinct histories of tribal classification and the ongoing disenfranchisement of Scheduled Caste (SC) Gaddis from tribal recognition in Kangra. This article examines one such SC group, Sippis, who have three political classifications (SC, ST, STO) based on locality and are actively petitioning for a fourth category (STD). I focus on the experiences of Sippis in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), where the state government classifies Sippis as an independent tribe culturally allied but juridically distinct from Gaddis. I show how reservation categories and ethnoreligious Othering have redrawn aspects of Gaddi sociality and created novel conditions for tribal Dalit belonging.
Caste, COVID-19, and Inequalities of Care: Lessons from South Asia, 2022
This chapter analyses the positionality of Halis—former bonded labourers, ploughers and animal c... more This chapter analyses the positionality of Halis—former bonded
labourers, ploughers and animal carcass removers—who constitute the most subordinated Scheduled Caste (SC) community within the Gaddi tribal orbit. For many
Halis, the struggle for Scheduled Tribe (ST) recognition begins with legally undoing
their ancestral conversion to the Ayra Samaj. In the early twentieth century, many
Halis officially replaced their caste name with ‘Arya’ or ‘Gaddi Arya’ in the Revenue
Record in order to combat tribal casteism. For a time, they adopted the purifying techniques and caste-obliterating ideologies of the Arya Samaj. This strategy of upward caste mobility backfired, however, when Arya was classified as a forward caste and converted Halis were denied SC/ST benefits in the initial constitutional scheduling. Their official status as Aryas continues to deprive thousands of Halis of much-needed reservation protections. Through fieldwork data collected between 2014 and 16, I highlight the psychosocial anguish of many Halis as they waste inordinate amounts of time and resources bribing bureaucrats, negotiating with state administrators, excavating the archive for non-existent property documents, and being exploited by lawyers—all in the pursuit of restoring their Hali caste name to qualify for SC benefits. Many Halis—non-literate village scratch farmers—are defeated by feelings of worthlessness and inadequacy. Their struggle is further complicated by a desire to
ascend the escalator of state recognition from forward caste Aryas to SC Halis to
ST Gaddi Dalits. Based on 16 months of ethnographic fieldwork, I argue that state
(mis)recognition can drive marginalization and coarsen psychosocial wellbeing.
Caste, COVID-19, and Inequalities of Care: Lessons from South Asia, 2022
This book explores how identity-based discriminations contribute to health disparities and impede... more This book explores how identity-based discriminations contribute to health disparities and impede well-being. In doing so, it both draws from and extends the robust anthropological literature on how social suffering shapes health outcomes, specifically during the COVID-19 pandemic.
An entry on MMS for the Database of Religious History at the University of British Columbia
Social Science Journal Japan , 2021
Wadhwa’s monograph will be of interest to scholars of the Indian diaspora, the largest diaspora i... more Wadhwa’s monograph will be of interest to scholars of the Indian diaspora, the largest diaspora in the world. Although the diaspora is well researched in places like South Africa, Fiji, Mauritius, and the West (Vertovec 2000), there is a scholarly gap in our understanding of Indians in East Asia. It will also be of interest to anthropologists working on Japanese multiculturalism and the production of ethnic enclaves like the Little India in Tokyo’s Nishi-Kasai. Her analysis effectively avoids both victimising Indian diasporans as racialised minorities and over-exaggerating their ease of integration into a purportedly multicultural, immigrant nation. She avoids overstating Japanese heterogeneity and transparently reckons with the sense of lonely fatigue that Indians, and other struggling migrant communities, face when integrating into Japanese social life and work culture. Moreover, Wadhwa’s conversational writing style and emphasis on ethnographic description will appeal to undergraduate students. I have integrated her monograph into my Introduction to India syllabus at Tokyo Metropolitan University for next semester. As the sole English-language monograph on Indians in Japan, it is a vital resource for the next generation of scholarship. Much more remains to be said about how South Asians factor into the Japanese cultural imaginary and the intertwining possible futures of Japan and India.