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2025, Material Religion

A critical review of Michael Amoruso’s Moved by the Dead, exploring how devotional practices to the souls of the dead mediate memory, race, and urban precarity in São Paulo. The book contributes to debates on material religion and... more

2025

When, in the 1940s, J. E Holleman, the first professional anthropologist to study the Shona, investigated their kinship system, he drew up a chart: 'My informants were having an argument about the proper term of address for a certain remote relative, and finally suggested one that did not fit the total set-up because it obviously clashed with the broad principles of classification which had clearly emerged from my half-filled diagrams. 'That woman can't be your 'mother',' I corrected the spokesman, 'because you say 'wife' to her brother's daughter. Surely, you can play with her and marry her if you want to?' They looked at me with incredulity. A! . . . A! . . . how did I know that? I showed them my diagrams and recalled the clan-names of the woman which I had recorded a few minutes before. There was no error

2025, Material Religion 21(2)

In discerning the universal survey museum, Carol Duncan and A. Wallach argue that “the primary function of a museum is ideological as it is meant to impress upon those who use or pass through the society’s most revered beliefs and values” (Duncan and Wallach 1980, 448). They further suggest that museums embody and make the idea of the “state” visible. This aspect is best reflected in national museums, where the variable of what constitutes an “ideal state” is materialized by selecting and arranging the museum’s collection and works of art to best suit the nationalist discourse upheld and propagated by the ruling regime. This strategic disposition of art and knowledge dictates, to a certain extent, the visitor’s experience as a script organizes a performance, almost like a religious ritual in both form and content. By examining the reception history of Buddhism at the National Museum in New Delhi, I aim to demonstrate how museums can serve as spaces that accommodate both hegemonic narratives and counter-narratives while employing the same ritualistic tools and practices.

2025

The experience of a religious ideal through flesh and blood is studied within the field of hagiography, delineating holy figures as they pertain to specific religious traditions. The most numerous primary source used by scholars to understand the significance, role, and purpose of holy figures is overwhelmingly literary. The visual culture of holy figures has traditionally been sidelined in the field, considering objects as secondary sources or not at all. I argue that this hinders full consideration of holy figures, requiring a new heuristic vernacular. Under a phenomenological eye, this paper proposes a schema specific to hagiographic visual culture. The traditional interpretive framework proposed by Panofsky is limited within the field of hagiography. This paper first considers David Dubuission, Brigit Meyer, and Christoph Uehilinger to argue for a necessary shift from art history to visual culture within comparative religious research. The paper then applies Scott Kugle’s discussion of Farīd al-Zahi’s phenomenological schema of the body to hagiographic visual culture as scaffolding to the proposed schema. A new schema is constructed with concentric spheres delineated as metaphysical, spirituality, latent occult, and active occult as dimensions. These denotations encapsulate the materiality, belief structure, and the potential for thaumaturgical activity within a hagiographic object respectively. Each dimension is defined as it relates to specific functions of hagiographic culture, carefully considering saintly embodiment, memory, and social negotiations that transcend spatial temporal boundaries. This schema is then applied to the Hagia Sophia through Bissera V Pentcheva’s multi-sensory analysis and Anthony K. Cassell’s discussion of Saint Lucy’s iconography.

2025, Religion and Society

This article foregrounds transcendence and its definitions to formalize the term's value as a viable analytic for anthropology. It notes the proliferation of transcendences (plural) in anthropological literature and proposes a working typology of transcendence that recognizes the different scales within analysis on which transcendence is being used. Drawing upon this scalar-aware typology, it reviews existing scholarship in the field of anthropology of material religion, characterized by a detailed theoretical treatment of transcendence. Finally, this article redraws attention to the situatedness of transcendence in the history of anthropology and its attendant Christian legacy, in other words the scale of anthropology itself. It concludes that the most promising value of transcendence as an analytic lies in attending to the tensions between different scales in analysis.

2025, Journeys: International Journal of Travel and Travel Writing

The title alludes to the familiar Protestant hymn, whose imperial reach stretches from the Arctic to the Equator, from a Danish colony to a British one. Rhetorically, the hymn's 'inverted apostrophe' is extended by anaphora: these lands are not addressed by us, as 'O Greenland, O India'; rather, they and their barbaric people call us; they solicit our colonial attentions: From Greenland's icy mountains, From India's coral strand, Where Afric's sunny fountains Roll down their golden sand; From many an ancient river, From many a palmy plain, They call us to deliver Their land from error's chain.

2025, Ahmed Shabin

Perumal Murugan is an acclaimed Indian novelist, essayist, and poet who writes in the Tamil language. He has been hailed by readers and critics for his excellent storytelling, attention to detail, and representations of the brutal realities of the rural agrarian communities of Kongu Nadu. 2 Despite the whirlpool of controversies and threats that surrounded Murugan's life and writings, nothing has deluded him from his commitment to use writing as a weapon to expose social inequalities. The present interview revolves around the role of food in his creative works. It includes a discussion of the various culinary traditions and food paradigms of his ancestral village, the reverence for food and environment amongst agrarian communities, the difference that food preferences create amongst people, and the arrival of fast-food culture in Tamil Nadu due to globalization. While the interview discusses a range of literary works, it mainly focuses on Murugan's memoir Amma, where he recollects the cherished food memories of his childhood and also of his mother, whose values and love for cooking have shaped both his identity and culinary preferences. Murugan's narrativizing of these memories through various creative forums has enabled what David Sutton calls "prospective memory", a process of how people plan to remember meals and what they taste like for the future (163).

2025, Zhongguo Kuangye Daxue Xuebao

This paper is focused on how common cultural space in village of Nepal is utilized by different cultural, religious, social and ethnic or caste group for different performances by the villagers in different time is best explained. How these diverse performances in complex, multiplex Nepalese societies have significant role to maintain the diversity, differences, inequalities for the welfare, cooperation, harmony through the interactions, socializations to reduce the gap between the contradict, conflicting societies. The role of such rituals, feast and festivals to resolve the disorder, conflict and misunderstanding as mechanism, events and act or activities of everyday life of the people in the study area, were found very significant. Eight different common cultural spaces were selected as the case study for ethnographic study from each ward. Three level analysis; family community and society indicated that Khotehang villagers have used the common cultural spaces for religious, social, political, economic etc by different communities, at different time can maintain the harmony, cooperation, unity and respect from one to another with religious syncritized, culturally melted and socially accepted and psychologically dignified identity with each other sounds the good example for all diverged, multiplexed and complex society in this world. From the idea of "religion is the Opium of the masses" to "religion is the societal glue of the society" to "religious ritual provide the common spaces for diverse believers" can be visualized clearly with the help of theoretical preposition of structuralism, functionalism, symbolism, interactionism, interpretativism of various contributors form Emile Durkheim to Red Cliff Brown, Malinowski, Clifford, Geertz, to Turner to Sherry Ortner.

2025, Edinburgh University Press

How would a switch from the inner to the outer, from the inwardness to the surface, from the habitus to the haptic alter our anthropological thinking about Islam? How do micro matters permeate the terrain of Shiʿi women’s religious practice and Iran’s contemporary politics? Women, Martyrs and Stones in Iran's Post-War Politics explores the haptic relations that connect mothers and wives of the fallen soldiers of the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88) to their sons and husbands as martyrs. They have played a crucial role in the legitimation discourse of the Iranian state and transformed the very grounds on which religious nationalist and statist projects can be envisioned and practiced. Mourning mothers of martyrs covered in black veils have not only been integrated into a state-revering cult, but have incorporated their conduct into state’s apparatus. This book takes the reader on a journey from women’s dreamworld to their practices of intercession in cemeteries and former battlefields to show material and affective exposures in crafting relics.

2025, Secular Studies 7 (2025) 302-323

What does secularity feel like when blown through the air rather than designated by state secularism? How does dust-wind unsettle the distinction between religion and politics? This article places dust-wind at the centre of an ethnographic engagement with material effects and affective resonances that shape the problem-space of secularism in Iran. In the past decade, the eruption of dust-winds across the Iran-Iraq borderlands has drastically impacted people's relations with their environment: in religious discourse, dust undergirds various modes of veneration and commemoration among the Shi'i inhabitants. However, when risen in the air it intrudes breathing and invokes transgressive interpretations. I analyse material secularity through the phenomenon of bad air and the distinction between the religious 'respiratory sacrifice' and the secular 'right to breathe'. While 'respiratory sacrifice' connotes dust as a reliquary of martyrs, the 'right to breathe' concerns dust-winds and necessary repairs. I draw on two notions of 'atmosphere' , one spiritual and orchestrated, the other, meteorologically hazardous bad air. Together they make up contesting atmospheric collectives that unsettle formal religious scripts. I argue that atmospheric collectives recalibrate environmental protests while dilating dust to produce a secular materiality.

2025, Secular Studies

This article investigates the changing role of folk books and folklore research in the history of the Turkish nation state from a global perspective through a material approach to secularity, including superstition as a third category to the secular-religious nexus. I propose to conceptualize folk books as 'religious media' and to use them as legitimate sources to trace the fluidity between Alevis and Sunnis in terms of reverence for Ali, as well as to recognize the agency of Alevis and the role of Alevism in folklore research before the rise of identity politics in the 1990s. I argue that such a shift in perspective and methodology enables us to understand how Alevism was excluded from the realm of religion during the early Cold War. It also contributes to the recent critical research on religion and secularism with an alternative history of Turkish modernity in terms of religious transformation.

2025, 中国美术研究

《步辇图》是初唐阎立本为唐太宗李世民会见吐蕃使者禄东赞而创作的一幅作品，如今存在不少争议。本文通过梳理六朝以来道教老君图像发展与唐太宗对道教的态度，从《步辇图》中的构图、人物造型和物件，对比《历代帝王图》《朝元仙仗图》等图像中出现的帝王形象组合特点，揭示《步辇图》中帝王与女性形象组合、太宗坐于步辇的道教文化因素，对《步辇图》看似不合理处提出新的解读，以阐释画面原本想表达的唐太宗“出自柱下”的创作意图。

2025, Corpos Sutis e Chacras Guia de Estudos - Olivio Cezar

Somos um complexo de energia em várias frequências, portanto, estamos constantemente trocando energia uns com os outros e também com a Natureza, de forma consciente ou inconsciente. A qualidade dessa interação será de acordo com os nossos pensamentos e sentimentos.
Nosso corpo energético é semelhante ao Universo. Ele possui milhões de pontos brilhantes. Junto com eles temos vórtices maiores de energia, que se parecem com as galáxias e são vórtices de luz brilhante, girando em alta velocidade. Dentro desses vórtices temos vários outros mini vórtices de luz, que denominamos de chacras.
Somos seres dotados de múltiplas dimensões com diversos corpos anexados ao corpo físico, chamados de corpos sutis. Estes corpos têm centros de energia distribuídos ao longo do eixo central do nosso corpo físico, conhecidos como chacras.
A Doutrina Espírita traz uma grande contribuição para o assunto, abordando a realidade dos fluidos, a imortalidade da alma e a existência de planos espirituais, nos alertando que somos o que pensamos, interagindo o tempo todo com tudo ao nosso redor.
Esta obra está dividida em três partes principais: corpos sutis, chacras e planos sutis, pois esses assuntos estão interligados e consideramos importante a abordagem dos mesmos para uma melhor compreensão do leitor.

2025, Olivio Cezar

2025

Her research covers the critical study of religion and state, digital religion, material culture and dynamics of religious groups, with a particular focus on Buddhism in contemporary societies.

2025, Civil War Book Review

Matthew 25 is a chapter of parables in the biblical New Testament. Speaking to his listeners in verses 21 and 23, Jesus says: "Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou has been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter into the joy of thy Lord." These vague biblical promises of future power for the faithful comprise the singular scriptural passage most frequently quoted in both the North and the South during the Civil War, as identified by James P. Byrd, Chair of the Graduate Department of Religion and Associate Professor of American Religious History at Vanderbilt University Divinity School, in his latest book, A Holy Baptism of Fire and Blood: The Bible and the American Civil War. Byrd's in-depth volume, on the other hand, is anything but vague. Excellent studies of religion during the Civil War have proliferated in recent decades, typically with the Bible lurking in the background or, at best, serving in a supporting role: George Rable's "civil religion" (God's Almost Chosen Peoples, 2010) and Harry S. Stout's "moral history" (Upon the Altar of the Nation, 2006)-hallmark contributions both-are notable examples. Byrd turns this paradigm upside down, placing the Bible-the most popular book in America in the Civil War era-front and center. As an overarching force enveloping the war, the Bible, for many Americans, continually created and recreated meaning amid an epic struggle over freedom and bondage, victory and defeat, life and death, hope and despair, politics and community. Having honed his eye for the historic role of the Bible in early American life in a previous work, the critically-acclaimed Sacred Scripture, Sacred War: The Bible and the American Revolution, Byrd in his Civil War study zeroes in on the blood-soaked, battlefield crucifixion of some three-quarters of a century of political secularization beginning with the nation's founding. Voicing virtue but lacking the moral certainty of America's colonial theocratic heritage, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution satisfied neither slaveowners nor abolitionists.

2025, Material Perspectives on Religion, Conflict, and Violence

2025

The Śilāhārā dynasty was one of the prominent dynasties in the early medieval Deccan. This dynasty was divided into three main branches, the Śilāhārās of North Konkan being one of them. They had control over the present-day districts of Thane and Raigad of Maharashtra, with their capital at Sthānaka i.e., modern-day Thane. Of the 160 epithets used by them, this paper aims to discuss the following four epithets: Mahāsāmantādhipati-Mahāmaṇḍaleśvara, Tagarapuraparameśvara, Suvarṇṇagaruḍadhvaja and Paścimasudrādhipati, in great detail. The author of this paper intends to highlight the political, social, economic, and cultural scenarios that were prevalent at their times through the analysis of these titles. In the course of this paper, the use of epithets to comprehend the larger historical narratives shall be highlighted.

2025, Religieuze overeenkomsten

Öegenüber vielen populären Darstellungen der dem Abendländer so fremdartig anmutenden Persönl, ichkeit des Mahätma Gandhi hat d1 iese Schrift den Vorzug, uns eine höchst , instruktive ,Auslese aus Reden und Auf sätzen Gandhis' zu bieten, die vor allem seine ,Reli g, iösen Lehren' (Ahimsä oder Nicht-Schädigung; Brahma carya oder Keuschheit; die Bhagavad-Oitä) sowie seine ,ReUg, iösen Grundsätze in ihrer Anwendung auf soziale, wirtschafüiche und politische Probleme' (Gesetz des Svadeshi oder der w, irtschaftlichen Unabhäng , igkeit der ind, ischen N ation ; Satyagraha oder auf der W ahrheit geistiger Kraft bestehen; Svaräj oder Selbstläuterung; "VerpfHchtung zur Gehorsamsverwe�ng für den, der n, icht gemeinsame Sache mit dem übel machen will") zum G eg enstand haben. Eine Anzahl berühmter Aus sprüche Gandhis sow,ie die Schilderung ,eines Besuchs , in Mahätma GandhJs ,Ashrama' in Sabannati' von dem MUarbeiter Prof. D. R. Ott.os, dem schwedischen Pfarrer Birger Forell, besch1ie8t die Schrift, der Rudolf Otto selbst ein rel, igionsgeschichtlich orientiertes Geleitwort beigegeben hat. ,,Gandhi will die Freiheit und Unab hängigkeit seines Landes und Volkes. Aber dabei will er ein J , n d,i e n , und auf i n di s c h e Weise. Er lehnt nicht , nur ,England' ab, sondern ebenso lehnt er ,Europa' ab. In der westlichen Mechamsierung, Maschinisierung, Techn, is,ierung des Lebens, in der Modemisierung', die die alte Geisteshaltung seines Vo�es und seine Seele selber, wie er glaubt, bedroht, s,ieht er die vielleicht 'noch schHmmere Oefahr als Jo der Beugung unter fremde polfüsche Gewalt und in der wirtschaftlichen Ausbeu tung'' (13). R. Otto bemerkt • noch (S. 14f.), da8 Oan dhis hingebender Kampf für die Pariias nicht nur dem indiisehen Erbe (Buddhas Milde) entstamme, sondem auch durch "das Vorbild des Islams, durch chnistliche M, iss,ion und christHches Liebeswerk, ja auch durch west liche so2Jiale Ideen" beeinfluBt wurde.

2025

Mārīcī (Molizhi tian 摩利支天) originated in India and spread throughout various Indian religious traditions. She is also the subject of a crosscultural cult which spread to Central Asia, China, Tibet, Korea, Japan, and Southeast Asia and generated different iconographies and cults. In each locale, Mārīcī underwent localization or syncretisation with indigenous traditions. The first section of this paper will explore Mārīcī's textual transmission from India to China, including scriptures on Mārīcī in Chinese translations of Buddhist texts, and investigate the characteristics and implications of Mārīcī worship. The second section analyzes texts related to Doumu 斗母-Mārīcī, focusing on iconographies, rituals, and spells. By reading the Yuyin qianyuan dantian leifa玉音乾元丹天雷法 [Thunder Methods of the Cinnabar Heaven of the Jade-Toned Primordial Heavens] and the Xiantian Doumu zougao xuanke 先天斗母奏告玄科 [Posterior-Heaven Ritual of Doumu's Proclamation to the Profound], this paper investigates the process through which Doumu rituals were transformed into Dipper-proclamation rites, how new Doumu rituals were formed using the framework of Dipperproclamation rites, and how they had a significant influence on later Doumu proclamation.

2025, Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief

Introducing the themes and contexts for this special issue of the journal, this editorial reflects particularly on the experience of museums and museum and heritage educators in the UK and Asia in interpreting religions and religious art. It looks at successful examples of specialist museum programs and exhibits on religions; and distance learning resources that include faiths in suggesting new approaches to citizenship education through cultural learning. It looks more broadly at new approaches to religious education that encompass sacred spaces.

2025, Expedition Magazine

This year's student exhibition, Looking to the Stars, Listening to the Earth, presents a set of cosmological figurines and other objects characteristic of tombs ca. 1200 CE from what is now Jiangxi Province, People’s Republic of China. At... more

2025, REVER: Revista de Estudos da Religião

Resumo: Este artigo pretende abordar os blocos afros surgentes de ontologias afro-brasileiras a partir de seus aspectos materiais-instrumentos, música, dança, rituais e demais artigos religiosos-que são mobilizados no âmbito do carnaval de rua de São Paulo. Para isso, analisaremos a atuação do Bloco Afro É Di Santo, localizado no bairro da Piraporinha, zona sul da cidade. É possível identificar que a materialidade religiosa afro-brasileira composta por suas práticas corporais, musicais e instrumentais ao serem agenciadas na construção cotidiana do bloco e em suas apresentações públicas do carnaval, mobilizam diretamente a experiência religiosa de seus integrantes e foliões. Dessa forma, percorreremos as seguintes etapas: 1) Analisar o carnaval enquanto expressividade das religiões afro-brasileiras, ressaltando a história do carnaval negro de São Paulo; 2) Compreender a origem dos Blocos Afro e suas expressões estético-musicais; 3) Analisar a história e atuação do Bloco Afro É Di Santo, identificando o lugar do religioso em seu cotidiano e apresentações, a partir de suas práticas musicais, corporais e instrumentais. Para isso, utilizaremos a Religião Material enquanto método de pesquisa das religiões afro-brasileiras na Ciência da Religião. Logo, o artigo pretende contribuir para a ampliação do campo de abordagem da Religião Material no interior da Ciência da Religião, principalmente por meio da intersecção entre as religiões afro-brasileiras e o carnaval de rua.

2025, Roman Identity and Lived Religion. Baptismal Art in Late Antiquity

Roman Identity and Lived Religion Christianity is considered prevalent when it comes to defning the key values of late antique society, whereas 'feeling connected to the Roman past' is commonly regarded as an add-on for cultivated elites. This book demonstrates the signiûcant impact of popular Roman culture on the religious identity of common Christians from the ûfth to the seventh century in the Mediterranean world. Baptism is central to the formation of Christian identity. The decoration of baptisteries reveals that traditional Roman culture persisted as an integral component of Christian identity in various communities. In their baptisteries, Christians visually and spatially evoked their links to Roman and, at times, even pagan traditions. A close examination of visual and material sources in North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula, and Italy shows that baptisteries served roles beyond mere conduits to Christian orthodoxy.

2025, Transforming Spirit Bodies. Materialization and Embodied Dependencies in South America

2025, Hualin International Journal of Buddhist Studies, 7.2 (2024): i–xiii

The articles in this special issue originated in the international conference we organized, 'Ritual and Materiality in Buddhism and Asian Religions', hosted by Princeton University in June 2023. 1 The conference was immensely exciting, marking a resumption of in-person academic exchange that had halted owing to the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. The gathering brought together nearly fifty participants, including a keynote speaker, two discussants, twenty-one panelists, five Princeton University faculty serving as presiders, and twenty graduate attendees.

2025, The Yellow Court Scripture, Vol. 3: Historical and Comparative Studies, edited by Livia Kohn

[abstract of the volume]
The Huangting jing (Yellow Court Scripture) consists of a set of two texts that outline the body vision and key techniques of Daoist meditation. At the center of an extensive literature of both commentaries and exegeses compiled over several millennia, it has been mainly studied from a historical and textual perspective. Supplementing this, this volume explores not only important rhyme structures but also the nature of the body vision presented, the type and quality of the practices involved, and how they compare to modern scientific models as well as to later Chinese interpretations and adaptations, such as medical texts of the Tang and internal alchemy of the Song. It assembles nine presentations of accomplished scholars in the field, bringing the Huangting jing into the limelight and enhancing its in-depth understanding in the greater context of Daoist history and modern science.

2025, Endowment Studies 8

This paper will focus on Sanskrit references to maṭhas and maṭhikās in the early medieval epigraphical corpora of the Rāṣṭrakūṭas, Śilāhāras and Yādavas, ruling in the Deccan from the eighth to the thirteenth centuries. The most prominent evidence is provided by the five famous Chinchani copper-plate charters covering a period from 926 to 1053 ce, when the Rāṣṭrakūṭas and later the Śilāhāras and their subordinates ruled over the region north of Mumbai. A few late-twelfth-century Śilāhāra stone inscriptions from Kolhapur in south Maharashtra shed light on the multi-functional character of maṭhas. Finally, a Yādava-period stone epigraph from northwestern Maharashtra testifies to the existence of and the endowment for a very special maṭha in 1207 ce.

2025, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion

Much of the art housed in Western museums is religious in nature-the result of how these museum collections were assembled and merged with differing displays over time. The origins of museums and their exhibition activities lie in the vast and myriad collecting histories of ancient, medieval, and Early Modern times, when the avenues of acquisition and display were often intertwined with sacred purposes. As empires, international trade, and missionaries encouraged the movement of people, objects, and ideas, they ensured that the monumental containers meant to preserve and display these collections took on meanings ever more distinct from the original meanings and functions of the individual objects they housed, religious or otherwise. Collections also evolved into "contact zones" between peoples and objects. While the history of display is different from that of museums, because it is premised more on a visiting public than on preservation and study efforts, these approaches to objects merge in the 16th century so that visual comparison and the ordering of displays are seen as a means to develop further knowledge from a collection.

2025, American Religion, Volume 6, Number 1, pp. 135-137

Cosmopolítica y cosmohistoria: una anti-síntesis is a novel collection of six anthropological
and historical essays that engage with the concept of cosmopolitics,
advanced by the philosophers of science Isabelle Stengers and Bruno Latour,
by examining a range of practices and ways of producing knowledge among or
in relation with Amerindian peoples. In anthropology, cosmopolitics has come to refer to the active participation of human and non-human entities in political negotiations, most commonly in the context of conflicts over territory and resources between indigenous groups and national or international extractivist projects. This book seeks to expand this definition by dwelling on the aspects of uncertainty and potential disjunctions in Stengers’s original proposal. According to the authors, a focus on ontological and epistemological multiplicity and its political effects requires added complexity. When read as a whole, the collection offers a kaleidoscopic view of the cosmopolitical, leaving space for contradiction and invention

2025, La città dei desideri. Sogni e disegni di architettura

2025, Kroniek Tijdschrift Historisch Amersfoort Jg 13 Nr 4 P 2 3

Al sinds 1727 is dit bijzondere gebouw dé plek waar de Joodse gemeente haar gebedsdiensten houdt. Het staat in het hartje van de oude binnenstad, aan de Kortegracht en de Drieringensteeg. Het complex bestaat uit een synagoge met aan de straatkant twee kleine woonhuizen. Sinds de Tweede Wereldoorlog was het voortbestaan van de synagoge als plek van gebed in gevaar. Het ledenaantal is de afgelopen jaren aanzienlijk kleiner geworden. De Joodse gemeente heeft er alles aan gedaan om het eigendom van de synagoge in eigen hand te houden, maar dit bleek uiteindelijk niet haalbaar. Na veel overleg is een passende oplossing gevonden. De synagoge is in december 2012 overgedragen aan Stadsherstel, dat de garantie heeft gegeven dat de gebedsdiensten plaats kunnen blijven vinden in het pand. Hierdoor blijven het gebouw en de omliggende omgeving het hart van de Joodse gemeenschap in Amersfoort. De overdracht vormt een nieuwe fase in de roerige geschiedenis van het gebouw, waarin perioden van voor-en tegenspoed elkaar afwisselden.

2025, U.S. Catholic Historian

This article is an ethnographic archaeology of Catholic material culture as
it circulates through secondhand economies. Via estate sales, auctions,
antique shops, flea markets, thrift stores, eBay, Instagram, and Etsy,
Catholiciana is bought, sold, and recontextualized for new ownership every
day. In the contemporary U.S., several structural patterns—parish
closures, the decline in Catholic adherence, and the death of a generation
of Catholics who maintained extensive personal devotional collections—
intersect to create conditions in which Catholic materials become
secondhand commodities. We explore how circulation is structured by the
technological affordances of devotional material; how the sensory and social
histories of objects are erased through patterns of discard and partially
recovered through traces of use; and, how discovered objects are presented to market publics by actors with divergent stances toward institutional
Catholicism. Ultimately, we attend to Catholic objects as both devotional
and disposable in order to better understand how objects pass in and out of
the commodity state, their shifting valuation, their appeal to different
audiences, and recalibrations of power and potency.

2025, China's Southern Paradise: Treasures from the Lower Yangzi Delta

Hanging scroll; ink, color, and gold on silk; 113 x 51.5 cm (image), 163.5 x 64.2 x 3.5 cm (overall).

2025, The Journal of Asian Studies

2025, Culture and Religion

/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution , reselling , loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.

2025, Mana

Resumo Este texto enfoca um conjunto de imagens de Madre Paulina, mulher canonizada pela Igreja Católica em 2002 e que tem seu santuário no sul do Brasil. Esculturas com distintas características participam dos esforços de difusão da devoção à santa. A análise da produção dessas imagens - e suas reproduções em suportes variados - é realizada tendo como referência discussões antropológicas sobre representação e presentificação. Argumenta-se que não é necessário opor estas duas ideias, e a análise demonstra que a multiplicação de representações da santa, com a sua produção de variações, combina-se com o projeto de atrair pessoas para sua devoção. Para a constituição dos dados da pesquisa, foram utilizadas observações nos locais onde as imagens estão, bem como entrevistas com religiosas da congregação que administra o santuário e com os manufaturadores das esculturas da santa.

2025, Nidān: International Journal for Indian Studies

2025, Bloomsbury

Public manifestations of Islam remain fiercely contested across the Global West. Studies to date have focused on the visual presence of Islam - the construction of mosques or the veiling of Muslim women. Amplifying Islam in the European... more

2025

Seemingly Japan is not a country where people tend to be religious. However, there are strong evidences which show that in spite of Japanese people's apparent "indifference" towards religion, they are religious in many ways. From Japanese politics, business and sports to rituals, festivals and celebrations the influence of religions can be vividly seen. The huge number of religious organizations, institutions and various movements including main religious main sects and sub sects such as Buddhist, Shinto's groups and Christian churches having marvelous buildings as well as a layer of New New Religious Movements are only a few examples of Japanese religiosity. This paper aims to answer the question how religious discourse in contemporarily Japan tends to keep pace with the changing patterns of society, highlighting the new trends in various forms of religious activities such as modern modes of virtual pilgrimages, cyber worship, religious ceremonies and rituals etc.

2025, Challenging dichotomies and biases in the study of the ancient southern levant

A fumigation altar is a tangible object that has a multisensorial impact as it engages the sense
of smell, sight, and touch. It is also an object that indexes a certain place, a sanctuary, a
certain ritual practice, an offering, and a certain ‘presence,’ a divine recipient of the offering.
With this study, I wish to show how a material-semiotics inspired approach may affect our
reading of Hebrew Bible texts. For this purpose, I shall use the two fumigation altars from
Arad as examples and analyse them alongside Exodus 30, a text that describes the manufacture, design, and use of such altars.

2025, Religions

Much of the literature on digital religious authority has focused on spiritual “influencers” and the challenges they pose to traditional religious hierarchies and structures of authority. Less attention has been dedicated to religious websites, social media pages, and digital feeds whose popularity and influence do not hinge on the personalistic qualities of their creators. There is a wide assortment of generic religious reference sites that, although developed and managed by largely anonymous webmasters and administrators, command significant audiences and exert substantial
influence on religious interpretations and practices. We argue that anonymity affords certain advantages for bolstering visibility and influence that have hitherto received insufficient attention in the literature on religion, authority, and cyberspace. In contrast to spiritual influencers, who draw attention to their personal biographies, credentials, appearances, and connections to enhance their legitimacy and authority, individuals or groups who administer religious reference sites commonly employ alternative strategies that involve concealing personal identities, experiences, and affiliations. Their aim is to come off as neutral, impartial, and free of ideological baggage that might bias their interpretations. This facilitates their efforts to frame the content they share as a form of universal religious truth that transcends ideological and sectarian differences. Our analysis centers on websites and social media pages that provide guidance to Spanish speakers on Islamic theology, jurisprudence, and piety.

2025, Geschlossene Gesellschaften - 38. Kongress der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Soziologie

Räume sind nicht nur Behältnisse, sondern Ausdruck gesellschaftlicher (oder partikulärer) Imaginationen, und sie wollen das von ihnen vertretene Transzendente oder Imaginäre vergegenständlichen, darstellen, fördern und inszenieren. Das gilt ganz offensichtlich für Kirchen, aber auch für Kunstmuseen und Einkaufszentren, den drei hier zu vergleichenden Gebilden. Es handelt sich jeweils um ‚gebaute Weltsichten', errichtet zu bestimmten (nicht nur funktionellen) Zwecken, als Verkörperungen des jeweils Unsichtbaren und Symbolischen jenseits der gemauerten Räumlichkeiten. Ich setze das voraus und konzentriere mich darauf, gewisse Gemeinsamkeiten von Kirchen 1 , Kunstmuseen 2 und Shopping Malls 3 herauszuarbeiten: Unter der Perspektive, dass wir es mit drei Sorten von Räumen zu tun haben, die (jeder auf seine Weise) ‚Transzendenzen' (im weitesten Sinne, wie bei Thomas Luckmann: Erfahrungen des Außeralltäglichen) auslösen (sollen) (Luckmann 1991: 164ff). Es sind im Zeitalter der ‚transzendentalen Obdachlosigkeit' (um mit Georg Lukács zu sprechen) (Lukács 2000) keine besonders starken Transzendenzen, eher ‚transzendentale Imaginationen' oder ‚imaginäre Transzendenzen'. Ich wer-1 Kirchen gibt es viele: Kathedralen und Stadtpfarrkirchen, Friedhofskirchen und Dorfkirchen, Bergkapellen und Klosterkirchen, Tempel und Moscheen und andere; die vorliegende Argumentation bezieht sich auf die ‚großen abendländischen Kirchen', die Dome und Kathedralen (Duby 1988). 2 Es gibt viele unterschiedliche Museen, deren Anbieter und Nachfrager ganz unterschiedlichen Logiken folgen; bei den nachfolgenden Vergleichen werden nur die historischen und künstlerischen Museen beziehungsweise Galerien ins Auge gefasst. Daneben gibt es aber auch Museen für Autos und Schlüssel, für Volkskunde und Feuerwehr, für Jagd und Technik, das Freilichtmuseum aus alten Bauernhäusern, Schlösser und Stifte als Museen und unzählige andere. Unlängst bin ich auf das Museum of Broken Relations gestoßen: "verlorene Liebe". Jeweils sind ihre Funktionen, Zielgruppen, Darstellungsformen ebenso unterschiedlich wie ihr Distinktionspotenzial für BesucherInnen sowie deren Erwartungshaltungen (Heesen 2012). 3 Für die Kategorie des Kaufens sollen die Shopping Malls stehen. Sie sind die am weitesten fortgeschrittenen Fazilitäten, in denen sich Konsumgesellschaften verkörpern, und es sind tatsächlich räumliche ‚Innovationen'. Auch wenn man auf alte Märkte in der klassischen Welt verweisen kann, so wird doch üblicherweise das 1956 entstandene Southdale Center in Minneapolis, welches von dem emigrierten österreichischen Architekten Victor Gruen konzipiert wurde, als erste Mall im modernen Sinne angeführt (Gruen 2014). de den Vergleich anhand bestimmter Kategorisierungen von Transzendenzen anstellen, entlang der Kategorien von Heiligkeit oder Außerordentlichkeit. Gebaute Weltsichten Kirche, Museum und Shopping Mall haben als Gebäude, als Räume ihre Funktionen: Orte für religiöse Rituale, künstlerische Expositionen und kommerzielle Kaufgelegenheiten. Aber sie haben als unterschiedliche ‚Erfahrungsräume' ("Erfahrungsräume sind besondere raumzeitliche Konfigurationen, in denen Dinge und Ereignisse für spezifische Erfahrungen präsentiert werden" Schützeichel 2016: 657) etwas Gemeinsames: ihre architektonische Verkörperung von Weltsichten. Die Kirche und das Jenseits Kirchenräume sind in ihrer Ausgestaltung immer als auratische und auratisierende, sakrale und sakralisierende Räume betrachtet worden. Eine besondere Räumlichkeit, die sich von ihrer Umwelt abschließt, soll Transzendenz ermöglichen und anstoßen, sie soll Glaubenselemente bewahren, verstärken, symbolisieren, sie soll überhaupt durch symbolhafte Verkörperungen eine "andere" Welt ins Leben oder ins Gedächtnis rufen -denn trotz und wegen ihrer Abschließung von der Außenwelt soll sie letzten Endes das Ganze, die Erde und den Himmel, repräsentieren. Religion verkörpert sich nicht nur in Glaubenssätzen, sondern auch in der Infrastruktur, in einer Architektonik, die Bedeutung verkörpert und Geschichten erzählt. Das Museum und die göttliche Kunst Religiöse Gefühle und Bedürfnisse können auf andere Sinnstiftungsquellen übertragen (oder durch diese ersetzt) werden, etwa auf politische Ideologien und nationalistische Gefühle. Die Kunst ist besonders häufig als ‚Feld' angesprochen worden, das Ähnlichkeit mit religiösen Gefühlen aufweist, und Museen sind als Orte identifiziert worden, an denen quasi-religiöse/transzendente Gefühle (die ‚göttliche Kunst') erfahren werden können. Museen wurden (seit dem 19. Jahrhundert, dem Jahrhundert ihres Entstehens) mit symbolischer Aufladung versehen. Sie wurden für das Bildungsbürgertum (mit Ausnahme bürgerlicher ‚Banausen') zu Manifestationen von Bildung und geistiger Tiefe, zum ‚eigenen Territorium', als Gegenstück zu politischen Institutionen, als Bollwerk gegen eine Politik, die man (noch) nicht erobern, ändern oder besetzen konnte. Die bürgerliche Welt wurde über zweihundert Jahre von dem Selbstverständnis geprägt, dass die Kunst (das ‚vollendete Werk') dem Leben einen Sinn verleihe und in religiöse Dimensionen führe, dass sie auf das Unsagbare, auf einen unverfügbaren, transzendenten ‚Rest' menschlichen Daseins, verweise. Die Shopping Mall und ihre Kultreligion Manche haben im kapitalistisch-konsumistischen Treiben der Spätmoderne das Ausleben quasireligiöser Gefühle wiedergefunden. Berühmt ist Walter Benjamins Fragment über den Kapitalismus als Religion, in Anknüpfung an Max Weber 4 , in dem er vermerkt, dass der Kapitalismus essenziell der Be-4 Benjamin hat dabei an Max Weber angeknüpft, dem zufolge die alten, entzauberten Götter in Gestalt persönlicher Mächte ihren Gräbern entsteigen; aber er hat den Gedanken nicht zu Ende führen kön-

2024, Material Religion

Made available courtesy of Berg Publishers: ***Note: Figures may be missing from this format of the document Opened in New York on October 2, 2004, the Rubin Museum of Art (RMA)'s mission is "to establish, present, preserve and document a permanent collection that reflects the vitality, complexity and historical significance of Himalayan art." 1 The seed for the RMA was planted in 1979 when the founders, Shelley and Donald Rubin, purchased their first thangka painting-an image of White Tara. The museum's location, at 150 West 17th Street, was identified in 1998, and the museum was founded in 1999, as a 501(c) (3) not-for-profit trust. The RMA's collection of approximately 1,200 objects inc1udes paintings, sculptures, and textiles that reflect the major periods and schools of Himalayan art from the twelfth century onward and stretches from Afghanistan in the west to Burma in the east. Commenting on the scope of the Rubin collection, dealer Canton Rochell has described it as "a nearly encyclopedic collection [containing] every subject, every mahasiddha, lama, bodhisattva, and-deity in every form you could imagine" (Wallis 2005, 77).

2024, Orientations, Vol. 56, No.1, pp. 23–33

This article examines a remarkable example of Tang Buddhist art: a finely polished brownish limestone sculpture of the enthroned Buddha Maitreya, carved in high relief. Acquired by the Art Institute of Chicago over a century ago, this medium-sized figure exemplifies the era's artistic sophistication and spiritual devotion. The study explores the sculpture’s provenance, style, and iconography, with particular attention to the dated inscription (705 CE) and donor’s name on its base, contextualizing the piece within its historical and religious milieu.