Encompassing A Fractal World

Encompassing a Fractal World presents a groundbreaking, innovative paradigm which opens up new perspectives for understanding and analyzing Hindu life and culture. This book is an interdisciplinary comparative work which attempts to 'connect the dots', moving beyond isolated local village-based studies in order to bridge the gulf between anthropology and Hindu studies.

Ethnomathematics of Negev Bedouins’ Existence in Forms, Symbols, and Geometric Patterns provokes a journey into the world of Negev Bedouins and attests to the beauty and sophistication of mathematics that occurs naturally in their craftwork, structures, games, and throughout Bedouin life. The major focus is Bedouin women’s traditional craftwork by which they reflect social and cultural activities in their weaving, embroidery, and similar pursuits. Their creations reveal mathematical ideas incorporated in embroidery compositions in repeated patterns of flowers and geometric figures in varying scales. The women use ground staked looms, stabilized by block-stones, to make multi-color, repeating pattern strip-rugs in a process practiced for generations. An image of this appears in the book’s cover photo collage. Bedouin men construct dwellings, tents, desert wells, and such. They and their children play games attuned to sand and other specific desert conditions. These activities of Bedouin women, men, and children require mathematical thinking and strategic reasoning to achieve desired outcomes. The book opens with a narrative of Bedouin history, followed by a brief overview of ethnomathematics, and concludes with discussion about bridging the gap between school mathematics experiences and those outside school. It considers mathematically problematic situations embedded in Bedouin sociocultural heritage likely to appeal to teachers for use with school students. The book is intended for a diverse audience from Bedouin communities in different countries to the general public and professionals, including ethnomathematicians and mathematics educators. Numerous photographs document the examples of Bedouin ethnomathematics. They are the subject of considerable analysis and appear throughout the book.

Owning Land, Being Women enquires into the processes that establish inheritance as a unique form of property relation in law and society. It focuses on India, examining the legislative processes that led to the 2005 amendment of the Hindu Succession Act 1956, along with several interconnected welfare policies. Scholars have understood these Acts as a response to growing concerns about women’s property rights in developing countries. In re-reading these Acts and exploring the wider nexus of Indian society in which the legislation was drafted, this study considers how questions of family structure and property rights contribute to the creation of legal subjects and demonstrates the significance of the politico-economic context of rights formulation. On the basis of an ethnography of a village in West Bengal, this book brings the moral axis of inheritance into sharp focus, elucidating the interwoven dynamics of bequest, distribution of family wealth and reciprocity of care work that are integral to the logic of inheritance. It explains why inheritance rights based on the notion of individual property rights are inadequate to account for practices of inheritance. Mondal shows that inheritance includes normative structures of affective attachment and expectations, i.e., evaluatively-charged imaginaries of the future that coordinate present practices. These insights pose questions of the dominant resource-based conceptualisation of inherited property in the debate on women’s empowerment. In doing so, this work opens up a line of investigation that brings feminist rights discourse into conversation with ethics, enriching the liberal theory of gender justice.

Don Handelman’s groundbreaking work in anthropology is showcased in this collection of his most powerful essays, edited by Matan Shapiro and Jackie Feldman. The book looks at the intellectual and spiritual roots of Handelman’s initiation into anthropology; his work on ritual and on “bureaucratic logic”; analyses of cosmology; and innovative essays on Anthropology and Deleuzian thinking. Handelman reconsiders his theory of the forming of form and how this relates to a new theory of the dynamics of time. This will be the definitive collection of articles by one of the most important anthropologists of the late 20th Century.

Presents an alphabetical listing of information on the peoples of Asia and Oceania including origins, prehistory, history, culture, languages, and relationships to other cultures.

This book investigates women’s ritual authority and the common boundaries between religion and notions of gender, ethnicity, and identity. Nanette R. Spina situates her study within the transnational Melmaruvathur Adhiparasakthi movement established by the Tamil Indian guru, Bangaru Adigalar. One of the most prominent, defining elements of this tradition is that women are privileged with positions of leadership and ritual authority. This represents an extraordinary shift from orthodox tradition in which religious authority has been the exclusive domain of male Brahmin priests. Presenting historical and contemporary perspectives on the transnational Adhiparasakthi organization, Spina analyzes women’s roles and means of expression within the tradition. The book takes a close look at the Adhiparasakthi society in Toronto, Canada (a Hindu community in both its transnational and diasporic dimensions), and how this Canadian temple has both shaped and demonstrated their own diasporic Hindu identity. The Toronto Adhiparasakthi society illustrates how Goddess theology, women's ritual authority, and “inclusivity” ethics have dynamically shaped the identity of this prominent movement overseas. Based on years of ethnographic fieldwork, the volume draws the reader into the rich textures of culture, community, and ritual life with the Goddess.

One God, Two Goddesses studies through their deities three very different South Indian cosmic worlds whose existence depends on their incessant dynamism, which is deeply and intimately related to ongoing transformation and regeneration.

The socio-political landscape of Nepal has been rocked by dramatic and far-reaching changes in the past thirty years. Following a ten-year Maoist revolution and civil war, the country has transitioned from a monarchy to a republic. The former Hindu kingdom has declared its commitment to secularism, without coming to any agreement on what secularism means or should mean in the Nepalese context. What happens to religion under conditions of such rapid social and political change? How do the changes in public festivals reflect and/or create new group identities? Is the gap between the urban and the rural narrowing? How is the state dealing with Nepal’s multicultural and multi-religious society? How are Nepalis understanding, resisting, and adapting ideas of secularism? In order to answer these important questions, this volume brings together eleven case studies by an international team of anthropologists and ethno-Indologists of Nepal on such diverse topics as secularism, individualism, shamanism, animal sacrifice, the role of state functionaries in festivals, clashes and synergies between Maoism and Buddhism, and conversion to Christianity. In an Afterword, renowned political theorist Rajeev Bhargava presents a comparative analysis of Nepal’s experiences and asks whether the country is finding its own solution to the conundrum of secularism.