Feeding Sharing And Devouring

Few thorough ethnographic studies on Central Indian tribal communities exist, and the elaborate discussion on the cultural meanings of Indian food systems ignores these societies altogether. Food epitomizes the social for the Gadaba of Odisha. Feeding, sharing, and devouring refer to locally distinguished ritual domains, to different types of social relationships and alimentary ritual processes. In investigating the complex paths of ritual practices, this study aims to understand the interrelated fields of cosmology, social order, and economy of an Indian highland community.

Few thorough ethnographic studies on Central Indian tribal communities exist, and the elaborate discussion on the cultural meanings of Indian food systems ignores these societies altogether. Food epitomizes the social for the Gadaba of Odisha. Feeding, sharing, and devouring refer to locally distinguished ritual domains, to different types of social relationships and alimentary ritual processes. In investigating the complex paths of ritual practices, this study aims to understand the interrelated fields of cosmology, social order, and economy of an Indian highland community.

The series Religion and Society (RS) contributes to the exploration of religions as social systems - both in Western and non-Western societies; in particular, it examines religions in their differentiation from, and intersection with, other cultural systems, such as art, economy, law and politics. Due attention is given to paradigmatic case or comparative studies that exhibit a clear theoretical orientation with the empirical and historical data of religion and such aspects of religion as ritual, the religious imagination, constructions of tradition, iconography, or media. In addition, the formation of religious communities, their construction of identity, and their relation to society and the wider public are key issues of this series.

Investigates processes of conversion in India from a comparative, multi-disciplinary and theoretical perspective, between, within and across religious traditions.

Periods of transition are often symbolically associated with death, making the latter the paradigm of liminality. Yet, many volumes on death in the social sciences and humanities do not specifically address liminality. This book investigates these “ultimate ambiguities,” assuming they can pose a threat to social relationships because of the disintegrating forces of death, but they are also crucial periods of creativity, change, and emergent aspects of social and religious life. Contributors explore death and liminality from an interdisciplinary perspective and present a global range of historical and contemporary case studies outlining emotional, cognitive, artistic, social, and political implications.

The whole world is changing with incredible speed towards something radically new, yet people across the globe also show resistance to the forces that homogenize our lives. This book deals with a community that has found its niche in the remote Niamgiri mountain range of Odisha (India) and is struggling to preserve its way of life: the Dongria Kond. In recent years, they made the headlines as the real “Avatars” because they successfully fought a multinational company’s plans to mine the mountains. From the perspective of the Dongria Kond, these mountains are the seat of gods, and the whole environment is animated by spiritual forces. This highly complex cosmic order includes humans and non-humans and rests on a divine law (niam). This book captures the viewpoint of the Dongria Kond and provides deep insights into their vision of the world. It offers elaborate accounts of how the Dongria relate to the outside world, conceive of their own society and engage in complex rituals in order to (re-)establish the cosmos. The book confronts the reader with radically different imaginings of familiar human concerns: love, fertility, wealth, status and well-being.

Malinowski’s Argonauts of the Western Pacific was a major contribution to anthropological theory and method, while simultaneously establishing the sub-field of economic anthropology. Even a century after its publication, Malinowski’s pioneering work remains critical for anthropology in a postcolonial age. This volume uses ethnographic studies from around the world to contextualize the work politically and intellectually, examining its gestation and influence from multiple perspectives. It critically explores the meaning of “economy” for Malinowski from his formation in the Austro-Hungarian Empire to his path-breaking fieldwork in Melanesia and ensuing career in London.

The book is set in the anthropologically much-neglected multi-ethnic interior of Highland Middle India. It is the result of fieldwork done over a period of more than a decade among the Ho, an indigenous community of approximately one million people, who have shared cultural norms and the space of the hilly region of the Chota Nagpur Plateau with other aboriginal (adivasi) and artisan communities for ages. The book explores the structured tapestry of Ho people’s relations and interrelatedness within their culture-specific sociocosmic universe ensuring their social reproduction in the present and affording them the means for and the awareness of living in a world of plenty. This world of abundance – with the Ho as its conceptual centre – includes the Ho’s dead, their complex spirit world and supreme deity, and their tribal and nontribal fellow humans, and it manifests itself in manifold facets of their lives: socially, ritually, economically, and linguistically. "This is an important piece of work. The ethnographic details in it are invaluable. The fieldwork is superb. What comes across so magnificently is that unique quality of the author's human and emotional contact and shared understanding with the people." MICHAEL YORKE: University College, London; Upside Films