The Making Of Goddess Durga In Bengal Art Heritage And The Public

This book examines the making of the Goddess Durga both as an art and as part of the intangible heritage of Bengal. As the ‘original site of production’ of unbaked clay idols of the Hindu Goddess Durga and other Gods and Goddesses, Kumartuli remains at the centre of such art and heritage. The art and heritage of Kumartuli have been facing challenges in a rapidly globalizing world that demands constant redefinition of ‘art’ with the invasion of market forces and migration of idol makers. As such, the book includes chapters on the evolution of idols, iconographic transformations, popular culture and how the public is constituted by the production and consumption of the works of art and heritage and finally the continuous shaping and reshaping of urban imaginaries and contestations over public space. It also investigates the caste group of Kumbhakars (Kumars or the idol makers), reflecting on the complex relation between inherited skill and artistry. Further, it explores how the social construction of art as ‘art’ introduces a tangled web of power asymmetries between ‘art’ and ‘craft’, between an ‘artist’ and an ‘artisan’, and between ‘appreciation’ and ‘consumption’, along with their implications for the articulation of market in particular and social relations in general. Since little has been written on this heritage hub beyond popular pamphlets, documents on town planning and travelogues, the book, written by authors from various fields, opens up cross-disciplinary conversations, situating itself at the interface between art history, sociology of aesthetics, politics and government, social history, cultural studies, social anthropology and archaeology. The book is aimed at a wide readership, including students, scholars, town planners, heritage preservationists, lawmakers and readers interested in heritage in general and Kumartuli in particular.

This book examines the making of the Goddess Durga both as an art and as part of the intangible heritage of Bengal. As the 'original site of production' of unbaked clay idols of the Hindu Goddess Durga and other Gods and Goddesses, Kumartuli remains at the centre of such art and heritage. The art and heritage of Kumartuli have been facing challenges in a rapidly globalizing world that demands constant redefinition of 'art' with the invasion of market forces and migration of idol makers. As such, the book includes chapters on the evolution of idols, iconographic transformations, popular culture and how the public is constituted by the production and consumption of the works of art and heritage and finally the continuous shaping and reshaping of urban imaginaries and contestations over public space. It also investigates the caste group of Kumbhakars (Kumars or the idol makers), reflecting on the complex relation between inherited skill and artistry. Further, it explores how the social construction of art as 'art' introduces a tangled web of power asymmetries between 'art' and 'craft', between an 'artist' and an 'artisan', and between 'appreciation' and 'consumption', along with their implications for the articulation of market in particular and social relations in general. Since little has been written on this heritage hub beyond popular pamphlets, documents on town planning and travelogues, the book, written by authors from various fields, opens up cross-disciplinary conversations, situating itself at the interface between art history, sociology of aesthetics, politics and government, social history, cultural studies, social anthropology and archaeology. The book is aimed at a wide readership, including students, scholars, town planners, heritage preservationists, lawmakers and readers interested in heritage in general and Kumartuli in particular.

Archaeological remains are ‘fragmented by definition’: apart from exceptional cases, the study of the human past takes into account mainly traces, ruins, discards, and debris of past civilizations. It is rare that things have been preserved as they were originally made and conceived in the past. However, not all the ancient fragmentary objects were the ‘leftovers’ from the past. A noticeable portion of them was part and parcel of the ancient materiality already in the form of a fragment or damaged item. In 2000, John Chapman, with his volume Fragmentation in Archaeology, attracted the attention of scholars on the need to reconsider broken artifacts as the result of the deliberate anthropic process of physical fragmentation. The phenomenon of fragmentation can be thus explored with more outcomes for a category of objects that played an important role inside the society: the figurines. Due to their portability and size, figurines are particularly entangled and engaged in social, spatial, temporal, and material relations, and – more than other artifacts – can easily accommodate acts of embodiment and dismemberment. The act of creation symmetrically also involves the act of destruction, which in turn is another act of creation, since from the fragmentation comes a new entity with a different ontology. Breaking contains the paradigms of life: creation and reparation, destruction and regeneration. The scope of this volume is to search for traces of any voluntary and intentional fragmentation of ancient artifacts, creating, improving, and sharpening the methods and principles for a scientific investigation that goes beyond single author impression or sensitivity. The comparative lens adopted in this volume can allow the reader to explore different fields taken from ancient societies of how we can address, assess, detect, and even discuss the action of breaking and mutilation of ancient figurines.

This book explores the scope and extent of the growing Chinese influence in India’s neighbourhood and its impact on India as well as on Asian power politics. Through theoretical narratives and detailed case studies, it examines Chinese bilateral relationships in the Indian neighbourhood and looks at the extent and significance of Chinese influence through the lens of strategic, economic and infrastructural arrangements and Chinese interventions in South, Southeast, and Central Asia. The book takes into account regional voices and domestic political compulsions in understanding what they make of the Chinese narrative and examines how and whether the narrative has changed in recent years through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as an instrument of Chinese public diplomacy. The volume also discusses how domestic narratives and compulsions in the Indian neighbourhood remain significant and how these, in turn, would impact the trajectory of Chinese public diplomacy. Intertwined through all these themes is a focus on the extent to which these could become potential flashpoints for India. This book will be a useful resource for academics and researchers working on Asian geopolitics and geo-economics, Chinese foreign policy, Chinese politics, international relations of Asia, Asian dynamics and Asian studies.

Religion as a form of cultural expression constitutes a critical element in the relationship between Germany and India. The discovery of Indian traditions in Germany and re-interpretations of those traditions in India fueled not only new theological and philosophical explorations, but also extensive innovations in the fields of music, dance, bodily experience, and political intervention. Seeking to uncover the enfolding of colonial thought structures through presentations of the Self, while placing them in the context of global colonial value chains that connected the peripheries with the centre, this interdisciplinary volume addresses India through the lens of an entangled relationship. Adopting the position that the acceleration of communication, technical development, and colonisation locally triggered re-interpretations of the religious sphere, This volume takes a look at the period from 1800 to the end of National Socialism, tracing the strands of an Indo-Germanic religion in the making as it goes along. A special emphasis is placed on the artistic expressions of religious experience including re-enactments of musical compositions and dance configurations, which were created to embody India in Germany. This is an open access book.

Routledge Readings on Northeastern India: Colonial Encounters, Customary Practices, Gender, Livelihoods presents some of the finest essays on a region that stretches across the Northeastern Himalaya, eight Indian States and many tribal and non-tribal peoples. With a lucid new Introduction, it covers a vast range of issues and offers a compelling guide to understanding the northeastern India, from colonial and missionary encounter to contemporary security and developmental issues in South Asia. The book covers several critical themes and unravels the complexities fraught by the unique biogeography and socio-political history of the region. The fifteen chapters in the volume, divided into three sections, examine gender, community: customary law and practices, land, agriculture, livelihoods, work, health, and education. This multi-disciplinary volume interweaves geography and history, culture and politics; the contested construction of identities, communities and nationalities; the political interplay of ethnicities and resource appropriation in a modernizing, globalizing economy; conflicts and violence in highly-militarized spaces. It includes engaged and insightful perspectives from major authors who have contributed to the academic and/or policy discourse of the subject. Routledge Readings on Northeastern India brings together a cluster of key readings to capture important research directions, policy suggestions, current trends, and aspects of history and future trajectories in the humanities and social sciences. It will serve as essential reading for students, scholars, policymakers, practitioners and the general reader interested in a nuanced understanding of India’s northeastern region, and especially those in South Asian studies, Northeast India studies, area studies, history, politics and international relations, labour studies, conflict and peace studies, gender studies, sociology and social anthropology. It will also appeal to those interested in public administration, development studies, environmental studies, law and human rights, regional literature, cultural studies, population studies, geography, and economics.

This book crtitically examines the reciprocal relationship between creativity and the built environment and features leading voices from across the world in a debate on originating, learning, modifying, and plagiarizing creativities within the built environment. The Companion includes contributions from architecture, design, planning, construction, real estate, economics, urban studies, geography, sociology, and public policies. Contributors review the current field and proposes new conceptual frameworks, research methodologies, and directions for research, policy, and practice. Chapters are organised into five sections, each drawing on cross-disciplinary insights and debates: Section I connects creativity, productivity, and economic growth and examines how our built environment stimulates or intimidates human imaginations. Section II addresses how hard environments are fabricated with social, cultural, and institutional meanings, and how these evolve in different times and settings. Section III discusses activities that directly and indirectly shape the material development of a built environment, its environmental sustainability, space utility, and place identity. Section IV illustrates how technologies and innovations are used in building and strengthening an intelligent, real-time, responsive urban agenda. Section V examines governance opportunities and challenges at the interface between creativity and built environment. An important resource for scholars and students in the fields of urban planning and development, urban studies, environmental sustainability, human geography, sociology, and public policy.

Each year, Kolkata's Durga Puja scales new heights as the most spectacular and extravagant event in the city's calendar. From the turn of the twenty-first century, the festival has taken on a particular artistic dispensation that is unique to the contemporary city, demanding a new order of attention and analysis. Based on field-research conducted between 2002 and 2012, this book unravels the anatomy of this newly-congured 'art' event, by tracking the new production processes, the mounting trends of publicity and sponsorship as well as the practices of mass spectatorship that make for the transformed visual culture of the festival. This new visual aesthetic, it is argued, has become the most important marker of the rapidly mutating identity of today's Durga Puja in Kolkata, bringing into the fray new categories of artists and designers, new genres of public art, and new spaces for art production and reception in the city. The book's central concern lies in conceptualizing a specically contemporary and artistic history of the urban festival. In keeping with its title, the book examines the diversity of images and practices - from the consumerist spectacle and the bonanza of awards to the efflorescence of public installations and art and craft productions - that unfurls in this season 'in the name of the goddess'. While proling the Durga Pujas as Kolkata's biggest public art event, the book also addresses the ambivalence of the designations of 'art' and 'artist' in this eld of production and viewership. One of the main aims of this study has been to lay open the claims of 'art' in this festival both as a set of insistent projections as well as a mesh of incomplete formations. The new artistic nomenclature of the festival, it is shown, is not easily secured and has to struggle to assert itself within the body of the religious event and the ephemeral mass spectacle.