Becoming Religious in a Secular Age / Mark Elmore.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Elmore, Mark, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Himachal Pradesh (India)--Religion--21st century.

Himachal Pradesh (India)--Religion--20th century.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (301 p.)

Place of Publication:

Berkeley, CA : University of California Press, [2016]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Religion is often viewed as a universally ancient element of the human inheritance, but in the Western Himalayas the community of Himachal Pradesh discovered its religion only after India became an independent secular state. Based on extensive ethnographic and archival work, Becoming Religious in a Secular Age tells the story of this discovery and how it transformed a community's relations to its past and to its members, as well as to those outside the community. And, as Mark Elmore demonstrates, Himachali religion offers a unique opportunity to reimagine relations between religion and secularity. Elmore shows that modern secularity is not so much the eradication of religion as the very condition for its development. Showing us that to become a modern, ethical subject is to become religious, this book creatively augments our understanding of both religion and modernity.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

List of Illustrations

Introduction: What Is This Thing Called Religion?

1. Becoming Sufficiently Developed in Himachal Pradesh, or How Religion Became a Problem

2. God Is a Beggar: Land Reforms Create Religion as a Separate Sphere

3. Ordinary Miraculousness: Farmers and Pharmacists Practice the Science of Religion

4. Managing Religion: Government, Gūrs, and Gods

5. Negotiating Religion: Normalization, Abjection, And Enrichment

6. Cultivating Religion Amid The Conflicting Desires Of Goats, Gods, And Government

Afterword: Religion Is A Verb

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9780520964648

0520964640

OCLC:

951625708