A detailed historical anthropology of Ayodhya, which argues that religious values CAN reflect political and economic processes.

This book sheds light on the social imagination of nature and environment in contemporary China. It demonstrates how the urgent debate on how to create an ecologically sustainable future for the world's most populous country is shaped by its complex engagement with religious traditions, competing visions of modernity and globalization, and by engagement with minority nationalities who live in areas of outstanding natural beauty on China's physical and social margins. The book develops a comprehensive understanding of contemporary China that goes beyond the tradition/ modernity dichotomy, and illuminates the diversity of narratives and worldviews that inform contemporary Chinese understandings of and engagements with nature and environment.

Media, War and Terrorism analyses, for the first time, responses to the events of 9/11 and it's repercussions from the point of view of Asian and Middle Eastern countries. Perhaps controversially, the contributors argue that while the US, and to an extent European, media seems largely unified in their coverage and silence in public debate of the events surrounding the attacks on the World Trade Centre, there exists open, critical debate in other parts of the world.
By examining the use of media as an instrument of warfare and analyzing the construction of public opinion in mediated electronic warfare, this book clearly shows the difference in perspectives between public opinion in the US and the rest of the world. Moving away from popular assumptions that societies in the West are democratic and progressive and those in the Middle East and Asia are either authoritarian or under-developed, this examination of the media in those countries suggests the exact opposite. In combining an examination of the general, theoretical issues concerning the use of the media as an instrument of warfare with rich, geographically diverse case studies, the editors are able to provide a diverse and intriguing analysis of the impact and inter-connectedness of national and global medias.
Bringing together contributions from academics, journalists and media practioners from all over the world, Media, War and Terrorism is an essential read for all of those seeking an informed, non-Western perspective on the events following 9/11.

This collection of essays covers the media and public debate dimension of the events of 9/11, and beyond, from the point of view of Middle Eastern and Asian countries. The first part of the book deals with the use of the media as an instrument of warfare, the growing significance of religion, the emergence of transnational media and a transnational public sphere and the relationship between the West and the rest of the world. The second part of the book contains nine case studies relating to different parts of the Middle East and Asian world, all with a strong empirical focus, while at the same time elaborating the book's theoretical concerns.

Prayer is an important religious practice that is rarely studied from the perspective of politics - and yet it should be. Though some forms of Protestantism teach that prayer should be individual and private, this is an exception rather than a rule. In many other religions and cultures, the regulation of collective and public prayer cannot be separated from the complex world of politics. Where is prayer allowed, and where not? Who can participate, and who can't? How should you pray - and how shouldn't you? Prayer is subject to a host of both written and unwritten political rules. From the Pentecostal religious battle - where prayer is both sword and shield against the Satanic Other - to the relations between Islam and Christianity, prayer as spiritual warfare can be found cross-culturally and across the world. This book brings together case studies of the political salience of prayer in Nigeria, France, India, Russia, and the United States. It deals with Christian, Muslim, and Hindu practices. In a world where religious tensions are ever-present, it reminds us of the intensely political nature of prayer. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Religious and Political Practice.

This book sheds light on the social imagination of nature and environment in contemporary China. It demonstrates how the urgent debate on how to create an ecologically sustainable future for the world's most populous country is shaped by its complex engagement with religious traditions, competing visions of modernity and globalization, and by engagement with minority nationalities who live in areas of outstanding natural beauty on China's physical and social margins. The book develops a comprehensive understanding of contemporary China that goes beyond the tradition/ modernity dichotomy, and illuminates the diversity of narratives and worldviews that inform contemporary Chinese understandings of and engagements with nature and environment.

Peter van der Veer has gathered together a ground-breaking collection of essays that suggests that conversion to forms of Christianity in the modern period is not only a conversion to modern forms of these religions, but also to relgious forms of modernity. Religious perceptions of the self, of community, and of the state are transformed when Western discourses of modernity become dominant in the modern world. This volume seeks to relate europe and its others by exploring conversion both in modern Europe and in the colonized world.
The contributors combine the study of conversion in modern Europe with an analysis of conversion in Africa, Sotuh and South-East Asia and Oceania. Several essays attempt explicitly to relate religious development in the colonizing and in the colonized world. Both the effects of the missionary project on target peoples and on the religious history of Western societies is examined. The discourse of "the reflective self," "personal choice," and "authenticity" inherent in Christian conversion and crucial to the question of modernity, is examined both in European and non-European contexts. Conversion is shown to be an innovative practice which partakes in the transformation of the social without being a mechanical result of it. "Conversion to Modernity" combines cultural studies, history and anthropology in providing new and important insights in modernity, colonialism and Christian discourse.
Contributors: Webb Keane, Peter van Rooden, Patricia Spyer, Achille Mbembe, Nicholas Dirks, Birgit Meyer, Judith Pollman, Margaret Jolly, Keith Luria, Eytan Bercovitch, Talal Asad, Gauri Viswanathan.

Broad and comprehensive, Conversions to Modernities provides new and important insights into modernity, colonialism and Christian discourse.

Prayer is an important religious practice that is rarely studied from the perspective of politics - and yet it should be. Though some forms of Protestantism teach that prayer should be individual and private, this is an exception rather than a rule. In many other religions and cultures, the regulation of collective and public prayer cannot be separated from the complex world of politics. Where is prayer allowed, and where not? Who can participate, and who can't? How should you pray - and how shouldn't you? Prayer is subject to a host of both written and unwritten political rules. From the Pentecostal religious battle - where prayer is both sword and shield against the Satanic Other - to the relations between Islam and Christianity, prayer as spiritual warfare can be found cross-culturally and across the world. This book brings together case studies of the political salience of prayer in Nigeria, France, India, Russia, and the United States. It deals with Christian, Muslim, and Hindu practices. In a world where religious tensions are ever-present, it reminds us of the intensely political nature of prayer. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Religious and Political Practice.

Peter van der Veer and the contributors to this volume explore the relationship between South Asian nationalism, migration, ethnicity, and the construction of religious identity. Although nationality and diaspora seem to represent opposite ideas and values, the authors argue that nationalism is strengthened, even produced, by migration.

A detailed historical anthropology of Ayodhya, which argues that religious values "can" reflect political and economic processes.

This innovative edited collection provides a comprehensive analysis of modern secularism across Asia which contests and expands prevailing accounts that have predominantly focused on the West. Its authors highlight that terms like 'secular', 'secularization', and 'secularism' do not carry the same meanings in the very different historical and cultural contexts of Asia. Critiquing Charles Taylor's account of secularism, this book examines what travelled and what not in 'the imperial encounter' between Western secular modernity and other traditions outside of the West. Throughout the book, state responses to religion at different points in Chinese and South-East Asian history are carefully considered, providing a nuanced and in-depth understanding of post-secular strategies and relations in these areas. Particular attention is given to Catholicism in the Philippines, Vietnam, and Singapore, and Hinduism and Chinese religion in Malaysia, Singapore, and India. This theoretically engaged work will appeal to students and scholars of Asian studies, anthropology, religious studies, history, sociology, and political science.

This innovative edited collection provides a comprehensive analysis of modern secularism across Asia which contests and expands prevailing accounts that have predominantly focused on the West. Its authors highlight that terms like 'secular', 'secularization', and 'secularism' do not carry the same meanings in the very different historical and cultural contexts of Asia. Critiquing Charles Taylor's account of secularism, this book examines what travelled and what not in 'the imperial encounter' between Western secular modernity and other traditions outside of the West. Throughout the book, state responses to religion at different points in Chinese and South-East Asian history are carefully considered, providing a nuanced and in-depth understanding of post-secular strategies and relations in these areas. Particular attention is given to Catholicism in the Philippines, Vietnam, and Singapore, and Hinduism and Chinese religion in Malaysia, Singapore, and India. This theoretically engaged work will appeal to students and scholars of Asian studies, anthropology, religious studies, history, sociology, and political science.

In his extraordinarily influential book "Orientalism," Edward Said argued that Western knowledge about the Orient in the Post-Enlightenment period has been "a systematic discourse by which Europe was able to manage--even produce--the Orient politically, sociologically, militarily, ideologically, scientifically, and imaginatively." According to Said, European and American views of the Orient created a reality in which the Oriental was forced to live. Although Said's work deals primarily with discourse about the Arab world, much of his argument has been applied to other regions of "the Orient."Drawing on Said's book, Carol A. Breckenridge, Peter van der Veer, and the contributors to this book explore the ways colonial administrators constructed knowledge about the society and culture of India and the processes through which that knowledge has shaped past and present Indian reality.One common theme that links the essays in "Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament" is the proposition that Orientalist discourse is not just restricted to the colonial past but continues even today. The contributors argue that it is still extremely difficult for both Indians and outsiders to think about India in anything but strictly Orientalist terms. They propose that students of society and history rethink their methodologies and the relation between theories, methods, and the historical conditions that produced them."Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament" provides new and important insights into the cultural embeddedness of power in the colonial and postcolonial world.

In The Value of Comparison Peter van der Veer makes a compelling case for using comparative approaches in the study of society and for the need to resist the simplified civilization narratives popular in public discourse and some social theory. He takes the quantitative social sciences and the broad social theories they rely on to task for their inability to question Western cultural presuppositions, demonstrating that anthropology's comparative approach provides a better means to understand societies. This capacity stems from anthropology's engagement with diversity, its fragmentary approach to studying social life, and its ability to translate difference between cultures. Through essays on topics as varied as iconoclasm, urban poverty, Muslim immigration, and social exclusion van der Veer highlights the ways that studying the particular and the unique allows for gaining a deeper knowledge of the whole without resorting to simple generalizations that elide and marginalize difference.

"The Modern Spirit of Asia" challenges the notion that modernity in China and India are derivative imitations of the West, arguing that these societies have transformed their ancient traditions in unique and distinctive ways. Peter van der Veer begins with nineteenth-century imperial history, exploring how Western concepts of spirituality, secularity, religion, and magic were used to translate the traditions of India and China. He traces how modern Western notions of religion and magic were incorporated into the respective nation-building projects of Chinese and Indian nationalist intellectuals, yet how modernity in China and India is by no means uniform. While religion is a centerpiece of Indian nationalism, it is viewed in China as an obstacle to progress that must be marginalized and controlled.

"The Modern Spirit of Asia" moves deftly from Kandinsky's understanding of spirituality in art to Indian yoga and Chinese qi gong, from modern theories of secularism to histories of Christian conversion, from Orientalist constructions of religion to Chinese campaigns against magic and superstition, and from Muslim Kashmir to Muslim Xinjiang. Van der Veer, an outspoken proponent of the importance of comparative studies of religion and society, eloquently makes his case in this groundbreaking examination of the spiritual and the secular in China and India.

"Peter van der Veer's bracing, audacious book is sure to stir up much-needed debate. Challenging the canonical narratives that have governed analysis of colonialism, culture, and religion, he advances a bold thesis about their complicity across boundaries and nationalist categories. Deeply learned and elegantly presented, "Imperial Encounters" is a gripping work of the scholarly imagination."--Edward W. Said, Columbia University

"This is a splendid book. Peter van der Veer has drawn on a wide range of fascinating readings to elaborate the post-colonial thesis that the modern histories of Britain and India have been mutually constitutive. I believe he is absolutely right in insisting on the fact--and demonstrating it so ably--that modern ideas like nation, religion, and race must be understood, if they are to be understood fully, through an interactional approach. Anyone interested in recent thinking about the joint history of colonialism and modernity should not miss this work."--Talal Asad, City University of New York

"Peter van der Veer has made extremely important contributions to the study of Indian history and society. In recent years, he has taken a particularly important approach, one the puts him at the cutting edge of historical work, in placing the European metropole and the Asian colonized into the same historical space. In this volume, he explores one aspect of the subject in depth and provides a coherent single-voice narrative. The scholarship is of the highest level, and van der Veer writes very well, often with a clever nuance or twist."--Barbara Metcalf, University of California, Davis

Does modernity make religion politically irrelevant? Conventional scholarly and popular wisdom says that it does. The prevailing view assumes that the onset of western modernity--characterized by the rise of nationalism, the dominance of capitalism, and the emergence of powerful state institutions--favors secularism and relegates religion to the purely private realm. This collection of essays on nationalism and religion in Europe and Asia challenges that view. Contributors show that religion and politics are mixed together in complex and vitally important ways not just in the East, but in the West as well.

The book focuses on four societies: India, Japan, Britain, and the Netherlands. It shows that religion and nationalism in these societies combined to produce such notions as the nation being chosen for a historical task (imperialism, for example), the possibility of national revival, and political leadership as a form of salvation. The volume also examines the qualities of religious discourse and practice that can be used for nationalist purposes, paying special attention to how religion can help to give meaning to sacrifice in national struggle. The book's comparative approach underscores that developments in colonizing and colonized countries, too often considered separately, are subtly interrelated.

In addition to the editors, the contributors are Benedict R. Anderson, Talal Asad, Susan Bayly, Partha Chatterjee, Frans Groot, Harry Harootunian, Hugh McLeod, Barbara Metcalf, and Peter van Rooden.

Understanding religion from a material and corporeal angle, this open access book addresses the ways in which refugees practice their religions and convert or develop new faiths. It also evaluates how secular institutions in Europe frame and determine what is classified as religion according to the law, and delineate the limits of religious authority, religious practice, and religious speech. The question of nationalism and migration has been shaping the political landscape in Europe for more than a decade, resulting in a nationalist upsurge. This volume places the current trajectories of people from Asia and Africa who flee from conditions such as oppression and conflict, and who are seeking refuge in Europe in a broader historical and comparative perspective. In so doing, it addresses past experiences in Europe with the role of religion in both producing and accommodating refugees, in the aftermath of the Peace of Westphalia, World War II, and in the context of the Cold War. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 licence on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by Utrecht University and the Max Planck Society.

Handbook of Religion and the Asian City highlights the creative and innovative role of urban aspirations in Asian world cities. It does not assume that religion is of the past and that the urban is secular, but instead points out that urban politics and governance often manifest religious boundaries and sensibilities in short, that public religion is politics. The essays in this book show how projects of secularism come up against projects and ambitions of a religious nature, a particular form of contestation that takes the city as its public arena. Questioning the limits of cities like Mumbai, Singapore, Seoul, Beijing, Bangkok, and Shanghai, the authors assert that Asian cities have to be understood not as global models of futuristic city planning but as larger landscapes of spatial imagination that have specific cultural and political trajectories. Religion plays a central role in the politics of heritage that is emerging from the debris of modernist city planning. Megacities are arenas for the assertion of national and transnational aspirations as Asia confronts modernity. Cities are also sites of speculation, not only for those who invest in real estate but also for those who look for housing, employment, and salvation. In its potential and actual mobility, the sacred creates social space in which they all can meet. Handbook of Religion and the Asian City makes the comparative case that one cannot study the historical patterns of urbanization in Asia without paying attention to the role of religion in urban aspirations.

Understanding religion from a material and corporeal angle, this open access book addresses the ways in which refugees practice their religions and convert or develop new faiths. It also evaluates how secular institutions in Europe frame and determine what is classified as religion according to the law, and delineate the limits of religious authority, religious practice, and religious speech. The question of nationalism and migration has been shaping the political landscape in Europe for more than a decade, resulting in a nationalist upsurge. This volume places the current trajectories of people from Asia and Africa who flee from conditions such as oppression and conflict, and who are seeking refuge in Europe in a broader historical and comparative perspective. In so doing, it addresses past experiences in Europe with the role of religion in both producing and accommodating refugees, in the aftermath of the Peace of Westphalia, World War II, and in the context of the Cold War. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 licence on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by Utrecht University and the Max Planck Society.

Religious nationalism is a subject of critical importance in much of the world today. Peter van der Veer's timely study on the relationship between religion and politics in India goes well beyond other books on this subject. He brings together several disciplines--anthropology, history, social theory, literary studies--to show how Indian religious identities have been shaped by pilgrimage, migration, language development, and more recently, print and visual media.
Van der Veer's central focus is the lengthy dispute over the Babari mosque in Ayodhya, site of a bloody confrontation between Hindus and Muslims in December 1992. A thought-provoking range of other examples describes the historical construction of religious identities: cow protection societies and Sufi tombs, purdah and the political appropriation of images of the female body, Salman Rushdie and the role of the novel in nationalism, Mahatma Gandhi and Swami Vivekananda, the Khalsa movement among Sikhs, and nationalist archaeology and the televised "Ramayana,"
Van der Veer offers a new perspective on the importance of religious organization and the role of ritual in the formation of nationalism. His work advances our understanding of contemporary India while also offering significant theoretical insights into one of the most troubling issues of this century.

In The Value of Comparison Peter van der Veer makes a compelling case for using comparative approaches in the study of society and for the need to resist the simplified civilization narratives popular in public discourse and some social theory. He takes the quantitative social sciences and the broad social theories they rely on to task for their inability to question Western cultural presuppositions, demonstrating that anthropology's comparative approach provides a better means to understand societies. This capacity stems from anthropology's engagement with diversity, its fragmentary approach to studying social life, and its ability to translate difference between cultures. Through essays on topics as varied as iconoclasm, urban poverty, Muslim immigration, and social exclusion van der Veer highlights the ways that studying the particular and the unique allows for gaining a deeper knowledge of the whole without resorting to simple generalizations that elide and marginalize difference.