Caring for Divine Infrastructures: Nature and Spirits in a Special Economic Zone in India

Ishii, Miho

doi:10.1080/00141844.2015.1107609

Cited by 25 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 24 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Bhat's narrative thus pointed to the overlap of the pathways for different forces and substances. Underground, the original Pilicāmuṇḍi shrine and the newly built industrial infrastructure became linked to one another, with catastrophic consequences (see also Ishii 2017). The ritual conducted by Bhat was a means of negotiating these contradictory forces to avoid more unanticipated events.…”

Section: An Explosion On the Path Of A Būtamentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Modernity and Spirit Worship in India

Ishii¹

2019

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This book investigates the entangled relations between people's daily worship practices and their umwelt in South India. Focusing on the practices of spirit (būta) worship in the coastal area of Karnataka, it examines the relationship between people and deities.Based on extensive fieldwork, this book links important anthropological theories on personhood, perspectives, transactions, and gift-exchanges together with the Gestaltkreis theory of Viktor von Weizsäcker. First, it examines the relations between būta worship and land tenure, matriliny, and hierarchy in the society. It then explores the reflexive relationship between modern law and current practices based on conventional law, before examining new developments in būta worship with the rise of mega-industries and environmental movements. Furthermore, this book sheds light on the struggles and endeavours of the people who create and recreate their relations with the realm of sacred wildness, as well as the formations and transformations of the umwelt in perpetual social-political transition.Modernity and Spirit Worship in India will be of interest to academics in the field of anthropology, religious studies and the dynamics of religion, and South Asian Culture and Society. List of illustrationsvii Preface ix 1 Introduction: towards an anthropology of the umwelt PART ONE Humans and the wild śakti of deities 2 The land of paddy fields, forests, and deities 3 The būta shrine and deities in Perar 4 Pāḍdana: the oral epics of deities 5 Dances, oracles, and blessings in the ritual 6 The transaction of wild śakti 7 Playing with perspectives PART TWO Social transformations and the emergence of a new umwelt 8 Būta's agency in conflicts over the village shrine 9 Historical changes in land tenure in South Kanara 10 Modern law, customary law, and the reflexive imagination 11 Land reforms and deities as the 'owners of land' 12 Būtas in the midst of the development project Contents vi Contents 13 The new umwelt in the industrial plant 14 Conclusion: being, pathos, and the umwelt Glossary Bibliography IndexIn the month of māyi during the hottest and driest season, būta rituals are held in many villages in South Kanara, a coastal area in Karnataka. 1 Accompanied by drums and wind instruments played by Puruṣa musicians, spirit mediums of the Pambada or Nalike castes dance around the precincts of local shrines, issue oracles, and interact with people.As apotheosised local heroes or heroines or as the spirits of wild animals dwelling in forests, būtas are generally regarded as deities. While būtas may travel across regions, they are generally believed to be closely linked to the land and nature of localities. Though normally invisible, their power, or śakti, 2 fills the deep forests, hangs over the bush and ponds, and circulates through the woods, agricultural fields, and villages. Consequently, būtas are considered to originate from-and embody-a realm of sacred wildness.Fieldwork for this monograph was mainly carried out in the two adjoining villages of Mudu Perar and Padu ...

show abstract

Section: An Explosion On the Path Of A Būtamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Ong 1988). Regarding this issue, see also Ishii (2017). Regarding this, see Kimura (2016), who describes the conflicts and negotiations between locals in the Tohoku region of Japan, who recognise the danger of earthquakes and tsunamis and still long for an intimate relationship with sea, and the state, which aims to build a gigantic seawall.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modernity and Spirit Worship in India

Ishii¹

2019

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…What would be extended in this process would thus not be the network as such but rather our curiosity about the continuous composition and reconfiguration of the world multiple (Omura et al, 2018). The aim would not be to capture within the network all those entitieslike earth-beings (de la Cadena 2015) or spirits (Ishii 2017) -whose forms do not easily fit, but rather to learn to relate to worlds composed by things and forces far more heterogeneous and unruly than those ANT has conventionally dealt with (see e.g. Jensen 2015, Jensen and Blok 2013, Jensen, Ishii and Swift 2016.…”

Section: Rhizomementioning

confidence: 99%

The Routledge Companion to Actor-Network Theory

Blok¹,

Farías²,

Roberts³

2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This companion explores ANT as an intellectual practice, tracking its movements and engagements with a wide range of other academic and activist projects. Showcasing the work of a diverse set of 'second generation' ANT scholars from around the world, it highlights the exciting depth and breadth of contemporary ANT and its future possibilities.The companion has 38 chapters, each answering a key question about ANT and its capacities. Early chapters explore ANT as an intellectual practice and highlight ANT's dialogues with other fields and key theorists. Others open critical, provocative discussions of its limitations. Later sections explore how ANT has been developed in a range of social scientific fields and how it has been used to explore a wide range of scales and sites. Chapters in the final section discuss ANT's involvement in 'real world' endeavours such as disability and environmental activism, and even running a Chilean hospital. Each chapter contains an overview of relevant work and introduces original examples and ideas from the authors' recent research. The chapters orient readers in rich, complex fields and can be read in any order or combination. Throughout the volume, authors mobilise ANT to explore and account for a range of exciting case studies: from wheelchair activism to parliamentary decision-making; from racial profiling to energy consumption monitoring; from queer sex to Korean cities. A comprehensive introduction by the editors explores the significance of ANT more broadly and provides an overview of the volume.The Routledge Companion to Actor-Network Theory will be an inspiring and lively companion to academics and advanced undergraduates and postgraduates from across many disciplines across the social sciences, including Sociology, Geography, Politics and Urban Studies, Environmental Studies and STS, and anyone wishing to engage with ANT, to understand what it has already been used to do and to imagine what it might do in the future.

show abstract

“…As mentioned, Amazonia's uncontrolled environments allow informal mining to proceed clandestinely through the ‘fluid spatiality’ of remote infrastructure alluded to above (see also Ishii ). Without these characteristics, the gold mining that takes place in Amazonia would be unable to participate in capitalism's edges (see Tsing ).…”

Section: Outside the Grids Inside The Fluidmentioning

confidence: 99%

The wild inside out: fluid infrastructure in an Amazonian mining region

Penfield

2019

Soc Anthropol

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Nestled in the hinterlands of Amazonia, informal gold mining continues largely unnoticed. The ‘wild’ landscapes that prospectors must negotiate in order to reach and work in these far‐flung mine sites consist of unruly forests, raging waterfalls and unpredictable waterways, locales that restrict and confound formal infrastructural development. In such terrains, prospectors must devise innovative ‘fluid infrastructures’ that allow the mine's continued existence against all odds. Local perceptions of the wilderness in these locales offer insights into remoteness not as regions untouched and inaccessible, but as intimately connected to the diffuse and manifold forms that global economies take. These are zones in which the wild is in fact turned inside out.

show abstract

Caring for Divine Infrastructures: Nature and Spirits in a Special Economic Zone in India

Cited by 25 publications

References 24 publications

Modernity and Spirit Worship in India

Modernity and Spirit Worship in India

The Routledge Companion to Actor-Network Theory

The wild inside out: fluid infrastructure in an Amazonian mining region

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About