Jugaad (Hindi, जुगाड़): an innovative solution that bends the rules or the use of a quotidian idea/object in a new way.

Project (English, verb): cause to move forward, plan, imagine, display.

The Jugaad Project is an open-access, digital educational platform for the study of material culture, embodiment, and belief/religious practices. It consists of a journal of the same name where thematic issues/anthologies are published upto twice a year and the Embodied Worlds podcast that dives deeper into recurring themes of how worlds are made and why. Founded by anthropologist Urmila Mohan, this platform is shaped by a changing volunteer working group that is dedicated and knowledgeable, and aims at scholarly rigor as well as dialog through diversity and innovation. The Project has fostered permanent channels of exchange, connecting those within and beyond academia in the global south and north. It works with scholars and artists to showcase and circulate their ideas, and relates theory to practice.

Academia, scholarship, and publishing has changed dramatically in the last decade. Online articles can be archived and cited much like those behind paywalls. When we started, academics and scholars would hesitate to write for us as they wondered if we were ‘cite-able’. Today, these diverse, stimulating titles reference our open-access articles in domains of food, work, religion, sports, science, health, citizenship, technology, migration, craft, heritage, museums, women's studies, and areas of South Asian and Indonesian studies.

Our content forms a ‘commons’ to aid research scholars and students from diverse fields. We work from within inter-disciplinarity while being situated in anthropological insights on practices. Over the past 5 years our body of boundaries and connections, and form and content, has held its own. Our contributors are not simply numbers to us. It has taken wisdom enfolded from a collective body of knowledge-generators, makers, and volunteers to build this platform. When you engage with us, read our themed issues, or listen to a podcast, you are immersed in something that enriches, nourishes, and makes a real difference.

Our focus is on the importance of lived reality as embodiment, experience, and perception (through the bodily-and-material) in the study of belief and/orreligion. Our approach to the study of ‘Material Religion in Context’ is inspired by the practice of Jugaad as frugal innovation in South Asia, and its equivalents in other parts of the world. While there are socio-cultural differences, we are broadly interested in how subjects and objects interact through improvisation, bricolage, diy, making do, and hacking. As such, we resist the ‘colonizing’ or siloing of knowledge through inter-disciplinary collaborations across anthropology, sociology, cultural history, classics reception, archeology, religious studies, urban studies, political science, and design, art, and craft studies. Simultaneously, and as we make connective pathways, we do not claim a ‘post-disciplinarity’ as there is much of value within disciplinary boundaries.

We define Material Religion as how and why people use material interfaces/mediums, such as objects, bodies, spaces, and senses to connect the reality of their lives with beliefs of various kinds. By focusing on beliefs and the ways they are imagined, evaluated, mediated, and manipulated we explore how people deal with the invisible, spiritual, supernatural, magical, mystical, ancestral, and/or divine to achieve certain goals. By adding the word context we draw attention to the historic and contingent nature of terms such as ‘religion’ as well as interrogating the relevance of place, practice, knowledge, and experience. That is, our study of beliefs (secular, civic, spiritual), and their objects and subjects is in dialog with how materialities are diverse, transformative, and productive as well as attendant concerns of power and relationality. How do humans imagine, manifest, and mediate realms such that they are perceived as tangible, efficacious, and real? How are humans shaped in turn?

A brief history from 2014-now.

Our story begins with the Material Religions blog, founded in 2014 by Urmila Mohan and John J. McGraw (1974-2016) as a result of discussions at a conference on religious subjectivation hosted by University College London. That site evolved from a blog to a digital journal and experimental group, The Jugaad Project, where our focus continues to be on the importance of lived reality (bodily and material) in the study of religion and belief. This open-access experimental research and publication group is run by a team of volunteers who are independent, flexible and global in outlook. We pay special attention to context in covering the diversity of global belief practices with inputs from other disciplines. In 2020, and in the wake of the pandemic, we expanded our scope to include transformatory affects and practices of belief in politics.

What does the term ‘Jugaad’ mean?

On our site we define it as “an innovative solution that bends the rules or the use of a quotidian idea/object in a new way.” We associate our project with the notion of ‘hacking’ or frugal innovation which has its roots in South Asian usage but expand it to explore whether and how other cultures and societies innovate religious practices, beliefs and ideas. Dynamics of the messy, improvised, and emergent are part of life but instead of associating Jugaad practices with notions of cheapness or expediency (as they are sometimes), we purposely aim to reposition the term and thus the project as a site of innovation, focusing on quotidian acts of making, doing, and knowing. As part of Jugaad politics, we aim at being inclusive and supportive of emerging creators through our editorial and curatorial vision and practice.

The term 'Project' in our name is something that is ubiquitous and, perhaps, more easily overlooked. ‘Project' is both a noun and a verb. One can both take up a project as well as pro-ject ideas and emotions into the project. While the noun form of this term has become popular, indeed, indispensable in today's world, the verb form is still salient, meaning to imagine, to propose, and to move forward. These connotations resonate with our vision of an experimental educational space that uses different media and kinds of communication to present and discuss ideas. While our core ideas remain relevant to scholarship and academics on materiality, 'The Jugaad Project' helps us take these ideas and make them accessible on multiple levels thereby giving them momentum. Conversely, the responses and insights we get feed back into new priorities and ideas for scholarly exploration on the building of life worlds.

Why do you emphasize ‘bodies’ and ‘materials’?

Our content features a common interest in the roles of bodies and materials in religion with attendant concerns of (in)tangibility, (in)visibility, real vs. imaginary, and the relationship between discursive and procedural modes of knowledge. Our ideas initially drew upon our relationship with the Matière à Penser group and scholars, such as Jean-Pierre Warnier and David Morgan, whose works deal with aspects of performance and embodiment whether or not directly connected with the domain of religion. Subsequently, and through interdisciplinary workshops, we developed our own framework that focuses on subjectivity, affect/emotion, and imagination. We welcome collaboration across western and non-western systems of thought and practice, and the support of non-western women’s scholarship.

Have you read our edited volume?

From 2020-23, The Jugaad Project ran 3 virtual workshops with global participants. These workshops produced papers that were later edited into a book The Efficacy of Intimacy and Belief in Worldmaking Practices (Routledge, 2024). Now released to stimulating critiques (such as this review by James Bielo), this edited volume showcases new, exciting work at the intersection of belief, intimacy, and material culture, and connects life-worlds across religion and politics.