All in Reviews

Book Review: Mapping the Complexities and Adaptability of Devotional Practices

Book Review: Mapping the Complexities and Adaptability of Devotional Practices

Lalita Waldia
Reviews

Lalita Waldia, Project Coordinator, People For Himalayan Development, Himachal Pradesh, India, reviews the book "Clothing as Devotion in Contemporary Hinduism" by Urmila Mohan that explores the profound connection between material culture and religious devotion within the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON). The book delves into various elements of ISKCON’s practices, focusing on how clothing, body marks, japa beads, and other material artifacts are integral to the religious lives of its followers. The central thesis of Mohan’s work is that these material objects are not mere accessories but play a crucial role in expressing and cultivating devotion, encapsulated in the concept of “efficacious intimacy.”

Disrupting Individualism through the Intimate: A Review of 'The Efficacy of Intimacy and Belief in Worldmaking Practices' (Routledge, 2024)

Disrupting Individualism through the Intimate: A Review of 'The Efficacy of Intimacy and Belief in Worldmaking Practices' (Routledge, 2024)

Emma Cieslik
Reviews

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 very positive endorsements, this edited volume showcases new, exciting work at the intersection of belief, intimacy, and material culture, and connects life-worlds across religion and politics. Emma Cieslik reviews this book to explore how it might be useful to scholars.

Monument Lab Town Hall: Shaping the Past

Monument Lab Town Hall: Shaping the Past

Lillia McEnaney
Reviews

In October 2020, Monument Lab hosted their annual town hall, “Shaping the Past.” Through conversations between memory works, artists, and interdisciplinary scholars, “Shaping the Past” asked questions surrounding the future of monuments and monumentality, setting the stage for the future(s) of public space, artistic and curatorial activism, and community-building in the wake of 2020.

Heavenly Garden: Creating Intimacy, Developing Empathy

Heavenly Garden: Creating Intimacy, Developing Empathy

Ratu Saraswati
Articles, Reviews

The author, a performance artist, describes the impetus behind “Optik-Optik Kecil” (Tiny Optics), a participatory artwork of collecting morning dew. The performance was held in an area of land in Depok, a city close to Jakarta in West Java province. It was set at a specific time—weekend mornings during the holy month of Ramadan when Muslims fast from dawn to dusk. Participants canvassed the landscape collecting morning dew and, much like the practice of fasting, the performance itself aimed at cultivating people’s empathy. With dew as the materiality of hope and awareness, the artist hoped to make the participants’ realities intersect, even if briefly, within the space of the landscape.

Food for Thought: The Contributions of 'Matière à Penser' to the Study of Material Culture

Food for Thought: The Contributions of 'Matière à Penser' to the Study of Material Culture

Jean-Pierre Warnier
Articles, Reviews

As one of the founding members of the ‘MaP’ (Matière à Penser) working group and author of “The Pot King”, Jean-Pierre Warnier authored this brief description of the main ideas of the group, belatedly turned into an informal network, and devoted to the study of bodily and material culture with an emphasis on empirical field research and on theoretical sophistication.