You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
The Eastern Himalaya holds perhaps the highest levels of ethnolinguistic diversity in all Eurasia, with over 300 languages spoken by as many distinct cultural groups. What factors can explain such diversity? How did it evolve, and what can its analysis teach us about the prehistory of its wider region? This pioneering interdisciplinary volume brings together a diverse group of linguists and anthropologists, all of whom seek to reconstruct aspects of Eastern Himalayan ethnolinguistic prehistory from an empirical standpoint, on the basis of primary fieldwork-derived data from a diverse range of Himalayan Indigenous languages and cultural practices. Contributors are: David Bradley, Scott DeLancey, Toni Huber, Gwendolyn Hyslop, Linda Konnerth, Ismael Lieberherr, Yankee Modi, Stephen Morey, Mark W. Post, Uta Reinöhl, Alban Stockhausen, Amos Teo, and Marion Wettstein .
This volume is an important contribution to the new literature on frontier studies and the historiography of Northeast India.
Proposing a new theoretical framework, this book explores Shamanism’s links with violence from a global perspective. Contributors, renowned anthropologists and authorities in the field, draw on their research in Mongolia, China, Korea, Malaysia, Nepal, India, Siberia, America, Papua New Guinea, Taiwan to investigate how indigenous shamanic cultures dealt, and are still dealing with, varying degrees of internal and external violence. During ceremonies shamans act like hunters and warriors, dealing with many states related to violence, such as collective and individual suffering, attack, conflict and antagonism. Indigenous religious complexes are often called to respond to direct and indirect competition with more established cultural and religious traditions which undermine the sociocultural structure, the sense of identity and the state of well-being of many indigenous groups. This book explores a more sensitive vision of shamanism, closer to the emic views of many indigenous groups.
A study of the history and politics of colonial and post-colonial northeast India. In India, the eight states that border Myanmar, Bangladesh, Bhutan and the Tibetan areas of China are often referred to as just “the Northeast.” In the Name of the Nation offers a critical and historical account of the country’s troubled relations with this borderland region. Its modern history is shaped by the dynamics of a “frontier” in its multiple references: migration and settlement, resource extraction, and regional geopolitics. Partly because of this, the political trajectory of the region has been different from the rest of the country. Ethnic militias and armed groups have flourished for dec...
This edited book set in the context of North East India explores issues concerning symbols, meanings, representations, and social implications of materiality and visuality, as well as the dynamics of power, social reproduction, ideological dominance and knowledge production, from an interdisciplinary perspective. It seeks to answer the question of why some things matter more than others or what happens when certain things are made more visible than others. The book provides valuable insights into the process of identity construction through the use of cultural sources, both material and visual. Following on the debates/discussions on material and visual culture in the 1970s and 1980s, the bo...
The present volume offers a collection of essays that examines the mechanisms and strategies of collecting, displaying and appropriating Islamic art in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Many studies in this book concentrate on lesser known collections of Islamic art, situated in Central and Eastern Europe that until now have received little attention from scholars. Special attention is given to the figure of the Swiss collector Henri Moser Charlottenfels, whose important, still largely unstudied collection of Islamic art is now preserved in the Bernisches Historisches Museum, Switzerland. Contributors to the volume include young researchers and established scholars from Western a...
This book examines the formation of identity of the Nagas in northeast India in light of the proselytizing efforts by the Americans and the colonization by the British in their search for control over areas inhabited by the Nagas which were perfect for tea plantations. The author explores the westernization of Naga culture, its effect on the Naga Nationalist movement, and how it has led to the formation of modern Naga identity. As a unique indigenous group, the colonization of the Naga people offers fresh insights into our understanding of the processes and effects of colonization in India, as well as its long-term negative effects, particularly with regards to the preservation of traditional beliefs and customs.
This volume considers spirit possession in the Himalayas and the various ways in which invisible powers are made present. It does so by examining material representations of these powers through artefacts, animals, plants and natural substances, while also focusing on narratives of people’s encounters with the invisible that may help them to reconfigure reality. Through these two approaches, the contributions examine new phenomena associated with the concepts of "possession" and "shamanism", which otherwise tend to lead research into well-worn furrows. The book addresses a range of themes, including the gods of the Western Himalayas, death and ritual dissolution among Hyolmo Buddhists in Nepal, gods and rivers as legal persons in India, and the problem of conversion disorder in Nepal. Rich in ethnography, this book will be indispensable for scholars and researchers of anthropology, religion, spiritualism, sociology of religion, Himalayan studies, sociology and South Asia.
»Das ganze Werk, Kunst genannt, kennt keine Grenzen und Völker, sondern die Menschheit.« So schrieben es Franz Marc und Wassily Kandinsky 1911 für ihren Almanach Der Blaue Reiter. Dieses programmatische Jahrbuch etablierte den Blauen Reiter (ca. 1911–1914) als einen der ersten transnationalen Künstler*innenkreise. Und dieses Credo inspirierte das Lenbachhaus dazu, das Werk der beteiligten Künstler*innen – unter ihnen Gabriele Münter, Alfred Kubin, Maria Marc und Elisabeth Epstein – nicht nur ästhetisch und historisch, sondern in seinen geistigen, sozio-ökonomischen sowie politischen Zusammenhängen zu betrachten. Denn nicht nur mit Worten, sondern auch mit Bildern und Taten setzte sich der Kreis des Blauen Reiter für ein globales, gleichberechtigtes Kunstverständnis ein. Gefangen in der Zeit der kolonialen Weltordnung vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg, gelang es allerdings auch ihnen nicht, eine emanzipatorische Praxis von Kunst jenseits nationaler Zugehörigkeit sowie tradierter Hierarchien und Gattungen umzusetzen.
AHP's 2013 annual collection contains 5 original research articles, 7 new pieces of fiction, & 20 reviews of recent books. ARTICLES Ian G Baird-Shifting Contexts & Performances: The Brao-Kavet & Their Sacred Mountains in Northeast Cambodia Dpa' mo skyid-The 'Descent of Blessings': Ecstasy & Revival among the Tibetan Bon Communities of Reb gong Gerong Pincuo & Henrëtte Daudey-Too Much Loving-kindness to Repay: Funeral Speeches of the Wenquan Pumi Wang Shiyong-Towards a Localized Development Approach for Tibetan Areas in China. William Noseworthy-The Cham's First Highland Sovereign-Po Romé (r. 1627-1651) FICTION Bsod nams 'gyur med-Folktales from Gcig sgril Lhundrom-Longing for Snow-covered ...