Ranganathan
Biographic Data
| ID | 21241 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ranganathan |
| FAMILY NAME | Ranganathan |
| SIGNATURE | RANGANATHAN |
| AFFILIATIONS | Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6954-2727 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 14 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1977 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Drumming the Deity to Life
Representation of dyslexia in Indian media
The media’s role in representing marginalities such as disability and promoting social justice is crucial (Aspler et al., 2022). In the recent times, there has been an interest in discussions on dy
The Rhythms of Tradition
Fieldwork in pandemic times
What is it like as an academic to be doing social science research in pandemic times? How do research engagements and interactions transform in the wake of a global crisis? This creative piece ruminates on questions of care and ethics in the context of doing fieldwork during the pandemic. These poems emerged from the need to reimagine anthropological research in terms of care relations and ethics rather than methods or tools. Writing allowed for …
Making things work, practically
Drawing on ethnography that involved in‐depth online interviews with parents of adult autistic individuals in India, this article focuses on the experiences of five interlocutors to examine the nuanced understanding of disability, family, and care in the context of COVID‐19 in India and, more broadly, in the realm of disability. Anchored in a feminist philosophical framework of care, the study addresses two pivotal questions. First, it explores h…
Linking Body, Memory, and Divine Embodiment
Chronic relationships and mental health care
The paper explores how chronicities and chronic relationships are fostered at a state-sponsored community psychiatry clinic that has been affiliated with a Sufi shrine in western India. The clinic provides free psychotropic treatment to patients, most of whom are pilgrims visiting the shrine. While the clinic has been lauded for its collaborative approach of blending 'medicine and prayer' in the provision of mental health care, observations of cl…
“Initially, medicines will be given, and then we need to study the case”
In response to the global call to upscale mental health services in low--income countries, mental health non-governmental organisations (MHNGOs) have sprung up in Kerala to address mental health needs by partnering with pre-existing locally grown, bottom-up, community-led pain and palliative clinics (PPCs) to increase access to mental health care through task-shifting. The MHNGOs mandate filtering only patients with 'severe mental disorders' from…
Chronic illness in South Asia
This special issue brings together five original research papers on chronic conditions in South Asian contexts with a view to rethink dominant discourses of risk, evidence and control surrounding the category of chronic conditions. Focusing on the multiple and contradictory (re)definitions of what counts as illness, specifically in the context of the rising burden of chronic illness, the papers in this issue deal with a range of health care pract…
A Garland of Forgotten Goddesses
Additional informationNotes on contributorsVineet GairolaVineet Gairola is a Ph.D. Scholar of Psychology at the Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad researching ritual practices in the Garhwal Himalayas. Email: [email protected] RanganathanDr Shubha Ranganathan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Liberal Arts, Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad. Focusing on practices in the Mahanubhav temples in Maharashtra
Lamb, Sarah. Being Single in India
I do not feel well here as such. But it has become my home’
In thinking about care, much research has focused on kin relations, family-related care, and formal (medical) or informal care providers. Yet, how do we understand care responsibilities in contexts where kin care is absent despite being a desired social norm, and people turn to other community sources or practices? This paper draws on ethnographic research in a Sufi religious shrine in western India well-known for providing succor to those in dis…
Worship in Transition
The state of Uttarakhand in India is referred to as dev bhūmi (Land of the Gods) as it is home to several devī-devtās (local deities), sages, and ṛṣis whose presence renders the geography of this land a potent one. The soundscape of temples in Uttarakhand includes bells, chants, mantras, and ḍhol-damauñ, the latter referring to two rhythmic instruments which are used to facilitate divine possession. Kandara village is situated in Uttarakhand's Ru…
The Divine as a Child and the Mother Goddess
Kunwarikā Devī is one of the forms of Ādi Śaktī (primordial goddess) and is represented as a kanyā (unmarried little girl). She is worshiped both as a child and as a mother goddess in the Garhwal Himalaya. In 2019, there was a significant worship event of the goddess after a gap of 92 years (the previous worship had occurred in 1927). The Devī traveled to different villages to bless devotees and keep them safe. The Kunwarikā Devī worship practice…
Informal Work from Home
Juxtaposing The Great Indian Kitchen and the Kudumbashree
The recent Malayalam film ‘The great Indian kitchen’ invoked debate in Kerala on women’s unpaid work in the house. Taking off from this film, this commentary draws on ethnographic research with women participating in the Kudumbashree, a women’s empowerment programme in Kerala, to engage with questions of paid work, household labour and care arrangements within the household. While the film depicts the struggles of a newly wedded young woman in he…
Of Vulnerability and Agency
The recent Anti-Trafficking Bill in India (2018) has received considerable criticism for perpetuating a paternalistic attitude towards victims of sex trafficking. Scholars, activists and legal experts have pointed out the failure of the Act to recognise the agency of trafficked girls and women. In thinking about victimhood and agency, we draw attention to the need for thinking of ‘vulnerability’ in terms of complex intersectional processes and si…
Task-Shifting in Community Mental Health in Kerala
Based on an ethnography of community mental health programs run by two NGOs in Kerala which have associated themselves with preexisting, locally grown, community-based palliative clinics, this article explores how professional NGOs bring a new culture to volunteer-based programs. Professionalizing volunteers through task-shifting results in the transformation of their philosophy of community care, which constrains and narrows understandings of me…
Re-Thinking the ‘Medical’ through the Lens of the ‘Indigenous’
This chapter analyses material from a contemporary anthropological study of women seeking healing in Mahanubhav temples in Maharashtra to explore how the ‘medical’ is invoked in narratives of indigenous healing. I argue that the conceptual differentiation between ‘biomedical’ and ‘indigenous’ healing systems, often referred to in the literature on medical pluralism, is in fact at odds with people’s everyday lived experiences of healing. Women’s c…
From Victimhood to Survivor-Hood
A space to “eat, trance, and sleep”
This paper explores the effectiveness of religious healing by focusing on one important factor that has been much neglected – the stay within the shrine. Drawing on qualitative research in Mahanubhav temples in India, this paper emphasises that the central part of religious healing is the process of being in the temple and becoming familiar with shrine culture. At the same time, I argue that the social space of the shrine is important not only fo…
Rethinking ‘Efficacy’
Healing Temples, the Anti-Superstition Discourse and Global Mental Health
The recent murder of anti-superstition crusader Narendra Dabholkar highlighted competing discourses on the place of local healing shrines in contemporary India. While healing shrines are dismissed as regressive and exploitative sites by the rationalist movement, mental health discourses seek to either abolish them or utilise them in community psychiatry initiatives. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Mahanubhav temples in western India, this pape…
This Temple is Our Natal Home!”
Material Acts in Everyday Hindu Worlds
Healing Temples, the Anti-Superstition Discourse and Global Mental Health
The recent murder of anti-superstition crusader Narendra Dabholkar highlighted competing discourses on the place of local healing shrines in contemporary India. While healing shrines are dismissed as regressive and exploitative sites by the rationalist movement, mental health discourses seek to either abolish them or utilise them in community psychiatry initiatives. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Mahanubhav temples in western India, this pape…
Task-Shifting in Community Mental Health in Kerala
Based on an ethnography of community mental health programs run by two NGOs in Kerala which have associated themselves with preexisting, locally grown, community-based palliative clinics, this article explores how professional NGOs bring a new culture to volunteer-based programs. Professionalizing volunteers through task-shifting results in the transformation of their philosophy of community care, which constrains and narrows understandings of me…
This Temple is Our Natal Home!”
Standing Commission of the Red Cross
Of the five National Society members, elected in their personal capacity, Mrs. Issa El-Khoury was absent because of the situation in Lebanon, and Mrs
Fishing for Development. Small-Scale Fisheries in Africa
This Temple is Our Natal Home!”
Healing Temples, the Anti-Superstition Discourse and Global Mental Health
The recent murder of anti-superstition crusader Narendra Dabholkar highlighted competing discourses on the place of local healing shrines in contemporary India. While healing shrines are dismissed as regressive and exploitative sites by the rationalist movement, mental health discourses seek to either abolish them or utilise them in community psychiatry initiatives. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Mahanubhav temples in western India, this pape…
A space to “eat, trance, and sleep”
This paper explores the effectiveness of religious healing by focusing on one important factor that has been much neglected – the stay within the shrine. Drawing on qualitative research in Mahanubhav temples in India, this paper emphasises that the central part of religious healing is the process of being in the temple and becoming familiar with shrine culture. At the same time, I argue that the social space of the shrine is important not only fo…
Rethinking ‘Efficacy’
From Victimhood to Survivor-Hood
Re-Thinking the ‘Medical’ through the Lens of the ‘Indigenous’
This chapter analyses material from a contemporary anthropological study of women seeking healing in Mahanubhav temples in Maharashtra to explore how the ‘medical’ is invoked in narratives of indigenous healing. I argue that the conceptual differentiation between ‘biomedical’ and ‘indigenous’ healing systems, often referred to in the literature on medical pluralism, is in fact at odds with people’s everyday lived experiences of healing. Women’s c…
Task-Shifting in Community Mental Health in Kerala
Based on an ethnography of community mental health programs run by two NGOs in Kerala which have associated themselves with preexisting, locally grown, community-based palliative clinics, this article explores how professional NGOs bring a new culture to volunteer-based programs. Professionalizing volunteers through task-shifting results in the transformation of their philosophy of community care, which constrains and narrows understandings of me…
Juxtaposing The Great Indian Kitchen and the Kudumbashree
The recent Malayalam film ‘The great Indian kitchen’ invoked debate in Kerala on women’s unpaid work in the house. Taking off from this film, this commentary draws on ethnographic research with women participating in the Kudumbashree, a women’s empowerment programme in Kerala, to engage with questions of paid work, household labour and care arrangements within the household. While the film depicts the struggles of a newly wedded young woman in he…
Of Vulnerability and Agency
The recent Anti-Trafficking Bill in India (2018) has received considerable criticism for perpetuating a paternalistic attitude towards victims of sex trafficking. Scholars, activists and legal experts have pointed out the failure of the Act to recognise the agency of trafficked girls and women. In thinking about victimhood and agency, we draw attention to the need for thinking of ‘vulnerability’ in terms of complex intersectional processes and si…
Informal Work from Home
Chronic relationships and mental health care
The paper explores how chronicities and chronic relationships are fostered at a state-sponsored community psychiatry clinic that has been affiliated with a Sufi shrine in western India. The clinic provides free psychotropic treatment to patients, most of whom are pilgrims visiting the shrine. While the clinic has been lauded for its collaborative approach of blending 'medicine and prayer' in the provision of mental health care, observations of cl…
“Initially, medicines will be given, and then we need to study the case”
In response to the global call to upscale mental health services in low--income countries, mental health non-governmental organisations (MHNGOs) have sprung up in Kerala to address mental health needs by partnering with pre-existing locally grown, bottom-up, community-led pain and palliative clinics (PPCs) to increase access to mental health care through task-shifting. The MHNGOs mandate filtering only patients with 'severe mental disorders' from…
Chronic illness in South Asia
This special issue brings together five original research papers on chronic conditions in South Asian contexts with a view to rethink dominant discourses of risk, evidence and control surrounding the category of chronic conditions. Focusing on the multiple and contradictory (re)definitions of what counts as illness, specifically in the context of the rising burden of chronic illness, the papers in this issue deal with a range of health care pract…
A Garland of Forgotten Goddesses
Additional informationNotes on contributorsVineet GairolaVineet Gairola is a Ph.D. Scholar of Psychology at the Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad researching ritual practices in the Garhwal Himalayas. Email: [email protected] RanganathanDr Shubha Ranganathan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Liberal Arts, Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad. Focusing on practices in the Mahanubhav temples in Maharashtra
Lamb, Sarah. Being Single in India
I do not feel well here as such. But it has become my home’
In thinking about care, much research has focused on kin relations, family-related care, and formal (medical) or informal care providers. Yet, how do we understand care responsibilities in contexts where kin care is absent despite being a desired social norm, and people turn to other community sources or practices? This paper draws on ethnographic research in a Sufi religious shrine in western India well-known for providing succor to those in dis…
Worship in Transition
The state of Uttarakhand in India is referred to as dev bhūmi (Land of the Gods) as it is home to several devī-devtās (local deities), sages, and ṛṣis whose presence renders the geography of this land a potent one. The soundscape of temples in Uttarakhand includes bells, chants, mantras, and ḍhol-damauñ, the latter referring to two rhythmic instruments which are used to facilitate divine possession. Kandara village is situated in Uttarakhand's Ru…
The Divine as a Child and the Mother Goddess
Kunwarikā Devī is one of the forms of Ādi Śaktī (primordial goddess) and is represented as a kanyā (unmarried little girl). She is worshiped both as a child and as a mother goddess in the Garhwal Himalaya. In 2019, there was a significant worship event of the goddess after a gap of 92 years (the previous worship had occurred in 1927). The Devī traveled to different villages to bless devotees and keep them safe. The Kunwarikā Devī worship practice…
Linking Body, Memory, and Divine Embodiment
Material Acts in Everyday Hindu Worlds
Representation of dyslexia in Indian media
The media’s role in representing marginalities such as disability and promoting social justice is crucial (Aspler et al., 2022). In the recent times, there has been an interest in discussions on dy
The Rhythms of Tradition
Fieldwork in pandemic times
What is it like as an academic to be doing social science research in pandemic times? How do research engagements and interactions transform in the wake of a global crisis? This creative piece ruminates on questions of care and ethics in the context of doing fieldwork during the pandemic. These poems emerged from the need to reimagine anthropological research in terms of care relations and ethics rather than methods or tools. Writing allowed for …
Sociology (17 works) · Psychology (12 works) · Medicine (11 works) · Political science (10 works) · Art (9 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (8 works) · Gender Studies (8 works) · Gender Studies (8 works) · History (8 works) · Law (8 works)