Spatiality, Memory and Street Shrines of Amritsar

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2634849
AutoresYogesh Snehi (0000-0002-7164-6971, Indian Institute of Management Amritsar, autor de correspondencia)
Año2018
Volumen18
Número18
Fecha de publicación2018-07-23
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaSouth Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1960-6060 • E-ISSN: 1960-6060
EditorialOpenEdition (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.4000/samaj.4559
OpenAlexW2883083084
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas1
Referencias citadas22

This paper explores semiotics at street shrines that foreground “popular” everyday faith and commemorative practices, like urs at Amritsar. These shrines are a blend of pre-partition and contemporary shrine practices, and hybridize identities in contemporary Punjab, imagined and negotiated through an ongoing process of visitation, veneration and memorialization. Street shrines are thus embedded in the “long history of space” of Amritsar which are neither subject nor object but rather a social reality. These shrines are, therefore, sites of living memory and rupture both communal and nationalist narratives of the city space. I argue that rather than following the “sedimentary” theories of religious change we need to consider “popular” religion as overlapping layers of religious practices that delineate the lived and the everyday and spatialize faith practices in modern South Asia. I explore the possibilities to go beyond the neat boundaries of identities that have become comfortable meta-frames of contemporary historiographies

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Faith · Literature · Memorialization · Narrative · Political science · Sociology · Theology · Veneration · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Gender Studies · History · Law · Philosophy · Religious Tourism and Spaces · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies