Sinah Theres Kloß
Biographic Data
| ID | 161836 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sinah Theres Kloß |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sinah Theres |
| FAMILY NAME | Kloß |
| SIGNATURE | KLOß S T |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Bonn |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7990-9329 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 84 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Transforming Spirit Bodies: Materialization and Embodied Dependencies in South America
“Transforming Spirit Bodies” is an edited volume that focuses on the bodies and embodiments of spirits, their (im-)materialities, and their bodily transformations. The anthropological, sociological and archaeological contributions draw attention to the embodied experiences of asymmetrical dependencies among humans and spirits and how experiences of (inter-)dependence are negotiated in their interactions. Suggesting that more-than-human entities s…
Skin
Hair as sensory skin: Sensitive bodies, ritual shaving, and the maintenance of bodily boundaries in Hindu Suriname
Hair is an integral part of the skin's interface and has sensory capacity. It actively contributes to processes of bodily materialization and facilitates transactional exchange with other social actors and environments, particularly regarding energies and vibrations that can be perceived as subtle matter. Many Surinamese Hindus conceptualize practices such as cutting, shaving, and tying hair as ways to reduce the body's connectivity to other enti…
Pregnant Bodies - Embodied Pregnancy: An Introduction
Research on pregnancy has primarily been conducted in relation to topics, such as abortion or reproductive rights, within the framework of (giving) birth, conceptualisations of foetal bodies and, more generally, regarding the notion of life. However, it is equally necessary to draw attention to the pregnant bodies themselves and embodied pregnancy as an experience, as bodily experiences of pregnancy influence and are affected by social contexts a…
Sensitive Bodies: Materialisation, Energetic States and the Balancing of Bodily Boundaries During Pregnancy and Birth
Human bodies comprise a range of material and intra-acting entities, such as gross and subtle bodies. While continuous acts of bodily union and separation realise what social actors ultimately consider to be distinct human bodies, pregnancy may be considered an active process of merging or tying together various kinds of more or less material bodies. Although all bodies are involved in transactional exchanges with other entities and the environme…
Tattoos and Sonic Imitation: Mantras, Body Tuning and Tattooing as Sounding
Tattoos are sensory experiences, requiring analyses that consider them not only as images but also as intersensory, bodily experiences and practices. Taking into account the interrelation of sound, vision and touch in tattooing, this study focuses on godna: the tattoos and historical tattooing practices of Surinamese and Guyanese Hindus. Godnas may be conceptualised as sound events, as among other things they include Hindu mantras. Like recited m…
Serving toward Release: Tattoos, Religious Work, and Coercion in Post-Indenture Communities
Autonomy is not universally considered the basis of agency in all cultural and historical contexts, nor is it always seen as a prerequisite to “freedom” and “liberation,” standing in conceptual opposite to coercion. In Caribbean Hindu contexts, the notion of service ( sevā ) as a form of (religious) work is aimed at decentering and dissolving the self for ultimate release from worldly suffering. Historically, regarding post-indenture Suriname and…
Journal of Indentureship and Its Legacies
Indentureship had profound and lasting effects on the bodies of those involved. Recruitment processes, along with the harrowing conditions of transport and labour, radically reshaped the material and physical realities of indentured labourers, influencing not only their immediate bodily experiences but also the socio-cultural practices and embodied memories they would pass down to future generations. As such, indentured corporeality dwells in but…
Embodying dependency: Caribbean godna (tattoos) as female subordination and resistance
A tattoo has not one but multiple meanings, depending on the person and interpretations within a sociocultural context. To demonstrate, this article focuses on tattoo marks labeled godna in Suriname and Guyana and on their related tattooing practices. Godnas can be found among senior Hindu women, and can be interpreted as marks of subordination and resistance. They inscribe and actively (re)create asymmetrical power relations and embody different…
Tattoo
Tattoos are body markings that mark similarities between people and within groups as well as differences between them. They produce and reinstate boundaries between self and other, individual and society, human and deity, human and animal. Depending on the context and modes of application, they may forge a sense of community and identity or mark a group by designating it as other. Social and cultural anthropologists have highlighted the role of t…
Tattoo Histories: Transcultural Perspectives on the Narratives, Practices, and Representations of Tattooing
"Tattoo Histories is an edited volume which analyzes and discusses the relevance of tattooing in the socio-cultural construction of bodies, boundaries, and identities, among both individuals and groups. Its interdisciplinary approach facilitates historical as well as contemporary perspectives. Rather than presenting a universal, essentialized history of tattooing, the volume's objective is to focus on the entangled and transcultural histories, na…
The Global South as Subversive Practice: Challenges and Potentials of a Heuristic Concept
Sinah Theres Kloß, The Global South as Subversive Practice: Challenges and Potentials of a Heuristic Concept, The Global South, Vol. 11, No. 2, The Global South as Subversive Practice (Fall 2017), pp. 1-17
Contesting ‘Gifts from Jesus’
Clothes are a means to demonstrate wealth, status, and socio-religious hegemony. Practices of consuming and exchanging clothing enhance or lower one’s status by displaying and creating taste and capital. In Guyana, many Hindus relate charitable clothing distributions exclusively to Christian missions. They commonly state that the distribution of used clothing is a means to convert Hindus to Christianity. While indeed in the past only Christians w…
Sexual(ized) harassment and ethnographic fieldwork: A silenced aspect of social research
Sexual(ized) harassment during ethnographic fieldwork is often described by female researchers as a 'rather common' experience, yet it continues to be marginalized in methodological discussions and anthropological training. Rather than silencing accounts of these experiences, it is necessary to include them in the analysis of acquired data and to reflect on them in ethnographic writing. This article raises awareness and stimulates discussion abou…
(Ex)Changing the Deity’s Clothes
This chapter draws attention to the reciprocal practice of charhaway, the ritual offering of gifts to deities. These items include clothing, as deities and respectively their murtis (manifestations, statues) wear clothes. Sanatanists often strive for a uniform look of their murtis in temples, while Madrassis more strictly adhere to prescribed colors for healing purposes. Charhaway, conceptualized as a ‘giving back,’ visualizes and materializes re…
Touched Clothes and Thrifty Barrels
Guyanese Hindus conceptualize both giving and wearing as modes of consumption and using, implying the notion of touch. This chapter proposes that in a Hindu context touch and pollution are related. Pollution is defined as a relational concept, indicative of hierarchy, which emphasizes human-divine relations. Consumption does not necessarily imply pollution, as, for example, items partially consumed by deities are shared as ‘prasadam,’ auspicious …
Uniform(ity) Through Color: The Invention of Madrassi Vestment
Othering processes consolidate ethnic groups, but are also relevant in the development of specific Hindu subgroups and traditions. Chapter 4 illustrates that the Madras tradition is an ‘invented’ yet ‘authentic’ tradition, which developed in relation to the mainstream Sanatan tradition. To establish a Sanskritic Hindu tradition in the Christian environment, specific ritual practices were excluded from Sanatan worship. These then consolidated in t…
Fabrics of Indianness: The Exchange and Consumption of Clothing in Transnational Guyanese Hindu Communities
This book describes how Guyanese Hindus recreate Indian ethnic identity in contemporary Guyana and examines how Hindu traditions have been transformed in this multi-religious and multi-ethnic society
Sexual(ized) harassment and ethnographic fieldwork: A silenced aspect of social research
Sexual(ized) harassment during ethnographic fieldwork is often described by female researchers as a 'rather common' experience, yet it continues to be marginalized in methodological discussions and anthropological training. Rather than silencing accounts of these experiences, it is necessary to include them in the analysis of acquired data and to reflect on them in ethnographic writing. This article raises awareness and stimulates discussion abou…
The Global South as Subversive Practice: Challenges and Potentials of a Heuristic Concept
Sinah Theres Kloß, The Global South as Subversive Practice: Challenges and Potentials of a Heuristic Concept, The Global South, Vol. 11, No. 2, The Global South as Subversive Practice (Fall 2017), pp. 1-17
Embodying dependency: Caribbean godna (tattoos) as female subordination and resistance
A tattoo has not one but multiple meanings, depending on the person and interpretations within a sociocultural context. To demonstrate, this article focuses on tattoo marks labeled godna in Suriname and Guyana and on their related tattooing practices. Godnas can be found among senior Hindu women, and can be interpreted as marks of subordination and resistance. They inscribe and actively (re)create asymmetrical power relations and embody different…
Serving toward Release: Tattoos, Religious Work, and Coercion in Post-Indenture Communities
Autonomy is not universally considered the basis of agency in all cultural and historical contexts, nor is it always seen as a prerequisite to “freedom” and “liberation,” standing in conceptual opposite to coercion. In Caribbean Hindu contexts, the notion of service ( sevā ) as a form of (religious) work is aimed at decentering and dissolving the self for ultimate release from worldly suffering. Historically, regarding post-indenture Suriname and…
Tattoos and Sonic Imitation: Mantras, Body Tuning and Tattooing as Sounding
Tattoos are sensory experiences, requiring analyses that consider them not only as images but also as intersensory, bodily experiences and practices. Taking into account the interrelation of sound, vision and touch in tattooing, this study focuses on godna: the tattoos and historical tattooing practices of Surinamese and Guyanese Hindus. Godnas may be conceptualised as sound events, as among other things they include Hindu mantras. Like recited m…
Sensitive Bodies: Materialisation, Energetic States and the Balancing of Bodily Boundaries During Pregnancy and Birth
Human bodies comprise a range of material and intra-acting entities, such as gross and subtle bodies. While continuous acts of bodily union and separation realise what social actors ultimately consider to be distinct human bodies, pregnancy may be considered an active process of merging or tying together various kinds of more or less material bodies. Although all bodies are involved in transactional exchanges with other entities and the environme…
Contesting ‘Gifts from Jesus’
Clothes are a means to demonstrate wealth, status, and socio-religious hegemony. Practices of consuming and exchanging clothing enhance or lower one’s status by displaying and creating taste and capital. In Guyana, many Hindus relate charitable clothing distributions exclusively to Christian missions. They commonly state that the distribution of used clothing is a means to convert Hindus to Christianity. While indeed in the past only Christians w…
(Ex)Changing the Deity’s Clothes
This chapter draws attention to the reciprocal practice of charhaway, the ritual offering of gifts to deities. These items include clothing, as deities and respectively their murtis (manifestations, statues) wear clothes. Sanatanists often strive for a uniform look of their murtis in temples, while Madrassis more strictly adhere to prescribed colors for healing purposes. Charhaway, conceptualized as a ‘giving back,’ visualizes and materializes re…
Touched Clothes and Thrifty Barrels
Guyanese Hindus conceptualize both giving and wearing as modes of consumption and using, implying the notion of touch. This chapter proposes that in a Hindu context touch and pollution are related. Pollution is defined as a relational concept, indicative of hierarchy, which emphasizes human-divine relations. Consumption does not necessarily imply pollution, as, for example, items partially consumed by deities are shared as ‘prasadam,’ auspicious …
Uniform(ity) Through Color: The Invention of Madrassi Vestment
Othering processes consolidate ethnic groups, but are also relevant in the development of specific Hindu subgroups and traditions. Chapter 4 illustrates that the Madras tradition is an ‘invented’ yet ‘authentic’ tradition, which developed in relation to the mainstream Sanatan tradition. To establish a Sanskritic Hindu tradition in the Christian environment, specific ritual practices were excluded from Sanatan worship. These then consolidated in t…
Fabrics of Indianness: The Exchange and Consumption of Clothing in Transnational Guyanese Hindu Communities
This book describes how Guyanese Hindus recreate Indian ethnic identity in contemporary Guyana and examines how Hindu traditions have been transformed in this multi-religious and multi-ethnic society
The Global South as Subversive Practice: Challenges and Potentials of a Heuristic Concept
Sinah Theres Kloß, The Global South as Subversive Practice: Challenges and Potentials of a Heuristic Concept, The Global South, Vol. 11, No. 2, The Global South as Subversive Practice (Fall 2017), pp. 1-17
Contesting ‘Gifts from Jesus’
Clothes are a means to demonstrate wealth, status, and socio-religious hegemony. Practices of consuming and exchanging clothing enhance or lower one’s status by displaying and creating taste and capital. In Guyana, many Hindus relate charitable clothing distributions exclusively to Christian missions. They commonly state that the distribution of used clothing is a means to convert Hindus to Christianity. While indeed in the past only Christians w…
Sexual(ized) harassment and ethnographic fieldwork: A silenced aspect of social research
Sexual(ized) harassment during ethnographic fieldwork is often described by female researchers as a 'rather common' experience, yet it continues to be marginalized in methodological discussions and anthropological training. Rather than silencing accounts of these experiences, it is necessary to include them in the analysis of acquired data and to reflect on them in ethnographic writing. This article raises awareness and stimulates discussion abou…
Tattoo Histories: Transcultural Perspectives on the Narratives, Practices, and Representations of Tattooing
"Tattoo Histories is an edited volume which analyzes and discusses the relevance of tattooing in the socio-cultural construction of bodies, boundaries, and identities, among both individuals and groups. Its interdisciplinary approach facilitates historical as well as contemporary perspectives. Rather than presenting a universal, essentialized history of tattooing, the volume's objective is to focus on the entangled and transcultural histories, na…
Tattoo
Tattoos are body markings that mark similarities between people and within groups as well as differences between them. They produce and reinstate boundaries between self and other, individual and society, human and deity, human and animal. Depending on the context and modes of application, they may forge a sense of community and identity or mark a group by designating it as other. Social and cultural anthropologists have highlighted the role of t…
Embodying dependency: Caribbean godna (tattoos) as female subordination and resistance
A tattoo has not one but multiple meanings, depending on the person and interpretations within a sociocultural context. To demonstrate, this article focuses on tattoo marks labeled godna in Suriname and Guyana and on their related tattooing practices. Godnas can be found among senior Hindu women, and can be interpreted as marks of subordination and resistance. They inscribe and actively (re)create asymmetrical power relations and embody different…
Serving toward Release: Tattoos, Religious Work, and Coercion in Post-Indenture Communities
Autonomy is not universally considered the basis of agency in all cultural and historical contexts, nor is it always seen as a prerequisite to “freedom” and “liberation,” standing in conceptual opposite to coercion. In Caribbean Hindu contexts, the notion of service ( sevā ) as a form of (religious) work is aimed at decentering and dissolving the self for ultimate release from worldly suffering. Historically, regarding post-indenture Suriname and…
Journal of Indentureship and Its Legacies
Indentureship had profound and lasting effects on the bodies of those involved. Recruitment processes, along with the harrowing conditions of transport and labour, radically reshaped the material and physical realities of indentured labourers, influencing not only their immediate bodily experiences but also the socio-cultural practices and embodied memories they would pass down to future generations. As such, indentured corporeality dwells in but…
Transforming Spirit Bodies: Materialization and Embodied Dependencies in South America
“Transforming Spirit Bodies” is an edited volume that focuses on the bodies and embodiments of spirits, their (im-)materialities, and their bodily transformations. The anthropological, sociological and archaeological contributions draw attention to the embodied experiences of asymmetrical dependencies among humans and spirits and how experiences of (inter-)dependence are negotiated in their interactions. Suggesting that more-than-human entities s…
Skin
Hair as sensory skin: Sensitive bodies, ritual shaving, and the maintenance of bodily boundaries in Hindu Suriname
Hair is an integral part of the skin's interface and has sensory capacity. It actively contributes to processes of bodily materialization and facilitates transactional exchange with other social actors and environments, particularly regarding energies and vibrations that can be perceived as subtle matter. Many Surinamese Hindus conceptualize practices such as cutting, shaving, and tying hair as ways to reduce the body's connectivity to other enti…
Pregnant Bodies - Embodied Pregnancy: An Introduction
Research on pregnancy has primarily been conducted in relation to topics, such as abortion or reproductive rights, within the framework of (giving) birth, conceptualisations of foetal bodies and, more generally, regarding the notion of life. However, it is equally necessary to draw attention to the pregnant bodies themselves and embodied pregnancy as an experience, as bodily experiences of pregnancy influence and are affected by social contexts a…
Sensitive Bodies: Materialisation, Energetic States and the Balancing of Bodily Boundaries During Pregnancy and Birth
Human bodies comprise a range of material and intra-acting entities, such as gross and subtle bodies. While continuous acts of bodily union and separation realise what social actors ultimately consider to be distinct human bodies, pregnancy may be considered an active process of merging or tying together various kinds of more or less material bodies. Although all bodies are involved in transactional exchanges with other entities and the environme…
Tattoos and Sonic Imitation: Mantras, Body Tuning and Tattooing as Sounding
Tattoos are sensory experiences, requiring analyses that consider them not only as images but also as intersensory, bodily experiences and practices. Taking into account the interrelation of sound, vision and touch in tattooing, this study focuses on godna: the tattoos and historical tattooing practices of Surinamese and Guyanese Hindus. Godnas may be conceptualised as sound events, as among other things they include Hindu mantras. Like recited m…
Sociology (11 works) · History (10 works) · Art (8 works) · Aesthetics (7 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (6 works) · Archaeology (6 works) · Gender Studies (6 works) · Caribbean history, culture, and politics (5 works) · Psychology (5 works)