John Zavos
Biographic Data
| ID | 3734529 |
|---|---|
| NAME | John Zavos |
| GIVEN NAMES | John |
| FAMILY NAME | Zavos |
| SIGNATURE | ZAVOS J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Manchester |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 82 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 26 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
The Aura of Chips
Religious difference is a significant index of social plurality in contemporary Britain. State discourses frequently project society as multi-faith, while simultaneously signaling religious others as a potential threat to social cohesion. Acknowledging the social power of these contrasting projections, this article analyses religious difference as an everyday feature of British urban pluralism. The article draws on Stuart Hall's recognition of pr…
Ethical narratives, street kitchens and doing religious difference amongst post-migrant communities in contemporary Britain
Street kitchens organised by religious groups in response to food poverty and homelessness have become a ubiquitous feature of British cities. Although a good deal of literature has explored this genre of social action, relatively little has analysed it as a feature of religious practice associated with post-migrant communities. This paper uses data drawn from ethnographic research on Sikh and Muslim street kitchens in two British cities to consi…
Placing Religious Social Action in the Multicultural City
The cultural geographer Lily Kong argues that spatial analysis is vital for an interrogation of the contemporary complexity of religion. Building on this observation and broader theoretical understandings of the dynamics of space and place, this paper asks what happens when religious ideas and organisations are implicated in contemporary social action initiatives in ethnically diverse cities. Drawing on ethnographic data, it provides a detailed s…
Narratives of Transformation
KEYWORDS: Religion conversioncastelife writingautobiographyIndiacolonial historyChristian missionHindutvaRSSBengaliHindiMarathiTamil
Rethinking the border security force
This opinion piece engages critically with the status of the peer-reviewed article and the role of the peer reviewer as a central feature of established academic practice. It situates the peer-review process in the development of academic practice, both generally and in the specific context of South Asian Studies, and asks how it may be developed to reflect the concerns and rapidly changing parameters of contemporary academics. The piece was writ…
Religion and social action in a city of posts
This article explores the ramifications of religious engagement in social action initiatives in ethnically and religiously plural urban environments in the UK. In particular, it explores this engagement through a series of inter-related analytical frames, which explain the trajectory and political significance of religiously inflected social action in different ways, before examining specific initiatives in localised context. Behind this approach…
To Be Cared For
Migration and Religion in Europe
Engaging South Asian Religions
Engaging South Asian Religions: Boundaries, Appropriations and Resistances, by Matthew Schmalz and Peter Gottschalk (eds.). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2011. 253 pp. $75.00. ISBN 978-1-4384-3323-3 (hardback). $24.95. ISBN 978-1-4384-3324-0 (paperback)
Digital media and networks of Hindu activism in the UK
This paper seeks to explore the role of digital media and other forms of networking in the development of Hindu activism in a diaspora environment. It asks how the opening up and development of new digital media environments has impacted on Hindu activism, its potential for growth and its resonance in broader social and political spaces. The paper focuses on a case study of one Hindu activist movement that has emerged in the UK in recent years, S…
Small acts, Big Society
This paper examines developing Hindu identity in a British context. It focuses on a recent initiative known as Sewa Day, an annual day dedicated to the provision of sewa, or service, as small-scale social action in local communities. Hindu nationalist organizations such as the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh have been central to promoting and taking part in Sewa Day. The paper asks what purpose is served by the drive to promote social action in this way,…
Chasing Euro-Hindus
In 2007, the Hindu Forum of Europe (HFE) was established at the European Parliament in Brussels, proposing to act as ‘an interface between European institutions and Hindus in Europe’. This article explores the development of this organisation and the idea of European Hindu identity that it seeks to represent. It examines the processes by which this idea of European Hindu identity is ‘becoming public’, arguing that specific issues related to ident…
Twisting the Wrist
Research into South Asian religious traditions has developed rapidly over the past two decades or so, contributing to and reflecting both a critical reflexive turn in the discipline of Religious Studies, and the growing influence of Postcolonial theory in the Humanities and Social Sciences. In this article, we explore the implications of these developments for teaching about South Asian religious traditions in the contemporary academy. We argue t…
Situating Hindu nationalism in the UK
This paper assesses the role of Hindu nationalism in the development of Hindu identity in Britain. Some accounts argue that the authoritarian network of Hindu nationalist organisations apparent in India is reproduced in diaspora contexts, especially in the west. The paper argues that this degree of organisational intentionality is not always borne out by evidence in the UK. Although Hindu nationalist organisations have achieved some success in es…
Temple Publics
Negotiating Multiculturalism
This paper examines the intersections of religious with ethnic and racial discourses in contemporary British politics, and asks how this process has affected the projection of minority identities in Britain. In particular, it looks at the development of Hindu identity through the emergence of national-level Hindu organisations, examining them in the framework of an analysis of developing multiculturalism and the articulation of religion as a legi…
Bin Laden is one of us! Representations of religious identity at the Parliament of the World's Religions
In July 2004 the fourth Parliament of the World's Religions took place in Barcelona. As with previous modern sessions, the Barcelona event was inspired by the original Parliament, which famously took place in Chicago in 1893. This paper examines the idea of the Parliament as a significant forum for the public representation of religious identity in global context. One way this was expressed in 2004 was in relation to political violence. As one de…
Stamp it out! Disciplining the image of Hinduism in a multicultural milieu
In November 2005 the UK Royal Mail's use of Hindu imagery in its Christmas stamp set was vigorously opposed by a range of organisations projected as representative of Hindus in the United Kingdom. The ‘Hindu stamp’ affair highlighted the speed with which appropriate institutional resources can now be mobilised to discipline the image of Hinduism as a religion in the name of a British Hindu community. It is one of a succession of such campaigns ov…
Are we not ‘BrAsians’
This review article comments on the publication of a new collection of essays focused on the South Asian presence in Britain. Through an initial comparison with an earlier edited volume focused on this theme, the article points to the distinctive features of this new collection, with its insistence on the complex, fragmentary dynamic that flows from a post-colonial analysis. The volume advocates the use of the neologism ‘BrAsian’ as a means of di…
Resources for teaching across South Asian religious traditions
This Research Note provides an annotated bibliography of currently available resources for teaching across South Asian religious traditions. Listed are over 70 books, articles, chapters in books and websites, with every entry including guidance notes
Riding a tiger? South Asia and the problem of ‘religion’
Our objective as editors of this special issue on ‘Teaching Across South Asian Religious Traditions’ is to interrogate the category of ‘religion’ and its use in higher education (university) teaching on South Asia. In particular, we take issue with the presentation of South Asian religious traditions in terms solely of a ‘World Religions’ model, and seek to challenge this by exploring ways of teaching across these traditions. Religion is examined…
Identity Politics and Nationalisms in Colonial India
As a form of identity, Hindu nationalism has a significance and meaning which has been ferociously contested in Indian politics. Its exponents often present it as the ‘real’ or ‘true’ form of Indian nationalism, to be contrasted with western-inspired, universalist concepts of ‘pseudo-secularist’ nationalists. 2 Opponents, on the other hand, present it as the very antithesis of ‘real’ or ‘true’ nationalism. That is, if it is acknowledged as meanin…
Decentring the Indian Nation
Decentring the Indian nation constitutional centring - nation formation and institutional legacies in India and Pakistan redrawing the body politic - federalism, regionalism and the creation of new states in India the continuing struggle for India's jharkhand - democracy, decentralization and the politics of names and numbers, liberal, secular democracy and explanations of Hindu nationalism whatever happened to cultural nationalism in Tamil Nadu?…
Conversion and the assertive margins
(2001). Conversion and the assertive margins: An analysis of Hindu nationalist discourse and the recent attacks on Indian Christians. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies: Vol. 24, No. 2, pp. 73-89
Defending Hindu Tradition
Accounts of social and religious reform and of Hindu revivalism in late nineteenth-century India refer consistently to the idea of sanatana dharma as an indicator of ‘orthodox’ resistance to change in the context of a modernising religion. This article questions this presentation of sanatana dharma as an unmediated reactionary force. It argues that sanatana dharma as orthodoxy in fact emerged as an influential feature of the modernisation process…
Stamp it out! Disciplining the image of Hinduism in a multicultural milieu
In November 2005 the UK Royal Mail's use of Hindu imagery in its Christmas stamp set was vigorously opposed by a range of organisations projected as representative of Hindus in the United Kingdom. The ‘Hindu stamp’ affair highlighted the speed with which appropriate institutional resources can now be mobilised to discipline the image of Hinduism as a religion in the name of a British Hindu community. It is one of a succession of such campaigns ov…
Situating Hindu nationalism in the UK
This paper assesses the role of Hindu nationalism in the development of Hindu identity in Britain. Some accounts argue that the authoritarian network of Hindu nationalist organisations apparent in India is reproduced in diaspora contexts, especially in the west. The paper argues that this degree of organisational intentionality is not always borne out by evidence in the UK. Although Hindu nationalist organisations have achieved some success in es…
Negotiating Multiculturalism
This paper examines the intersections of religious with ethnic and racial discourses in contemporary British politics, and asks how this process has affected the projection of minority identities in Britain. In particular, it looks at the development of Hindu identity through the emergence of national-level Hindu organisations, examining them in the framework of an analysis of developing multiculturalism and the articulation of religion as a legi…
The Ārya Samāj and the antecedents of Hindu nationalism
Small acts, Big Society
This paper examines developing Hindu identity in a British context. It focuses on a recent initiative known as Sewa Day, an annual day dedicated to the provision of sewa, or service, as small-scale social action in local communities. Hindu nationalist organizations such as the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh have been central to promoting and taking part in Sewa Day. The paper asks what purpose is served by the drive to promote social action in this way,…
Temple Publics
Riding a tiger? South Asia and the problem of ‘religion’
Our objective as editors of this special issue on ‘Teaching Across South Asian Religious Traditions’ is to interrogate the category of ‘religion’ and its use in higher education (university) teaching on South Asia. In particular, we take issue with the presentation of South Asian religious traditions in terms solely of a ‘World Religions’ model, and seek to challenge this by exploring ways of teaching across these traditions. Religion is examined…
Conversion and the assertive margins
(2001). Conversion and the assertive margins: An analysis of Hindu nationalist discourse and the recent attacks on Indian Christians. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies: Vol. 24, No. 2, pp. 73-89
The Aura of Chips
Religious difference is a significant index of social plurality in contemporary Britain. State discourses frequently project society as multi-faith, while simultaneously signaling religious others as a potential threat to social cohesion. Acknowledging the social power of these contrasting projections, this article analyses religious difference as an everyday feature of British urban pluralism. The article draws on Stuart Hall's recognition of pr…
Defending Hindu Tradition
Accounts of social and religious reform and of Hindu revivalism in late nineteenth-century India refer consistently to the idea of sanatana dharma as an indicator of ‘orthodox’ resistance to change in the context of a modernising religion. This article questions this presentation of sanatana dharma as an unmediated reactionary force. It argues that sanatana dharma as orthodoxy in fact emerged as an influential feature of the modernisation process…
Digital media and networks of Hindu activism in the UK
This paper seeks to explore the role of digital media and other forms of networking in the development of Hindu activism in a diaspora environment. It asks how the opening up and development of new digital media environments has impacted on Hindu activism, its potential for growth and its resonance in broader social and political spaces. The paper focuses on a case study of one Hindu activist movement that has emerged in the UK in recent years, S…
Narratives of Transformation
KEYWORDS: Religion conversioncastelife writingautobiographyIndiacolonial historyChristian missionHindutvaRSSBengaliHindiMarathiTamil
Ethical narratives, street kitchens and doing religious difference amongst post-migrant communities in contemporary Britain
Street kitchens organised by religious groups in response to food poverty and homelessness have become a ubiquitous feature of British cities. Although a good deal of literature has explored this genre of social action, relatively little has analysed it as a feature of religious practice associated with post-migrant communities. This paper uses data drawn from ethnographic research on Sikh and Muslim street kitchens in two British cities to consi…
Decentring the Indian Nation
Decentring the Indian nation constitutional centring - nation formation and institutional legacies in India and Pakistan redrawing the body politic - federalism, regionalism and the creation of new states in India the continuing struggle for India's jharkhand - democracy, decentralization and the politics of names and numbers, liberal, secular democracy and explanations of Hindu nationalism whatever happened to cultural nationalism in Tamil Nadu?…
The Ārya Samāj and the antecedents of Hindu nationalism
Conversion and the assertive margins
(2001). Conversion and the assertive margins: An analysis of Hindu nationalist discourse and the recent attacks on Indian Christians. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies: Vol. 24, No. 2, pp. 73-89
Defending Hindu Tradition
Accounts of social and religious reform and of Hindu revivalism in late nineteenth-century India refer consistently to the idea of sanatana dharma as an indicator of ‘orthodox’ resistance to change in the context of a modernising religion. This article questions this presentation of sanatana dharma as an unmediated reactionary force. It argues that sanatana dharma as orthodoxy in fact emerged as an influential feature of the modernisation process…
Identity Politics and Nationalisms in Colonial India
As a form of identity, Hindu nationalism has a significance and meaning which has been ferociously contested in Indian politics. Its exponents often present it as the ‘real’ or ‘true’ form of Indian nationalism, to be contrasted with western-inspired, universalist concepts of ‘pseudo-secularist’ nationalists. 2 Opponents, on the other hand, present it as the very antithesis of ‘real’ or ‘true’ nationalism. That is, if it is acknowledged as meanin…
Decentring the Indian Nation
Decentring the Indian nation constitutional centring - nation formation and institutional legacies in India and Pakistan redrawing the body politic - federalism, regionalism and the creation of new states in India the continuing struggle for India's jharkhand - democracy, decentralization and the politics of names and numbers, liberal, secular democracy and explanations of Hindu nationalism whatever happened to cultural nationalism in Tamil Nadu?…
Resources for teaching across South Asian religious traditions
This Research Note provides an annotated bibliography of currently available resources for teaching across South Asian religious traditions. Listed are over 70 books, articles, chapters in books and websites, with every entry including guidance notes
Riding a tiger? South Asia and the problem of ‘religion’
Our objective as editors of this special issue on ‘Teaching Across South Asian Religious Traditions’ is to interrogate the category of ‘religion’ and its use in higher education (university) teaching on South Asia. In particular, we take issue with the presentation of South Asian religious traditions in terms solely of a ‘World Religions’ model, and seek to challenge this by exploring ways of teaching across these traditions. Religion is examined…
Are we not ‘BrAsians’
This review article comments on the publication of a new collection of essays focused on the South Asian presence in Britain. Through an initial comparison with an earlier edited volume focused on this theme, the article points to the distinctive features of this new collection, with its insistence on the complex, fragmentary dynamic that flows from a post-colonial analysis. The volume advocates the use of the neologism ‘BrAsian’ as a means of di…
Bin Laden is one of us! Representations of religious identity at the Parliament of the World's Religions
In July 2004 the fourth Parliament of the World's Religions took place in Barcelona. As with previous modern sessions, the Barcelona event was inspired by the original Parliament, which famously took place in Chicago in 1893. This paper examines the idea of the Parliament as a significant forum for the public representation of religious identity in global context. One way this was expressed in 2004 was in relation to political violence. As one de…
Stamp it out! Disciplining the image of Hinduism in a multicultural milieu
In November 2005 the UK Royal Mail's use of Hindu imagery in its Christmas stamp set was vigorously opposed by a range of organisations projected as representative of Hindus in the United Kingdom. The ‘Hindu stamp’ affair highlighted the speed with which appropriate institutional resources can now be mobilised to discipline the image of Hinduism as a religion in the name of a British Hindu community. It is one of a succession of such campaigns ov…
Temple Publics
Negotiating Multiculturalism
This paper examines the intersections of religious with ethnic and racial discourses in contemporary British politics, and asks how this process has affected the projection of minority identities in Britain. In particular, it looks at the development of Hindu identity through the emergence of national-level Hindu organisations, examining them in the framework of an analysis of developing multiculturalism and the articulation of religion as a legi…
Situating Hindu nationalism in the UK
This paper assesses the role of Hindu nationalism in the development of Hindu identity in Britain. Some accounts argue that the authoritarian network of Hindu nationalist organisations apparent in India is reproduced in diaspora contexts, especially in the west. The paper argues that this degree of organisational intentionality is not always borne out by evidence in the UK. Although Hindu nationalist organisations have achieved some success in es…
Twisting the Wrist
Research into South Asian religious traditions has developed rapidly over the past two decades or so, contributing to and reflecting both a critical reflexive turn in the discipline of Religious Studies, and the growing influence of Postcolonial theory in the Humanities and Social Sciences. In this article, we explore the implications of these developments for teaching about South Asian religious traditions in the contemporary academy. We argue t…
Chasing Euro-Hindus
In 2007, the Hindu Forum of Europe (HFE) was established at the European Parliament in Brussels, proposing to act as ‘an interface between European institutions and Hindus in Europe’. This article explores the development of this organisation and the idea of European Hindu identity that it seeks to represent. It examines the processes by which this idea of European Hindu identity is ‘becoming public’, arguing that specific issues related to ident…
Migration and Religion in Europe
Engaging South Asian Religions
Engaging South Asian Religions: Boundaries, Appropriations and Resistances, by Matthew Schmalz and Peter Gottschalk (eds.). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2011. 253 pp. $75.00. ISBN 978-1-4384-3323-3 (hardback). $24.95. ISBN 978-1-4384-3324-0 (paperback)
Digital media and networks of Hindu activism in the UK
This paper seeks to explore the role of digital media and other forms of networking in the development of Hindu activism in a diaspora environment. It asks how the opening up and development of new digital media environments has impacted on Hindu activism, its potential for growth and its resonance in broader social and political spaces. The paper focuses on a case study of one Hindu activist movement that has emerged in the UK in recent years, S…
Small acts, Big Society
This paper examines developing Hindu identity in a British context. It focuses on a recent initiative known as Sewa Day, an annual day dedicated to the provision of sewa, or service, as small-scale social action in local communities. Hindu nationalist organizations such as the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh have been central to promoting and taking part in Sewa Day. The paper asks what purpose is served by the drive to promote social action in this way,…
Religion and social action in a city of posts
This article explores the ramifications of religious engagement in social action initiatives in ethnically and religiously plural urban environments in the UK. In particular, it explores this engagement through a series of inter-related analytical frames, which explain the trajectory and political significance of religiously inflected social action in different ways, before examining specific initiatives in localised context. Behind this approach…
To Be Cared For
Rethinking the border security force
This opinion piece engages critically with the status of the peer-reviewed article and the role of the peer reviewer as a central feature of established academic practice. It situates the peer-review process in the development of academic practice, both generally and in the specific context of South Asian Studies, and asks how it may be developed to reflect the concerns and rapidly changing parameters of contemporary academics. The piece was writ…
Placing Religious Social Action in the Multicultural City
The cultural geographer Lily Kong argues that spatial analysis is vital for an interrogation of the contemporary complexity of religion. Building on this observation and broader theoretical understandings of the dynamics of space and place, this paper asks what happens when religious ideas and organisations are implicated in contemporary social action initiatives in ethnically diverse cities. Drawing on ethnographic data, it provides a detailed s…
Narratives of Transformation
KEYWORDS: Religion conversioncastelife writingautobiographyIndiacolonial historyChristian missionHindutvaRSSBengaliHindiMarathiTamil
Ethical narratives, street kitchens and doing religious difference amongst post-migrant communities in contemporary Britain
Street kitchens organised by religious groups in response to food poverty and homelessness have become a ubiquitous feature of British cities. Although a good deal of literature has explored this genre of social action, relatively little has analysed it as a feature of religious practice associated with post-migrant communities. This paper uses data drawn from ethnographic research on Sikh and Muslim street kitchens in two British cities to consi…
Sociology (24 works) · Political science (20 works) · Law (19 works) · Politics (15 works) · Religious studies (15 works) · Gender Studies (14 works) · Law (14 works) · Anthropology (12 works) · Hinduism (12 works) · Religious Studies (11 works)