Peter Van Der Veer
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 3594811 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Peter Van Der Veer |
| PRENOMES | Peter |
| SOBRENOME | Van Der Veer |
| ASSINATURA | VAN DER VEER P |
| AFILIAÇÕES | Max Planck Institute for Political and Social Science |
| VERIFICADO | Não |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 87 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 619 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 77 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 10 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1985 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 13 |
The Concept of the Ideal Brahman as an Indological Construct
Portrait
My BA was a double major in anthropology and what was then called 'Oriental languages', and my MA and PhD were in anthropology, all at the University of California, Berkeley. Berkeley instilled in me a strong sense of politics and power dynamics and a penchant for social critique in my work. My PhD advisers were Jack Potter, a cultural Marxist who had done fieldwork on peasants in rural Hong Kong and Guangdong Province in China; Paul Rabinow, a p…
Secularism in Asia
This chapter addresses two issues that do not seem to receive enough attention in the discussion of secularism. The first is the question of the secular as rational. This question is raised especially by Max Weber’s work on Entzauberung. It relates to secular policies against magic or superstition, especially in communist states. The second issue is that of violence against religious minorities. The relation between minority and majority is cruci…
Asia and the Secular
Muslim Bare Life in Contemporary India
Today Hindutva has become hegemonic to the extent that Muslims not only have to fear for their way of life but also for their own bare lives. The election of Narendra Modi as prime minister is a sign of the changes that have occurred from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)-led Hindutva campaigns of the 1980s to the firm grip on government by the BJP-RSS today. Analyses of ‘the success of India’s democracy’ (Kohli, The Success of India’s Democr…
Reforming Global Governance
The 7th Global China Dialogue was organised by Global China Academy and ESRC Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Science, Lancaster University, with support from Tsinghua University, China, for organising speakers from China, on the 10th December at the British Academy, London. Presented here are summaries of special addresses of Opening and Closing sessions and abstracts of panel speeches. Full speeches will be published in Reforming Global G…
Oriëntalisme
Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community
Minority Rights and Hindu Nationalism in India
In this paper, I want to focus on some aspects of the political process in India that have an impact on the treatment of religious minorities. Much of the discussion on multicultural jurisdictions deals with differentiated citizenship rights that allow religious groups to maintain their normative universe. This literature shows the tensions surrounding individual and group rights. I want to approach the question of religious freedom from a rather…
Nation and Religion
Gods on Earth
This book is the result of the long interest in Hindu pilgrimage which was encouraged during his study of Sanskrit and Hinduism It provided a detailed historical anthropology of Ayodhya, which argues that religious values can reflect political and economic processes. This is Volume 59 of the London School of Economics Monographs on Social Anthropology
Media, Urban Aspirations, and Religious Mobilization among Twelver Shiʻites in Mumbai
The Secular in South, East, and Southeast Asia
Dumont’s Hierarchy Among the Nuosu of China
In this article we consider whether Dumont’s theory of hierarchy in the Indian caste system (or elements thereof) might be applicable to the hierarchal distinctions of Nuosu society in south-west China and vice versa. Nuosu society is characterized as both a ‘slave society’ and a caste society. It is the categories of ‘slavery’ and ‘caste’ that deserve our attention here. Like slaves in Nuosu society, Hindu society in India sees untouchables as ‘…
Resisting general models
Response to comments on van der Veer, Peter. 2016. The value of comparison. Durham, NC: Duke University Press
The Value of Comparison
In The Value of Comparison Peter van der Veer makes a compelling case for using comparative approaches in the study of society and for the need to resist the simplified civilization narratives popular in public discourse and some social theory. He takes the quantitative social sciences and the broad social theories they rely on to task for their inability to question Western cultural presuppositions, demonstrating that anthropology's comparative …
Introduction
The relationship between the sacred and the urban remains understudied. This special issue studies this relationship by focusing on urban religious aspirations in diverse globalizing Asian cities. The approach builds on the sacred geographies and sociology of secularization literatures. It is argued that religious practitioners respond to urbanization by inventing new conceptions of the urban to make sense of secularizing spaces. In turn, the sec…
The Future of Utopia
The widespread notion that the city is secular and that therefore society's future is secular is in need of serious reconsideration. This paper argues that religion does not melt away but rather morphs into modern forms of aspiration, speculation, and contention. Religion is therefore crucial to social inquiry into the nature of the urban. The paper argues that in Asia the Christian modern is close to the secular modern with fragments of rational…
‘The Enigma of Arrival’
Communalism
Religions of India
Handbook of Religion and the Asian City
Handbook of Religion and the Asian City
The Cambridge World History
Since 1750, the world has become ever more connected, with processes of production and destruction no longer limited by land- or water-based modes of transport and communication. Volume 7 of The Cambridge World History, divided into two books, offers a variety of angles of vision on the increasingly interconnected history of humankind. The second book questions the extent to which the transformations of the modern world have been shared, focussin…
Nation, Politics, Religion
This paper argues that religious and political practice in the modern word is in important ways shaped and framed by nationalism. This argument qualifies the general critique of methodological nationalism that is a feature of current literature on transnationalism. It first analyzes the general features of the relation between religion and nationalism. Through a comparison of the development of nationalism in India and China it further argues tha…
JRPP ’s Forthcoming Special Issue titled “Prayer and Politics”
The next issue of the Journal of Religious and Political practice (JRRP) is about Prayer and Politics. Prayer is generally studied from the perspective of ritual performance, linguistic specificity
Imperial Encounters
Spirituality in Modern Society
This paper attempts to liberate the concept of "spirituality" from its apolitical consumerized present, and suggests that our thinking about selves as well as about secularity and religion must recognize its debts to Orientalist practices
Nation and Migration
Peter van der Veer and the contributors to this volume explore the relationship between South Asian nationalism, migration, ethnicity, and the construction of religious identity. Although nationality and diaspora seem to represent opposite ideas and values, the authors argue that nationalism is strengthened, even produced, by migration.
God must be Liberated!' A Hindu Liberation Movement in Ayodhya
There seem to be at least two elusive concepts in the sociology of India: caste and communalism. On caste Eric Wolf makes the point eloquently: 'The literature on the topic is labyrinthine, and the reader is not always sure there is light at the end of the tunnel' (1982: 397). The sociological perspective on caste seems to be obscured by a great deal of confusion about the place of religious values and sentiments in Hindu society. According to Lo…
Pim Fortuyn, Theo van Gogh, and the Politics of Tolerance in the Netherlands
Research Article| January 01 2006 Pim Fortuyn, Theo van Gogh, and the Politics of Tolerance in the Netherlands Peter van der Veer Peter van der Veer Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Public Culture (2006) 18 (1): 111–124. https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-18-1-111 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Peter van der Veer; Pim Fortuyn, Theo van Gogh, and the Politic…
Religious Nationalism
Religious nationalism is a subject of critical importance in much of the world today. Peter van der Veer's timely study on the relationship between religion and politics in India goes well beyond other books on this subject. He brings together several disciplines—anthropology, history, social theory, literary studies—to show how Indian religious identities have been shaped by pilgrimage, migration, language development, and more recently, print a…
Religion in South Asia
This article examines the study of religions of South Asia, in particular of India, from the angle of postcolonial criticism. It argues that the study of state formation provides a crucial perspective for the unraveling of the multiple transformations of religion in the colonial and postcolonial public sphere. The colonial state cannot be studied in isolation from the global framework of imperial interactions between metropole and colony, in whic…
Brahmanism Abroad
Outside of India, Hinduism plays a central role in organizing and orienting communities of Indian migrants and their descendants. Since Indians have migrated to all parts of the world, Hinduism has become unambiguously a distinct world religion. It is therefore important that the study of Hinduism does not remain confined to the Indian subcontinent. In this essay, we consider the development of Hinduism in the Caribbean context and specifically i…
Transnational religion
In this article I deal with transnational Hindu and Muslim movements. I reject the common assertion that migrant communities are conservative in religious and social matters by arguing that 'traditionalism' requires considerable ideological creativity and that this significantly transforms previous practices and discourses. I suggest that religious movements, active among migrants, develop cosmopolitan projects that can be viewed as alternatives …
Taming the Ascetic
Hinduism in Great Britain
Global breathing
In most places in the world one can follow courses in Yoga and Qigong. These forms of Indian and Chinese spirituality have gone global, but are still connected to national identities. This article juxtaposes and compares contemporary Indian and Chinese spiritual movements after sketching the extent to which they are the product of the imperial encounter with the West
The Power of Detachment
This article examines the ways in which the disciplines of the Ramanandi monks of North India create the abilities and potentialities of their performers by the use of different kinds of power. I argue that the notion of "power," best seen as both an indigenous and sociological concept, is crucial to these disciplines of "detachment," which aim at a total transformation of basic attitudes and emotions. Different groups within the Ramanandi order …
Playing or Praying
In surat, an industrial city in Gujarat, a multiplicity of meanings is attached to the cult of the Rifa'i saint by different groups of Muslims, such as the holy man (pir) and his family, his lay followers, the Rifa'i faqirs, and the Tablighis (Reform Muslims who are the main opponents of the cult), as well as by Hindus. It is argued that none of these meanings have come to dominate and entirely marginalize the others. This article will describe a…
Tales of the Field
Gods on Earth
Pandits, power and profit
The Global History of “Modernity”
This paper finds its origin in a certain uneasiness with the application of the notion of to a wide-ranging set of phenomena in world history and with the replacement of an idea of the singularity of modernity by a notion of a multiplicity of modernities. It offers a critical reflection on the arguments put forward in the contributions made to JESHO (volume 40, number 4, 1997) by suggesting that it might be preferable to speak of a single moderni…
The Future of Utopia
The widespread notion that the city is secular and that therefore society's future is secular is in need of serious reconsideration. This paper argues that religion does not melt away but rather morphs into modern forms of aspiration, speculation, and contention. Religion is therefore crucial to social inquiry into the nature of the urban. The paper argues that in Asia the Christian modern is close to the secular modern with fragments of rational…
Hindus
In this contribution I want to first examine some aspects of the influence of Orientalism and Christianity on the construction of a notion of Hinduism which could serve as the basis for nationalism. Second, I want to explore two influential claims about the uniqueness and superiority of the Hindu religion and its practitioners. The first claim is that Hinduism is the religion of a superior race, namely the Aryan race. The second claim is that Hin…
Introduction
This special issue seeks to highlight the ways in which diverse Asian cities - Mumbai, Seoul, Singapore - exceed current urban theorization. Modest, but nonetheless more-than-local re-theorization, can proceed from such empirical excess, which itself can only be derived from sustained ethnographic examination of cities in all their diversity. Relatedly, we cast Asia as a frontier for ethnographic strategizing - where, rather than merely importing…
Minority Rights and Hindu Nationalism in India
In this paper, I want to focus on some aspects of the political process in India that have an impact on the treatment of religious minorities. Much of the discussion on multicultural jurisdictions deals with differentiated citizenship rights that allow religious groups to maintain their normative universe. This literature shows the tensions surrounding individual and group rights. I want to approach the question of religious freedom from a rather…
Introduction
The relationship between the sacred and the urban remains understudied. This special issue studies this relationship by focusing on urban religious aspirations in diverse globalizing Asian cities. The approach builds on the sacred geographies and sociology of secularization literatures. It is argued that religious practitioners respond to urbanization by inventing new conceptions of the urban to make sense of secularizing spaces. In turn, the sec…
Embodiment, Materiality, and Power. A Review Essay
Theories of agency are central to any form of explanation or interpretation of human action in the social and behavioral sciences, including the study of history. In studies of religion, they appear to require even more reflection than usual, because of secular skepticism of religious understandings of agency, involving divine intervention or supra-human powers. The major problem with theories of agency is their immense range and complexity. They…
Gods on Earth
This book is the result of the long interest in Hindu pilgrimage which was encouraged during his study of Sanskrit and Hinduism It provided a detailed historical anthropology of Ayodhya, which argues that religious values can reflect political and economic processes. This is Volume 59 of the London School of Economics Monographs on Social Anthropology
Brahmans
Pandits, power and profit
God must be Liberated!' A Hindu Liberation Movement in Ayodhya
There seem to be at least two elusive concepts in the sociology of India: caste and communalism. On caste Eric Wolf makes the point eloquently: 'The literature on the topic is labyrinthine, and the reader is not always sure there is light at the end of the tunnel' (1982: 397). The sociological perspective on caste seems to be obscured by a great deal of confusion about the place of religious values and sentiments in Hindu society. According to Lo…
Taming the Ascetic
Hinduism in Great Britain
Satanic or Angelic? The Politics of Religious and Literary Inspiration
The Power of Detachment
This article examines the ways in which the disciplines of the Ramanandi monks of North India create the abilities and potentialities of their performers by the use of different kinds of power. I argue that the notion of "power," best seen as both an indigenous and sociological concept, is crucial to these disciplines of "detachment," which aim at a total transformation of basic attitudes and emotions. Different groups within the Ramanandi order …
Gods on Earth
Tales of the Field
Sociology
Twenty Days into the War
Research Article| May 01 1991 Twenty Days into the War Jean Adelman; Jean Adelman Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Arjun Appadurai; Arjun Appadurai Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Carol A. Breckenridge; Carol A. Breckenridge Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Kris Hardin; Kris Hardin Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Michèle Richman; Michèle Rich…
Brahmanism Abroad
Outside of India, Hinduism plays a central role in organizing and orienting communities of Indian migrants and their descendants. Since Indians have migrated to all parts of the world, Hinduism has become unambiguously a distinct world religion. It is therefore important that the study of Hinduism does not remain confined to the Indian subcontinent. In this essay, we consider the development of Hinduism in the Caribbean context and specifically i…
Sociology
Africa, Asia, and Latin America
Playing or Praying
In surat, an industrial city in Gujarat, a multiplicity of meanings is attached to the cult of the Rifa'i saint by different groups of Muslims, such as the holy man (pir) and his family, his lay followers, the Rifa'i faqirs, and the Tablighis (Reform Muslims who are the main opponents of the cult), as well as by Hindus. It is argued that none of these meanings have come to dominate and entirely marginalize the others. This article will describe a…
Europe
Recapturing Anthropology
The ten papers in this volume offer different versions of how and where anthropologists might work usefully in today's world, converging on the issue of how anthropology can best recapture the progressive character its basic concepts, such as culture, once had. Together the authors demonstrate that a reinvigorated anthropology must recognize how the profession labors under an existing intellectual discipline, with its own political and economic h…
Net of Magic
No Nations, but Classes
Religious Nationalism
Religious nationalism is a subject of critical importance in much of the world today. Peter van der Veer's timely study on the relationship between religion and politics in India goes well beyond other books on this subject. He brings together several disciplines—anthropology, history, social theory, literary studies—to show how Indian religious identities have been shaped by pilgrimage, migration, language development, and more recently, print a…
A Politics of Virtue
Introduction
Nation and Migration
Peter van der Veer and the contributors to this volume explore the relationship between South Asian nationalism, migration, ethnicity, and the construction of religious identity. Although nationality and diaspora seem to represent opposite ideas and values, the authors argue that nationalism is strengthened, even produced, by migration.
Nation and migration
The modernity of religion
Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (1993), 335 (Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, £35.00, paperback £13.00
Sociology (57 obras) · Political science (50 obras) · Philosophy (43 obras) · Law (39 obras) · History (31 obras) · Politics (26 obras) · Religious studies (26 obras) · Religion and Society Interactions (22 obras) · Philosophy (21 obras) · Epistemology (16 obras)