Spatiality, Memory and Street Shrines of Amritsar

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2634849
AutoresYogesh Snehi (0000-0002-7164-6971, Indian Institute of Management Amritsar, autor correspondente)
Ano2018
Volume18
Fascículo18
Data de publicação2018-07-23
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoSouth Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1960-6060 • E-ISSN: 1960-6060
EditoraOpenEdition (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.4000/samaj.4559
OpenAlexW2883083084
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas1
Referências 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