The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religion and Materiality E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Serie: Blackwell Companions to Religion
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 1574

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religion and Materiality provides a thoughtfully organized, inclusive, and vibrant project of the multiple ways in which religion and materiality intersect. The contributions explore the way that religion is shaped by, and has shaped, the material world, embedding beliefs, doctrines, and texts into social and cultural contexts of production, circulation, and consumption. The Companion not only contains scholarly essays but has an accompanying website to demonstrate the work of performers, architects, and expressive artists, ranging from musicians and dancers to religious practitioners. These examples offer specific illustrations of the interplay of religion and materiality in everyday life. The project is organized from a comparative perspective, highlighting examples and case studies from traditions originating in both East and West. To summarize, the volume: * Brings together the leading figures, theories and ideas in the field in a systematic and comprehensive way * Offers an interdisciplinary approach drawing together religious studies, anthropology, archaeology, history, sociology, geography, the cognitive sciences, ecology, and media studies * Takes a comparative perspective, covering all the major faith traditions

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Acknowledgments

About the Editor

Notes on Contributors

CHAPTER 1: The Persistence, Ubiquity, and Dynamicity of Materiality

1.1 The Persistence of Materiality

1.2 Sources of the Ambivalence Towards Materiality

1.3 Characterizing the Turn to Materiality

1.4 The Collection

Works Cited

Section I: Religious Bodies

CHAPTER 2: The Incarnate Body and Blood in Christianity

2.1 Medieval Materiality and the Body of Christ

2.2 The Word Made Flesh and Blood

2.3 Conclusion

Acknowledgments

Works Cited

CHAPTER 3: Perspectives on Rabbinic Constructions of Gendered Bodies

3.1 Introduction

3.2 The Rabbinic ‘Body’: Adam

3.3 Rabbinic Bodies: The

Androginos

(and the

Tumtum

)

3.4 Rabbinic Constructions of Gender: A Provisional Spectrum

3.5 Doing Rabbinic Gender: Male and Female Performative Acts

3.6 Rabbinic Bodies

3.7 The Primal Androgyne and the Androginos

3.8 Conclusion: Perspectival Gender, Where and How We Look Matters

Works Cited

CHAPTER 4: The One and the Many

4.1 ‘With Shame He Comes’: The Hidden Anomaly

4.2 Inside and Outside, Open and Closed: Duality in Kuwai's Body

4.3 Viscera, Body Fluids, and their Significance

4.4

Kuwai

and Growth: The Ancestral Heart/Soul (

ikaale

) of the Sun Father

4.5 Sacred Sounds and Growth

4.6 Body Adornments

4.7 Connections to Sacred Geography

4.8 Conclusion

Works Cited

CHAPTER 5: Cognitive Science, Embodiment, and Materiality

5.1 Introduction

5.2 The Problematic Meaning of Embodied Cognitive Science

5.3 Functionalism, Embodiment, and Materiality

5.4 Conclusion

Works Cited

Section II: Practices and Performances

CHAPTER 6: From Bells to

Bottus

6.1 ‘Dance and Embodied Knowledge’: Conceptualizing the Course (jbf)

6.2 Nakha Sikha: Descriptions of the Body from Toe to Head (hmk)

6.3 Dancing Feet (jbf)

6.4 Bent Knees and Straight Back (hmk)

6.5 Mudras: Expressive Hands (hmk)

6.6 Face, Eyes, and Hair (jbf)

6.7 Vesham: Materiality of Clothing and Ornamentation

6.8 Materiality in Motion: The Full Dancing Body

6.9 Carrying Indian Embodied Dance Knowledge into New Contexts

Works Cited

CHAPTER 7: Spirit Incorporation in Candomblé

7.1 Precedents

7.2 Materializing Spirit Incorporation in Candomblé

7.3 Affordances and Constraints

7.4 An Exercise of Redescription

Works Cited

CHAPTER 8: Spiritual Warfare in Pentecostalism

8.1 Spiritual Warfare: From Ideology to Strategy

8.2 Scaling in Space and Time

8.3 Subjectivity and Discipline

8.4 Concluding Remarks

Works Cited

CHAPTER 9: Consider the Tourist

9.1 Economies of an Existential Phenomenology

9.2 Yellowstone Awakenings

9.3 Authentic Alterities

9.4 Graceland Charisma

9.5 Authentic Religion

Works Cited

Section III: Spatiality, Mobility, and Relationality

CHAPTER 10: Moving, Crossing, and Dwelling

10.1 Introduction

10.2 Theoretical Itineraries

10.3 Moving, Crossing and Dwelling: From Theory to Practice

10.4 Power and Control: Pilgrimage, Evangelization and Material Religion

10.5 Monumentality, Changing Landscapes, Identity, and Memory

10.6 Conclusion

Works Cited

Notes

CHAPTER 11: Hindu and Sikh Processions in Europe

11.1 Sri Lankan Tamil Hindus and Sikhs in Europe

11.2 Processions of the Sri Lankan Tamil Hindus

11.3 The Sikh Vaisakhi Procession

11.4 Conclusion

Works Cited

CHAPTER 12: Geopolitics, Space Sacralization, and Devotional Labour on the US–Mexico Border

12.1 Religion Moves

12.2 Emplacing Religion on the Border: Historical and Geopolitical Considerations

Works Cited

CHAPTER 13: The Imagination of Matter

13.1 The Sacred Tree and the Spanish Conquest

13.2 Mesoamerican Cities as Super Materiality

13.3 Sacred Body, Ritual Violence, and the City

13.4 Conclusion: Stories on Trees

Works Cited

CHAPTER 14: Material Religion, Materialism, and Non‐human Animals

14.1 Introduction

14.2 Religion, Material and Materialist

14.3 Animal Studies

14.4 Animals and Religion

14.5 Conclusion: Animals, Anthropocentrism, and Materiality

Works Cited

Section IV: Sacred Objects and Beings

CHAPTER 15: Assembling Inferences in Material Analysis

15.1 The Artefact

15.2 Specification

15.3 Refining Likeness: Putting the Archive to Work

15.4 Function and Form in a Religious Technology

15.5 Reticulating the Sacred

Works Cited

CHAPTER 16: Woven Beliefs

16.1 Textiles as Clothing for the Spirit World

16.2 Textiles and Sacred Places

16.3 Textiles and the Afterlife

16.4 Conclusion

Works Cited

CHAPTER 17: Beyond the Symbolism of the Headscarf

17.1 The Assemblage of Veiling

17.2 The Agentic Thing

17.3 The Ethical Problematic

17.4 Conclusion

Works Cited

CHAPTER 18: Indigenous Sacred Objects after NAGPRA

18.1 Introduction: Law, Tradition, and Mêtis

18.2 The Law: Legislators Theorize the Sacred

18.3 In Circulation: Makah Whaling

18.4 Out of Circulation: Hawaiian Objects

18.5 Conclusion: Object Lessons

Works Cited

CHAPTER 19: Relics in the Sikh Tradition

19.1 The Materiality of Sikh Traditions

19.2 The

itihāsik:

Historical Place and Historical Object

19.3 Relic Travels

19.4 Relics and the Materiality of Religious Life

Works Cited

Section V: Religion, Food, and Comensality

CHAPTER 20: Religion, Food, and Agriculture

20.1 The Communities

20.2 Brahma Vidya Mandir

20.3 Cherith Brook Catholic Worker

20.4 Sirius Ecovillage

20.5 Body and Labour

20.6 Society

20.7 Environment

20.8 Conclusion

Works Cited

CHAPTER 21: Vaishnava Vegetarianism

21.1 Introduction

21.2 The Scriptural Basis of Vegetarianism

21.3 Meat Eating in the Vaishnava Tradition

21.4 Five Components of Vaishnava Vegetarianism

21.5 Conclusion

Acknowledgements

Works Cited

CHAPTER 22:

Prasāda

, Grace as Sustenance, and the Relational Self

22.1 Introduction:

Prasāda

as Sacred Hindu Food

22.2 Commensality, Community, and

Prasāda

22.3 ‘Classical’ Hindu Food Systems and

Prasāda

22.4

Prasāda

as “Universal” Food in Practice

22.5 Concluding Reflections

Works Cited

CHAPTER 23: To Eat and Be Eaten

23.1 Sacrificial Feeding

23.2 Sustaining Blood

23.3 Sustaining Excrement

23.4 To Eat and Be Eaten

Works Cited

Section VI: Media and Material Religion

CHAPTER 24: Cinema

24.1 Brief Background on ‘Religion and Film’

24.2 Before the Show: The Re‐Creation of the World

24.3 During the Show: The Body in the Cinema

24.4 After the Show: The Afterlives of Film in Afilmic Reality

24.5 Conclusion: All the World's a Screen

Works Cited

Filmography

CHAPTER 25: Religion and Digital Media

25.1 Introduction

25.2 The Rise of Digital Religion

25.3 How Materiality Is Manifest and Negotiated in Digital Religion

25.4 Translation and Transportation of the Religious Via Virtual Objects, Digital Artefacts and Online Spaces

25.5 Online Ritual as Negotiation Between Online and Offline

25.6 Digital Aesthetics and Our Engagement with Technological Devices

25.7 Key Themes and Challenges in Studying Materiality in Digital Religion

25.8 Question of Authenticity and the Authentic Form Online

25.9 Questions of Authority and Boundary Making Within Digital Realms

25.10 Questions of How the Digital Shapes and Changes Understandings of the Religious

25.11 The Future for Studying Digital Material Religion and Culture

Works Cited

CHAPTER 26: Aural Media

26.1 Working with Sound

26.2 Case Studies

26.3 Body and Voice

26.4 Ritual Instruments

26.5 Space

26.6 Final Reflections

Works Cited

Section VII: Economies and Governmentalities of Religion

CHAPTER 27: Colonialism, Orientalism, and the Body

27.1 Introduction

27.2 Colonialism and Racialization

27.3 Matter and Spirit in Western Christianity

27.4 Colonial Encounters: Problems of Materiality and the Body

27.5 Conclusion

Works Cited

CHAPTER 28: Dharmaśāstra

28.1 Proper Conduct (

ācāra

)

28.2 Law (

vyavahāra

)

28.3 Conclusion

Abbreviations

Works Cited

CHAPTER 29: Religion and Ethnicity as Located and Localized

29.1 Introduction

29.2 Ethnicity and Religion: Dominant Perspectives

29.3 Localization and Belonging

29.4 Ethnicity Located and Localized

29.5 Religion Located and Localized

29.6 Conclusion

Works Cited

CHAPTER 30: Never Again

30.1 Materialism and Religion

30.2 The Civil War

30.3 The Good Book

30.4 The Passion of Guatemala

30.5 Testimonio

30.6 Global Fetishes

Works Cited

Index

End User License Agreement

List of Illustrations

Chapter 2

Figure 2.1 Christ as the Man of Sorrows, sixteenth‐century hand‐coloured eng...

Chapter 4

Figure 4.1

Maaliawali

.

Figure 4.2

Waliadoa

(petroglyph at Ejnipan, Içana River

)

.

Figure 4.3

Mulitu

(frog).

Figure 4.4 The body of

Kuwai‐ka Wamundana

. From: Omar González‐Náñéz 2...

Figure 4.5 Author's composition of the great spirits and deities of the Bani...

Chapter 6

Figure 6.1 Sasikala Penumarthi pins a sari on an Emory student.

Figure 6.2 Emory students wearing bells in the dance studio.

Figure 6.3 Middlebury dancers portray Krishna and his

gopi

. Dancers: Jeremy ...

Figure 6.4 Final performance at Emory University. Dancers Hina Purohit (left...

Chapter 11

Figure 11.1 Kavati dancer pierced by a small spear, a symbol of Murugan’s ve...

Figure 11.2 Display of ecstatic and wild dance as well as pain and suffering...

Figure 11.3 Display of ritualized bodies: the “five beloved ones” (

panj pyar

...

Figure 11.4 The use of banners in procession explaining the identity of the ...

Chapter 12

Figure 12.1

El Monje del Charbel

, 11 October 2013, la Parroquia del Santo Ni...

Figure 12.2 Rear View of the Christ figure, 10 September 2013, Marti’s, Nuev...

Figure 12.3 Embellishing the frame, 12 September 2013, Marti’s, Nuevo Laredo...

Figure 12.4 Marti and Rubén perfecting the Christ, 11 October 2013, la Parro...

Figure 12.5

Cristo de los Inmigrantes

, 18 September 2013, la Parroquia del S...

Chapter 13

Figure 13.1 This is a mythical twisted tree showing how materiality and spir...

Chapter 15

Figure 15.1 Sacred Heart of Jesus sick call station.

Figure 15.2 Rubber mould for plaster figure of saint, Miami, Florida, artist...

Figure 15.3 Imported statuary of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, The I. Donnelly ...

Figure 15.4 Corpus Christi Day, hand‐painted lithograph, c.1855. Image court...

Figure 15.5 Detail of face, Figure 15.1

Figure 15.6 Pedro de Mena,

Ecce Homo,

seventeenth century, polychromed wood....

Figure 15.7 Israhel van Meckenem, Mass of Saint Gregory, 1490s. Foto Marburg...

Figure 15.8 Alexandre Grellet (?),

Sacred Heart of Jesus

, second half of the...

Figure 15.9 Emblem of 20 July 1685, given by Alacoque to the Sisters at Para...

Figure 15.10 Rear compartment with liturgical items, back view of Figure 15....

Figure 15.11 Diagram for Catholic sick room, 1925.

Chapter 19

Figure 19.1 Historical weapons at Paonta Sahib. Photo by author.

Figure 19.2 Member of Dalla family displaying collection. Photo by author.

Figure 19.3 An object from the Bhai Rupa collection, from Bhai Sikander Sing...

Figure 19.4 Bhai Boota Singh with objects from the family collection, visiti...

Chapter 23

Figure 23.1 Preparation for the first human sacrifice, drawn from the Codex ...

Figure 23.2 First human sacrifice, drawn from the Codex Borgia, folio 42 (19...

Figure 23.3 Deities eating deities, drawn from the Codex Borgia, folio 42 (1...

Figure 23.4 Venus defecating the Bloody Dawn, drawn from the Codex Borgia, f...

Figure 23.5 Wind snakes bubbling from a cooking pot, drawn from the Codex Bo...

Figure 23.6 Quetzalcoatl simmering in a pot before performing the first New‐...

Chapter 24

Figure 24.1 Film still from

Star Wars

(1977).

Figure 24.2 Film still from

Charlotte's Web

(2006).

Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Begin Reading

Pages

ii

iii

iv

viii

ix

x

xi

xii

xiii

xiv

xv

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

43

45

46

47

48

49

50

51

52

53

54

55

56

57

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

72

73

74

75

76

77

78

79

80

81

82

83

84

85

86

87

88

89

90

91

92

93

94

95

96

97

98

99

100

101

102

103

104

105

106

107

108

109

110

111

112

113

114

115

116

117

118

119

120

121

122

123

124

125

126

127

129

131

132

133

134

135

136

137

138

139

140

141

142

143

144

145

146

147

148

149

150

151

152

153

154

155

156

157

158

159

160

161

162

163

164

165

166

167

168

169

170

171

172

173

174

175

176

177

178

179

180

181

182

183

184

185

186

187

188

189

190

191

192

193

194

195

196

197

198

199

200

201

202

203

204

205

206

207

209

210

211

212

213

214

215

216

217

218

219

220

221

222

223

224

225

226

227

228

229

230

231

232

233

234

235

236

237

238

239

240

241

242

243

244

245

246

247

248

249

250

251

252

253

254

255

256

257

258

259

260

261

262

263

264

265

266

267

268

269

270

271

272

273

274

275

276

277

278

279

280

281

282

283

284

285

286

287

288

289

291

293

294

295

296

297

298

299

300

301

302

303

304

305

306

307

308

309

310

311

312

313

314

315

316

317

318

319

320

321

322

323

324

325

326

327

328

329

330

331

332

333

334

335

336

337

338

339

340

341

342

343

344

345

346

347

348

349

350

351

352

353

354

355

356

357

358

359

360

361

362

363

364

365

366

367

368

369

370

371

373

375

376

377

378

379

380

381

382

383

384

385

386

387

388

389

390

391

392

393

394

395

396

397

398

399

400

401

402

403

404

405

406

407

408

409

410

411

412

413

414

415

416

417

418

419

420

421

422

423

424

425

426

427

428

429

430

431

432

433

434

435

436

437

438

439

440

441

442

443

444

445

446

447

448

449

450

451

452

453

455

456

457

458

459

460

461

462

463

464

465

466

467

468

469

470

471

472

473

474

475

476

477

478

479

480

481

482

483

484

485

486

487

488

489

490

491

492

493

494

495

496

497

498

499

500

501

502

503

504

505

507

509

510

511

512

513

514

515

516

517

518

519

520

521

522

523

524

525

526

527

528

529

530

531

532

533

534

535

536

537

538

539

540

541

542

543

544

545

546

547

548

549

550

551

552

553

554

555

556

557

558

559

560

561

562

563

564

565

566

567

568

569

570

571

572

573

574

575

576

577

578

579

580

581

582

583

584

585

586

587

588

589

590

591

592

593

594

595

596

597

598

599

600

601

602

603

604

605

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religion and Materiality

The Wiley Blackwell Companions to Religion series presents a collection of the most recent scholarship and knowledge about world religions. Each volume draws together newly commissioned essays by distinguished authors in the field, and is presented in a style which is accessible to undergraduate students, as well as scholars and the interested general reader. These volumes approach the subject in a creative and forward‐thinking style, providing a forum in which leading scholars in the field can make their views and research available to a wider audience..

Published

The Blackwell Companion to JudaismEdited by Jacob Neusner and Alan J. Avery‐Peck

The Blackwell Companion to Sociology of ReligionEdited by Richard K. Fenn

The Blackwell Companion to the Hebrew BibleEdited by Leo G. Perdue

The Blackwell Companion to Postmodern TheologyEdited by Graham Ward

The Blackwell Companion to HinduismEdited by Gavin Flood

The Blackwell Companion to ProtestantismEdited by Alister E. McGrath and Darren C. Marks

The Blackwell Companion to Modern TheologyEdited by Gareth Jones

The Blackwell Companion to Religious EthicsEdited by William Schweiker

The Blackwell Companion to Christian SpiritualityEdited by Arthur Holder

The Blackwell Companion to the Study of ReligionEdited by Robert A. Segal

The Blackwell Companion to the Qur’ān,Second EditionEdited by Andrew Rippin

The Blackwell Companion to Contemporary Islamic ThoughtEdited by Ibrahim M. Abu‐Rabi‛

The Blackwell Companion to the Bible and CultureEdited by John F. A. Sawyer

The Blackwell Companion to CatholicismEdited by James J. Buckley, Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt,and Trent Pomplun

The Blackwell Companion to Eastern ChristianityEdited by Ken Parry

The Blackwell Companion to the TheologiansEdited by Ian S. Markham

The Blackwell Companion to the Bible in English LiteratureEdited by Rebecca Lemon, Emma Mason, John Roberts, and Christopher Rowland

The Blackwell Companion to the New TestamentEdited by David E. Aune

The Blackwell Companion to Nineteenth Century TheologyEdited by David Fergusson

The Blackwell Companion to Religion in AmericaEdited by Philip Goff

The Blackwell Companion to JesusEdited by Delbert Burkett

The Blackwell Companion to PaulEdited by Stephen Westerholm

The Blackwell Companion to Religion and ViolenceEdited by Andrew R. Murphy

The Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics,Second EditionEdited by Stanley Hauerwas and Samuel Wells

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Pastoral TheologyEdited by Bonnie J. Miller McLemore

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religion and Social JusticeEdited by Michael D. Palmer and Stanley M. Burgess

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Chinese ReligionsEdited by Randall L. Nadeau

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to African ReligionsEdited by Elias Kifon Bongmba

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Christian MysticismEdited by Julia A. Lamm

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to the Anglican CommunionEdited by Ian S. Markham, Barney Hawkins IV, Leslie Nuñez Steffensen and Justyn Terry

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Interreligious DialogueEdited by Catherine Cornille

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to East and Inner Asian BuddhismEdited by Mario Poceski

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Latino/a TheologyEdited by Orlando O. Espín

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Ancient IsraelEdited by Susan Niditch

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to PatristicsEdited by Ken Parry

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to World ChristianityEdited by Lamin Sanneh and Michael J. McClymond

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Politics and Religion in AmericaEdited by Barbara A. McGraw

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religion and EcologyEdited by John Hart

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Political Theology,Second EditionEdited by William T. Cavanaugh and Peter Scott

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religion and MaterialityEdited by Vasudha Narayanan

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Wisdom LiteratureEdited by Samuel L Adams and Matthew Goff

The Wiley Blackwell Concise Companion to the HadithEdited by Daniel W. Brown

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Christian MartyrdomEdited by Paul Middleton

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to ZoroastrianismEdited by Michael Stausberg and Yuhan Vevaina Forthcoming

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Islamic SpiritualityEdited by Vincent J. Cornell and Bruce B. Lawrence

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religious DiversityEdited by Kevin Schilbrack

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Christianity, 2 Vols.Edited by Nicholas A. Adams

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to the Old Testament Apocrypha & PseudepigraphaEdited by Randall D. Chesnutt

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion, Second EditionEdited by Robert Segal

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religion and Materiality

Edited by

Vasudha Narayanan

This edition first published 2020© 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by law. Advice on how to obtain permission to reuse material from this title is available at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

The right of Vasudha Narayanan to be identified as the author of the editorial material in this work has been asserted in accordance with law.

Registered OfficesJohn Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, USAJohn Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK

Editorial OfficeThe Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK

For details of our global editorial offices, customer services, and more information about Wiley products visit us at www.wiley.com.

Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats and by print‐on‐demand. Some content that appears in standard print versions of this book may not be available in other formats.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of WarrantyWhile the publisher and authors have used their best efforts in preparing this work, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this work and specifically disclaim all warranties, including without limitation any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives, written sales materials or promotional statements for this work. The fact that an organization, website, or product is referred to in this work as a citation and/or potential source of further information does not mean that the publisher and authors endorse the information or services the organization, website, or product may provide or recommendations it may make. This work is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a specialist where appropriate. Further, readers should be aware that websites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read. Neither the publisher nor authors shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.

Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data

Names: Narayanan, Vasudha, editor.Title: The Wiley Blackwell companion to religion and materiality / edited by Vasudha Narayanan.Description: First Edition. | Hoboken : Wiley, 2020. | Series: The Wiley Blackwell companions to religion | Includes bibliographical references and index.Identifiers: LCCN 2019003273 (print) | LCCN 2019011029 (ebook) | ISBN 9781118688328 (Adobe PDF) | ISBN 9781118660089 (ePub) | ISBN 9781118660102 (hardback)Subjects: LCSH: Religion and culture. | Material culture–Religious aspects.| Materialism–Religious aspects.Classification: LCC BR65.C8 (ebook) | LCC BR65.C8 W55 2019 (print) | DDC 200–dc23LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019003273

Cover Design: WileyCover Images: Dervish © logosstock/Getty Images, Tibetan Singing Bowl © Veena Nair/Getty Images, Virupaksha temple © Neha Gupta/Getty Images, Three church bells © Yaroslav Mikheev/Getty Images, Cold green square paper © Julia Cherkinski/Shutterstock

Acknowledgments

This volume is a product of several scholars who have all worked in the field of religion and materiality for a very long time. We wanted to collectively come up with a volume where the chapters have analytical depth and the book as a whole would have comparative breadth, cover multiple traditions, geographical foci, and time periods, in addition to showcasing diverse expressions of religious materiality. The result has been a set of chapters where the topics have been carefully researched, rigorously analyzed, and presented through a wide array of disciplinary lenses.

It is a pleasure to thank the many people who have made the production of this volume possible. Several people at Wiley helped in seeing this book through its many stages. I am particularly grateful to Rebecca Harkin for initially suggesting this idea, to Juliet Booker for all continued help, and to Rajalakshmi Nadarajan for her efficient and professional attention to all the details and diligent work in the last stages of the production.

Manuel Vásquez did the heavy lifting for the editorial work when the chapters started to come in. He has also written the introduction, highlighting the contributions of each chapter and skillfully connecting them with the cutting‐edge theoretical and methodological debates informing the turn to materiality in religious studies and, more broadly, in the humanities and social sciences. And finally, a big “thank you” to the many authors in this volume for their scholarship and for their patience during the several years it took to see this volume come out.

Vasudha NarayananDistinguished Professor, ReligionUniversity of Florida

About the Editor

Vasudha Narayanan is Distinguished Professor of Religion at the University of Florida and a past President of the American Academy of Religion. She is an associate editor of the six‐volume Brill’s Encyclopedia of Hinduism (2009–2014). Her publications include numerous articles as well as several books namely The Vernacular Veda: Revelation, Recitation, and Ritual (1994), The Life of Hinduism (co‐edited with John Stratton Hawley, 2007), and Hinduism (2009). Her research has been supported by the John Simon Guggenheim Foundatiion; the Centre for Khmer Studies; the American Council of Learned Societies; National Endowment for the Humanities; the American Institute of Indian Studies/Smithsonian; and the Social Science Research Council.

Notes on Contributors

Nathaniel F. Barrett is a research fellow at the Institute of Culture and Society, University of Navarra (Pamplona, Spain). His current research focuses on the nature and evolution of affect, motivation, and enjoyment.

Jessica A. Boon Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, specializes in late medieval and early modern Christian culture, particularly Iberian spirituality and mysticism 1450–1550. Her first monograph is The Mystical Science of the Soul: Medieval Cognition in Bernardino de Laredo's Recollection Mysticism (University of Toronto Press, 2012). She publishes on Spanish mysticism, the history of science and spirituality, Passion devotion, Mariology, and theories of gender, pain, affect, materiality, and embodiment.

Thomas S. Bremer Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Rhodes College, is a historian of religions in the Americas. Much of his published work has focused on religion and tourism. His most recent book is Formed from This Soil: An Introduction to the Diverse History of Religion in America (Wiley, 2014).

Heidi A. Campbell is Professor of Communication and affiliate faculty in Religious Studies at Texas A&M University. She is director of the Network for New Media, Religion and Digital Culture Studies and author of over 90 articles and books on new media, religion, and digital culture including When Religion Meets New Media (Routledge 2010), Digital Religion (Routledge 2013) and Networked Theology (Baker Academic 2016).

David Carrasco is a Mexican‐American historian of religions who explores the question ‘Where is your sacred place’ in his research and writing on Mesoamerican cultures and the Mexican‐American borderlands. His studies with Mircea Eliade, Charles Long, and Paul Wheatley led him to study the rise of primary urban generation in Mesoamerica and the role of ceremonial centres in the Aztec empire and their transformations during the Gran Encuentro with Spanish imperialism between 1517 and 1810. He is the director of the Moses Mesoamerican Archive at Harvard University and the recipient of the Mexican Order of the Aztec Eagle.

Simon Coleman is Chancellor Jackman Professor at the University of Toronto, and co‐editor of the journal Religion and Society: Advances in Research. His research interests include Pentecostalism, pilgrimage, cathedrals, urban religion, and religious infrastructures, and he has carried out fieldwork in Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Nigeria. Recent books include The Anthropology of Global Pentecostalism and Evangelicalism (2015, NYU Press, co‐edited with Rosalind Hackett) and Pilgrimage and Political Economy (2018, Berghahn, co‐edited with John Eade).

Louise Connelly is a Senior E‐Learning Developer at the University of Edinburgh. Her research interests include social media, virtual worlds, and Buddhist communities and identity online. Her publications include ‘Virtual Buddhism: Buddhist Ritual in Second Life’ in Digital Religion: Understanding Religious Practice in New Media Worlds, H. Campbell (ed.) (Routledge, 2013) and ‘Virtual Buddhism: Online Communities, Sacred Places and Objects’ in The Changing World Religion Map, S. Brunn (ed.) (Springer, 2015).

John Eade is Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Roehampton, Visiting Professor at Toronto University and a member of the Migration Research Unit, UCL. His research interests focus on urban ethnicity, identity politics, global migration and pilgrimage. Relevant publications include the co‐edited volumes Contesting the Sacred (1991), Reframing Pilgrimage (2004), International Perspectives on Pilgrimage Studies (2015), and New Pathways in Pilgrimage Studies (2017).

Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger is Professor of Religion in the Department of Religion at Emory University. Her theoretical interests include performance, vernacular religion, and gender. She received a John Simon Guggenheim and Summer National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships in 2014–2015 to support research and writing for her book Material Acts in Everyday Hindu Worlds (in press, SUNY Press). Her publications include: an introductory textbook, Everyday Hinduism (2015); When the World Becomes Female: Possibilities of a South Indian Goddess (2013); In Amma's Healing Room: Gender and Vernacular Islam in South India (2006); Gender and Genre in the Folklore of Middle India (1996); and two edited volumes, Oral Epics in India (1989) and Boundaries of the Text: Epic Performances in South and Southeast Asia (1991).

Banu Gökarıksel is Associate Professor of Geography and Global Studies and the Royster Distinguished Professor at the Graduate School of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She served as the co‐editor of the Journal of Middle East Women's Studies (2014–2018) and is the recipient of the 2018 American Association of Geographers Enhancing Diversity Award and the 2017 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Chapman Family Teaching Award. Her research analyses the politics of everyday life and questions of religion, secularism, and gender with a focus on bodies and urban space.

Rosalind I.J. Hackett is Distinguished Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Tennessee. In fall 2018, she was the Gerardus van der Leeuw Fellow, Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Groningen. Her recent (co‐edited) books are Displacing the State: Religion and Conflict in Neoliberal Africa (2012), New Media and Religious Transformations in Africa (2015), and The Anthropology of Global Pentecostalism and Evangelicalism (2015). She is an Honorary Life Member of the International Association for the History of Religions (IAHR).

Knut A. Jacobsen is Professor of the Study of Religions at the University of Bergen, Norway and author and editor of many books and numerous articles in journals and edited volumes on Sāṃkhya and Yoga, and on various aspects on religions of South Asia and in the South Asian diasporas. He is the author of Prakṛti in Sāṃkhya‐Yoga: Material Principle: Religious Experience, Ethical Implications (Peter Lang, 1999), Kapila: Founder of Sāṃkhya and Avatāra of Viṣṇu (Munshiram Manoharlal, 2008), Pilgrimage in the Hindu Tradition: Salvific Space (Routledge, 2013), and Yoga in Modern Hinduism: Hariharānanda Āraṇya and Sāṃkhyayoga (Routledge, 2018) and editor of Routledge Handbook of Contemporary India (Routledge, 2016). Jacobsen is the founding Editor‐in‐Chief of the six volumes Brill's Encyclopedia of Hinduism (Brill, 2009–2015) and the Brill's Encyclopedia of Hinduism Online.

Greg Johnson is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Johnson’s research focuses upon the intersection of Indigenous traditions and law in American Indian and Native Hawaiian contexts. Recent publications include Sacred Claims: Repatriation and Living Tradition (University of Virginia Press 2007), Handbook of Indigenous Religion(s) (Brill 2017), edited with Siv Ellen Kraft, and Irreverence and the Sacred: Critical Studies in the History of Religions (Oxford 2018), edited with Hugh B. Urban.

Paul Christopher Johnson is Professor of History and of Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan, and Co‐Editor of the journal, Comparative Studies in Society and History. He wrote Secrets, Gossip, and Gods: The Transformation of Brazilian Candomblé (Oxford 2002), Diaspora Conversions: Black Carib Religion and the Recovery of Africa (California 2007), and Ekklesia: Three Inquiries on Church and State (Chicago 2018), with Winnifred F. Sullivan and Pamela E. Klassen, and edited Spirited Things: The Work of ‘Possession’ in Afro‐Atlantic Religions (Chicago 2014). He is completing a new book, Automatic Religion: Nearhuman Agents of Brazil and France.

Sylvester A. Johnson is Associate Professor of African American Studies and Religious Studies at Northwestern University. He researches religion, race, empire, and sexuality in the Atlantic world and the relationship between humans and intelligent machines. He recently authored African American Religions, 1500–2000: Colonialism, Democracy, and Freedom (Cambridge University Press 2015).

Harshita Mruthinti Kamath is Visweswara Rao and Sita Koppaka Assistant Professor in Telugu Culture, Literature and History at Emory University. Her research focuses on the textual and performance traditions of Telugu‐speaking South India in conversation with theoretical discourses on gender and sexuality in South Asia. She is the author of Impersonations: The Artifice of Brahmin Masculinity in South Indian Dance (2019). She has also co‐translated the sixteenth‐century classical Telugu text Parijatapaharanamu (Theft of a Tree) with Velcheru Narayana Rao, which will be published as part of the Murty Classical Library of India (Harvard University Press).

Gwynn Kessler is an Associate Professor in the Department of Religion at Swarthmore College. She is the author of Conceiving Israel: The Fetus in Rabbinic Narratives, and she is currently working on a monograph about queer theory and rabbinic literature.

David Morgan is Professor of Religious Studies at Duke University. He is author of several books, including The Forge of Vision: A Visual History of Modern Christianity (2015), The Sacred Gaze (2005), and Visual Piety (1998). He is an editor of the journal Material Religion, and co‐edits a book series on ‘Research in Material Religion’ published by Bloomsbury. His latest book is Images at Work: The Material Culture of Enchantment (2018).

Anne Murphy is Associate Professor in the Department of Asian Studies and co‐Director, Centre for India and South Asia Research, at the University of British Columbia. Her research concerns the vernacular literary and religious traditions of the Punjab region (India and Pakistan) in the early modern and modern periods, with a current focus on the history of the Punjabi language and its cultural production. Past research has addressed memory, history and representation; trauma and representation; material culture and its intersection with textual representations; and religious cultures in interaction.

Patrick Olivelle is Professor Emeritus, University of Texas at Austin and past President of the American Oriental Society. The author of over 30 books and 50 articles, his books have won awards from the American Academy of Religion and the Association of Asian Studies. His major publications include: Hindu Law: A New History of Dharmaśāstra (2018), Reader on Dharma: Classical Indian Law (2016), King, Governance, and Law in Ancient India (2013), Viṣṇu's Code of Law (2009), The Life of the Buddha (2008), Manu's Code of Law (2005), Upaniṣads (1996), and Ārama System (1993).

Kevin Lewis O'Neill is a Professor in the Department for the Study of Religion and Director of the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies at the University of Toronto. He is the author of City of God (California 2010), Secure the Soul (California 2015), and Hunted (Chicago 2019).

Terje Østebø received his Ph.D. in the History of Religion from Stockholm University, and is currently the Chair of the Department of Religion and an Associate Professor at the Center for African Studies and the Department of Religion, University of Florida. His research interests are Islam in contemporary Ethiopia, Islam, politics, and Islamic reformism in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa, as well as Salafism in Africa. He has lived in Ethiopia for six years, and has extensive field‐research experience. Important publications include: Muslim Ethiopia: The Christian Legacy, Identity Politics, and Islamic Reformism (co‐edited with Patrick Desplat), (Palgrave‐Macmillan 2013); Localising Salafism: Religious Change among Oromo Muslims in Bale, Ethiopia (Brill 2012)

Elaine A. Peña is an Associate Professor of American Studies at the George Washington University. She is currently a Visiting Scholar in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. Her research has been published widely in journals such as e‐misférica, American Literary History, and The Drama Review. She is the author of Performing Piety: Making Space Sacred with the Virgin of Guadalupe and the editor of Ethno‐Techno: Writings on Performance, Activism, and Pedagogy with Guillermo Gómez‐Peña.

Anna L. Peterson is a Professor in the Department of Religion at the University of Florida. Her research and teaching areas include social, environmental, and animal ethics. Her recent books include Being Human: Beasts and Boundaries in Nature Ethics (Columbia, 2013) and the edited volume Religion and Ecological Crisis: The Lynn White Thesis at 50 (Routledge, 2016). Her most recent book is Cats and Conservationists: The Debate Over Who Owns the Outdoors, co‐authored with Dara Wald (Purdue 2020). Her current research explores the place of practice in ethical theory.

Andrea Marion Pinkney is an Associate Professor at McGill University, in Montreal. Her current research interests include infrastructure and religious tourism in India, Hindu scriptural heritage in contemporary India (Uttarakhand māhātmya); and prasāda in the classical and contemporary religious traditions of North India. Her other research interests include Sikh Studies, contemporary Buddhism in Southeast Asia, and religious studies as an academic discipline in Asia.

S. Brent Plate is a writer, editor, and part time college professor whose books include A History of Religion in 5½ Objects, Blasphemy: Art that Offends, and Religion and Film: Cinema and the Re‐Creation of the World. His essays have been published in Newsweek.com, The Christian Century, The Islamic Monthly, and elsewhere. He is President of the Association for Religion and Intellectual Life/ Crosscurrents, and holds a visiting appointment at Hamilton College, NY.

Kay A. Read Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies (DePaul University), holds degrees in Art (University of Illinois, 1969), Religious Studies (University of Colorado, 1982); and History of Religions (University of Chicago, 1983, 1991). Her interests include Mesoamerican cosmology, mythology, imagery, sacrifice, time, comparative ethics and the interface of religion, nature and culture.

Steven J. Rosen (Satyaraja Dasa) is a practitioner/scholar and an internationally acclaimed author. He is the founding editor of the Journal of Vaishnava Studies and associate editor of Back to Godhead magazine. His 30‐plus books include Essential Hinduism(Rowman & Littlefield), Krishna's Other Song: A New Look at the Uddhava Gita (Praeger‐Greenwood); and Sri Chaitanya's Life and Teachings: The Golden Avatara of Divine Love (Lexington Books).

Victoria L. Rovine is Professor of Art History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research focuses on clothing and textiles in Africa, with particular attention to innovations in forms and meanings across cultures. She has published two books: Bogolan: Shaping Culture through Cloth in Contemporary Mali (Indiana University Press, 2008), and African Fashion, Global Style: Histories, Innovations, and Ideas You Can Wear (Indiana University Press, 2015). Her current research is focused on colonial‐era French West Africa.

A. Whitney Sanford is a professor in the Religion Department at the University of Florida. She is currently conducting ethnographic research on the Florida rivers, exploring human attachment to place and water, for a book tentatively entitled ‘River People of Florida’. Her books include Living Sustainably: What Intentional Communities Can Teach Us About Democracy, Simplicity, and Nonviolence (University Press of Kentucky, 2017), Growing Stories from India: Religion and the Fate of Agriculture (University Press of Kentucky, 2012) and Singing Krishna: Sound Becomes Sight in Paramanand's Poetry (SUNY 2008).

Anna J. Secor is Professor of Geography at the University of Kentucky. Her research focuses on theories of space, politics, and subjectivity. She is author of over 30 articles and book chapters. Her work develops ideas of topology in geography by engaging the texts of Lacan, Deleuze, and Agamben. Her research on Islam, state, and society in Turkey has been funded by the National Science Foundation. Recently, she has completed a collaborative NSF‐funded project with Banu Gökarıksel (UNC) on the production and consumption of Islamic fashions in Turkey, and currently she and Gökarıksel are collaborating on another NSF‐funded project on the role of religion in public life in Turkey.

Manuel A. Vásquez is an independent scholar who has published extensively in the fields of religion in the Americas, globalization, transnational migration, and method and theory. His works include The More than Belief: A Materialist Theory of Religion (2011), which has been the focus of symposia in Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Religion, and Religion and Society: Advances in Research.

Robin M. Wright is associate professor in the Department of Religion at the University of Florida. Research and fieldwork have focused on Indigenous religious traditions in South America and more broadly, the Americas and the world. He is the author of Mysteries of the Jaguar Shamans of the Northwest Amazon (2013) and Cosmos, Self, and History in Baniwa Religion: For Those Unborn (1998).

CHAPTER 1The Persistence, Ubiquity, and Dynamicity of Materiality: Studying Religion and Materiality Comparatively

Manuel A. Vásquez

1.1 The Persistence of Materiality

On 26 February 2001, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan under the leadership of the Taliban issued an edict regarding the destruction of religious images. It noted the presence of multiple ‘statues and non‐Islamic shrines located in different parts’ of the emirate. ‘These statues have been and remain shrines of unbelievers and these unbelievers continue to worship and respect them. God Almighty is the only real shrine [taghit] and all fake idols should be destroyed.’ Thus, the edict concluded: ‘as ordered by the ulema [the council of religious and legal scholars] and the Supreme Court of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan all the statues must be destroyed so that no one can worship or respect them in the future’. Arguably, the most high‐profile and controversial enactment of the edict was the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas. Standing at over 150 ft tall at the foot of the Hindu Kush in the central highlands of Afghanistan, the statues were not only amongst the world's largest figures of the Buddha, but also material evidence of the widespread circulation of Buddhism along the Silk Road, a transcontinental network that connected the Mediterranean with India and China. Built in the fifth century CE in the Greco‐Indian Gandhara style developed by the descendants of Greek artists who came to the region with Alexander the Great, the statues also underscored the key role of materiality in the encounter and cross‐fertilization of cultures and religions along the Silk Road. A Taliban spokesperson characterized the efforts to demolish the Bamiyan figures in military terms, almost suggesting that the statues actively resisted the attempts: ‘Our soldiers are working hard; they are using all available arms against the Buddhas.’ After 20 days of trying through various means to weaken the structures, including the use dynamite, anti‐aircraft guns, and tank shells, the figures were finally destroyed, along with many smaller statues of Buddha housed at the National Museum in Kabul.

The demolition of the Buddhas brought widespread condemnation, not only from the West but from neighbouring Muslim countries, as well as those with large Buddhist and Hindu populations. The United Nations' General Assembly was ‘appalled’ by the Taliban's edict and actions and adopted a resolution stating that ‘the artifacts being destroyed in Afghanistan, including the Buddhist statues in Bamiyan, belonged to the common heritage of humankind. Their destruction was an act of intolerance that struck at the very basis of civilized coexistence and was contrary to the real spirit of Islam’. The resolution also ‘strongly called upon the Taliban to protect Afghanistan's cultural heritage from all acts of vandalism, damage and theft. It also called upon Member States to help safeguard the unique Buddhist sculptures in Bamiyan, using appropriate technical measures, including, if necessary, their temporary relocation or removal from public view’.1

We start the volume with this case not to stress the radical iconoclasm of the Taliban, a strategy that, notwithstanding the UN's General Assembly's assertion that the destruction of the Buddhas ‘was contrary to the real spirit of Islam’, can easily be co‐opted by a ‘clash of civilization’ geopolitical gaze to portray Islam as not coeval with us, as a barbarian, uncivilized, and intolerant religion driven by a pre‐modern traditionalism contrary to modern notions of human rights and universal cultural values. To begin with, the Bamiyan Buddhas and surrounding Buddhist monasteries were attacked before the arrival of Islam by Hephthalites (also known as White Huns), for example, who worshipped Hindu gods, such as Vishnu and Shiva, and Zun, a merging of a local mountain deity and classical Shaivism (Wink 1990, pp. 117–119). Moreover, the giant Buddhas had co‐existed with Islam for centuries, surviving the Mongol, Mughal, and British empires and the Soviet intervention. While there is indeed a proscription in the Qur'an against shirk (the elevation of anyone and anything to Allah's singular preeminent place), Jamal Elias (nd, 14) notes ‘that there is no clear islamic [sic] condemnation paralleling the Biblical ban in the second commandment. Qur'anic condemnations are nowhere as explicit, perhaps the clearest being “And Abraham said to his father Azar: Do you take idols (aṣnāman) as gods? Indeed I see you and your people in manifest error”’ (6:74).2 Finbarr Flood (2002, p. 652), furthermore, shows that historically Islam is not characterized by ‘a timeless theology of images’. He points to the waxing and waning of iconoclastic ‘moments’ within Islam in response to socio‐political and cultural complexities, a similar dynamic that one can find in other religions, like Christianity during the Byzantine era, the conquest of the Americas, and the Protestant Reformation (see Kolrud and Prusac 2014).

Flood's and Elias's points dovetail with Webb Keane's observation that with its mistrust of institutional and ritual mediation and its emphasis on sola fides and sola scriptura, the Protestant Reformation reinforced an iconoclastic ‘entextualization of world’ (2007, p. 68), as part of a ‘creed paradigm’ that made the voluntary declaration of faith by the autonomous religious subject the core of authentic religion. ‘In the pre‐Reformation era, collective recitation of a creed was often linked to the penitential system that reformers rejected. The reformers instead stressed the sincerity and privacy of the creed. Religious materializations such as rituals, offerings, priesthoods, sacred sites, relics, communities, holy books, and bodily disciplines persisted but usually in a position subordinate to that of statements of belief’ (p. 75). James Simpson (2010) goes further, arguing that in its professed aim of breaking radically with tradition, of shattering the prejudices and idols that kept humanity from exercising autonomy on the basis of rationality, Western modernity was driven from the outset by a strong iconoclastic impetus. More specifically, the Kantian separation of pure reason (science), practical reason (ethics), and aesthetics (art) into autonomous spheres, each operating with its own ‘transcendental’ principles, a separation at the heart of the Enlightenment and Western secular modernity, had profoundly de‐materializing effects. For ‘transcendental’ here meant not just principles not derived from revelation (religion), but also that these principles are a priori conditions of human experience, conditions not affected by the contingencies and particularities of embodied existence.

…substantial aspects of the Enlightenment project aimed to protect art from the sensory excesses of material religion, to protect especially fine arts from the day‐to‐day sensory and material muckiness of religious art and artifact, to abstract and elevate this protected and purified category of object in such a way to disavow human kinships with the substance of that messiness and neutralize its threat.

(Promey 2014, p. 2, emphasis in the original)

We shall have more to say about the sources of what is, at the very least, a profound ambivalence towards materiality in Western modernity and in the discipline of religious studies, which is, after all, a modern regime of knowledge. But notice here that iconoclasm cannot be unproblematically attributed to the barbarism of the pre‐modern religious Other. ‘[I]conoclasm is not “somewhere else.” Instead, it lies buried deep within Western modernity, and especially deep with the Anglo‐American tradition. This tradition insistently and violently repudiates idols and images as dangerous carriers of the old regime’ (Simpson 2010, pp. 11–12). Thus, we see how French revolutionaries spurred by the universal ideals of fraternity, equality, and solidarity set out not only decapitate the leaders of the ancien régime, but also its icons (Gamboni 1977). Comparisons of this sort demonstrate that when it comes to materiality, it is much too simplistic to oppose irrational, iconoclastic tribal religion to a rational, tolerant, and cosmopolitan modernity. While answers may differ widely, from various forms of iconoclasm to the celebration of the ‘threatening, yet glorious’ ‘power of the material as material’ (Bynum 2011, pp. 121–122), the question of materiality is an enduring and vital one across religions and cultures.

Flood argues that at the local level, there has been a far more nuanced management of religious materiality in Islam. The physical obliteration of religious images has been rare. Far more common has been ‘re‐purposing’ of images in prescribed ways through defacement, decapitation, mutilation, and substitution with ‘safe’ depictions such as those of gardens and trees. Thus, to the extent that local and historical resources allow any generalization, ‘iconoclastic practice in the medieval Islamic world… was less an attempt to negate the image than to neutralize it’ (Flood 2002, p. 647). Furthermore, the ‘“deanimating” [of] existing images by depriving them of a soul (ruh)’ (p. 648) involved an implicit recognition of their potential efficacy. This reading certainly makes sense of the Taliban's spokesperson alluding to the Bamiyan figures as resisting their military efforts to destroy them. The figures themselves had agency, evincing an obduracy that affected the Taliban's actions. This reading also explains all the rich materialities that accompany Islam, from architecture and calligraphy, to textiles, particular styles of dress (see the chapters by Banu Gökariksel and Anna Secor, and Victoria Rovine) and the embodied practices, landscapes, and infrastructure involved in the Hajj – the donning of the ihram garments, the prayers at the massive encampment at Mina, the stoning of the devil at the three Jamarat walls, the circumambulation and kissing of the Ka'aba. The dynamic assemblage of these materialities and activities is key to the practitioner's experience of Islam as an efficacious religion.

If the challenge is not the outright denial of matter but rather the contested (im)proper deployment and management of what various materials afford us, we can also understand Michael Sells's point that the Taliban themselves depend on particular forms of materiality. For Sells, these include religious and financial networks that have made possible the transnational spread of rectificationist versions of Islam, such as Wahhabism. They also include the global media through which the Taliban made a spectacle of their act of iconoclasm. If they are going to claim authority as the defenders of the purity of Islam, this act must be disseminated globally to members and non‐members of the ummah. This is why Sells concludes that the Taliban are not a pre‐modern or anti‐modern form of traditionalism. Quite the contrary, they are the product of a late modern, or perhaps postmodern, globalization, driven electronic media.3

Positing that what is at stake is the power of and over materiality also foregrounds the contradictions in the United Nations' response to the Taliban's edict and actions regarding the destruction of images. Flood rightly takes to task the ‘contemporary iconolatry’ (2002, p. 651) that undergirds this response, an iconolatry that is paradoxically iconoclastic in the sense that it expunges the religious valence of the Buddha figures and elevates them as the animated material expression of the Geist of a particular people or even of the entire humanity. This is an operation of disenchantment and re‐enchantment that bears striking similarities with the re‐purposing of icons in Islam and of Catholic images and relics by Protestants in art museums. The Buddha figures become so special, thus so ‘sacred’, to draw from Ann Taves's definition of what counts as religious, that they have to be protected by a special international organization or ‘relocated’ – even if temporarily – to a museum in the metropole. Here, the UN's contemporary iconolatry must contend with the legacies of colonialism and Orientalism, which as Sylvester Johnson shows in his chapter in the Companion functioned through a simultaneous denial of embodiment of the colonizer (making himself a universal sovereign subject) and an intense interest in the utter materiality of the colonized. In the Orientalist gaze, the colonized is so primitive, so immature, so tied to her body and her immediate environment that she cannot legislate herself through universal values disclosed by Reason. She must be civilized; but to train her body, we must extract truth for it, summon texts, codes, and artefacts that enable the colonizer to elucidate her essence. To be sure the colonial process of subjection and subjectivation was not a one‐way, top‐down process. David Chidester speaks of a ‘triple mediation’ in the production of imperial knowledge. This mediation brought together ‘metropolitan theorists’ like Max Müller and James Frazer, who ‘deployed a comparative method that inferred characteristic of the “primitive” ancestors of humanity from reports about contemporary “savages” living on the colonized peripheries’, with ‘European observers, primarily travelers, missionaries, and colonial agents’ who mastered local language and provided accounts of indigenous life, and ‘local experts’, who served as ‘nameless translators, or converts at remote mission stations’ (Chidester 2004, p. 72). Nevertheless, these complex mediations were undergirded by one‐sided power asymmetries and by relations of exploitation disguised by the benevolent paternalism of the mission civilisatrice. The Taliban challenged this hypocritical paternalism when they pointed to the fact the West (in this case the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York) offered money to purchase and relocate the statues of the Buddha but not to feed the starving children of Afghanistan.

Throughout all the twists and turns of this case, what remains constant is the pervasiveness of materiality. And we have not even discussed the avowed anti‐materialism of Buddhism. Isn't the essence of Buddhism to seek release from samsara, the cycle of life and death, from the impermanence and illusory existence of materiality, including our own bodies? What are we to make of the colossal statues of the Buddha, the sheer size and physicality of which were marks of the success and prestige of Buddhism in the region? As John Kieschnick (2003, p. 4) observes, ‘Buddhist teachings are suffused with a suspicion of sensual pleasure and a tendency to denigrate and renounce the material world’. Nevertheless, Kieschnick warns, ‘there is a danger of giving too much weight to the role of ideas in the formation and development of material culture. Many things are employed according to traditions of religious behavior rather than as outgrowths of well‐defined doctrinal precepts’ (p. 14). Indeed, ‘if…we leave the world of recondite doctrine and statements of principle and look instead at the way Buddhism has been practiced, we find material goods everywhere’ (p. 5). Pointing to the ubiquity of stupas containing relics of Bodhisattvas, numinous statues of the Buddha, and Buddhist rosaries and sacred texts carried by merchants and monks in their travels, as well as the networks of economic and political patronage that enabled the growth of the sangha, the formation of canons and schools, and the establishment of monasteries, Kieschnick demonstrates that ‘[c]ertain objects could be harnessed for the greater cause of the rejection of the material world, but to do so required meticulous attention to detail and adherence to codes of behavior in their manufacture and use’ (pp. 5–6). No wonder, then, the painstaking regulations regarding monastic life, down to ‘the cut and hem of the monk's robes, the material from which his alms bowl was to be made, and the length of his walking staff’ (p. 5).

Given the stubborn presence of materiality, whence comes the entrenched representation of Buddhism as an other‐worldly philosophy? Gregory Schopen (1997) has shown how early European scholars of Indian Buddhism, imposing misreadings of Darwinian evolution and their Christian assumptions that a legitimate religion must have established universal doctrines and sacred texts, disregarded material culture – bones, stones, coins, statues, inscriptions, caves, and footprints – in the study of how Buddhism was practised in daily life in various local contexts. For example, every time scholars of Buddhism ‘encountered evidence that even suggested that monks and nuns owned personal property, they first signaled their surprise…and then immediately invoked either explicitly and implicitly the rules in the canonical monastic code against it, to assert in one way or another, that they were not really seeing what they saw. Either