Description
Book SynopsisJacob Kinnard offers an in-depth examination of the complex dynamics of religiously charged places. Focusing on several important shared and contested pilgrimage placesGround Zero and Devils Tower in the United States, Ayodhya and Bodhgaya in India, Karbala in Iraqhe poses a number of crucial questions. What and who has made these sites important, and why? How are they shared, and how and why are they contested? What is at stake in their contestation? How are the particular identities of place and space established? How are individual and collective identity intertwined with space and place? Challenging long-accepted, clean divisions of the religious world, Kinnard explores specific instances of the vibrant messiness of religious practice, the multivocality of religious objects, the fluid and hybrid dynamics of religious places, and the shifting and tangled identities of religious actors. He contends that sacred space is a constructed idea: places are not sacred in and of themselves, b
Trade ReviewJacob Kinnard sets his sights on a place, and sits and watches that place over time, observing shifts in light, the movements of people cutting across the frame, and ultimately takes note of the ways people gather together. These chapters are like long exposure photographs, with the resulting image capturing the blurs of activity of many people for many purposes over time. By seeing places in motion, Kinnard also puts scholarship in motion. A rich take on space through time. * S. Brent Plate, author of A History of Religion in 5 1/2 Objects *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ; Preface: The Questions of Places ; 1. Place, Contestation, and the Complexities of Agency ; 2. Power Fallen from the Sky ; 3. The Polyvalent Padas of Vishnu and the Buddha ; 4. The Drama of Vishnu and the Buddha at Bodhgaya ; 5. Bodhgaya, UNESCO, and the Ambiguities of Preservation ; 6. The Power and the Politics of Emplacement ; 7. Public Space or Sacred Place? ; 8. Fences and Walls: A Not-So-Final Reflection On Preservations, Prohibitions, and Places in Motion ; Notes ; Bibliography ; Index
