Embodied Reception
South Asian Spiritualities in Contemporary Contexts
Henriette Hanky [+–]
University of Bergen
Knut A. Jacobsen [+–]
University of Bergen
István Keul [+–]
University of Bergen
This volume investigates contemporary bodily practices as a mode of transmitting and receiving South Asian religious and spiritual traditions. The collection’s chapters explore processes of adoption and adaptation and the ways in which somatic religious practices are transplanted into new contexts, acquiring new meanings, and generating dynamics of their own. Using the concept of “embodied reception” as a heuristic, the contributions address the dialectic between incorporating (religious) knowledge by performing bodily practices and opening new avenues for (religious) meaning-making through bodily experiences.
The collection presents a range of empirical cases: contemplative bodily techniques such as postural yoga, mindfulness, and meditation; ritual practices in modern advaitic satsang; South Indian martial arts; tantric goddess veneration; contemporary Sāṃkhyayoga practices. The empirical studies span devotional communities, yoga institutions, New Age milieus, and secularized contexts, providing a rich tapestry of contemporary embodied reception in and outside South Asia.
Assembling research on embodied forms of reception both in South Asia and in Western countries, the volume advocates for paying close attention to entangled histories of knowledge. Grounded in this empirical outlook, the volume also speaks to theoretical and methodological debates on travelling bodily practices. The contributions suggest theoretical and methodological frameworks ranging from aesthetics of religion to sociology of knowledge, from ethnographic to cognitive approaches.
Table of Contents
Prelims
Introduction
I. Theoretical and Methodological Considerations
areas of research are religious-secular pluralism, economics of religion and aesthetics of
religion/embodied cognition with view to contemporary religion in Europe, global religious
discourses and cosmopolitan spirituality. She was co-editor of the Journal of Religion in Europe and is board member of several book series and journals. Recent publications: with K. Wilkens (eds.) The Bloomsbury Handbook to The Cultural and Cognitive Aesthetics of Religion (2019).
II. Performing Textual Traditions
III. Bodily Practices on the Move
director of the educational charity Inform based at King’s College London. She recently
published the Routledge Handbook of Yoga and Meditation Studies (2021), co-edited with Karen O’Brien-Kop.
Her main areas of research are New Age religion, New Religious Movements, the history of
missions among the Sami, and the adaptation of Hindu/Buddhist yoga and meditation in
the West.
and Humanities Research Council’s Open-Oxford-Cambridge Doctoral Training Partnership.
Lucy’s background is in dance, where her work investigates the confluence of her practices
of postmodern dance, martial arts and yoga.
IV. Embodied Meaning-making
body. His dissertation was an ethnography on the culture of conspiracy in Germany. He
teaches qualitative research methods at the Paracelsus Medical University of Salzburg and
is a freelance stress reduction and mindfulness trainer.