- 328 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
Naked holy men denying sexuality and feeling; elderly people basking in the warmth and security provided by devoted and attentive family members; fastidious priests concerned solely with rules of purity and the minutiae of ritual practice; puritanical moralists concealing women and sexuality behind purdah's veils—these are familiar Western stereotypes of India. The essays in Divine Passions, however, paint other, more colorful and emotionally alive pictures of India: ecstatic religious devotees rolling in temple dust; gray-haired elders worrying about neglect and mistreatment by family members; priests pursuing a lusty, carefree ideal of the good life; and jokers reviling one another with bawdy, sexual insults at marriages. Drawing on rich ethnographic data from emotion-charged scenarios, these essays question Western academic theories of emotion, particularly those that reduce emotions to physiological sensations or to an individual's private feelings. Presenting an alternative view of emotions as culturally constructed and morally evaluative concepts grounded in the bodily self, the contributors to Divine Passions help dispel some of the West's persistent misconceptions of Indian emotional experience. Moreover, the edition as a whole argues for a new and different understanding of India based on field research and an understanding of the devotional ( bhakti ) tradition.
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1990.
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Table of contents
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- CONTENTS 1
- PREFACE
- Introduction: Emotions in Theoretical Contexts
- ONE The Social Construction of Emotion in India
- PART TWO Love and Anxiety in Intimate Familial Contexts
- TWO The Ideology of Love in a Tamil Family
- THREE “To Be a Burden on Others” Dependency Anxiety Among the Elderly in India Sylvia Vatuk
- PART THREE Joy and Humor in Public Caste Contexts
- FOUR The Mastram Emotion and Person Among Mathura’s Chaubes Owen M. Lynch
- FIVE Untouchable Chuhras Through Their Humor “Equalizing” Marital Kin Through Teasing, Pretence, and Farce Pauline Kolenda
- PART FOUR Erotic and Maternal Love in Religious Contexts
- SIX Krishna’s Consuming Passions Food as Metaphor and Metonym for Emotion at Mount Govardhan Paul M. Toomey
- SEVEN In Nanda Baba’s House The Devotional Experience in Pushti Marg Temples Peter Bennett
- EIGHT Refining the Body Transformative Emotion in Ritual Dance Frederique Apffel Marglin
- PART FIVE Conflicting Emotions in Cross-Cultural Contexts
- NINE On the Moral Sensitivities of Sikhs in North America Verne A. Dusenbery
- TEN Hare Krishna, Radhe Shyam The Cross-Cultural Dynamics of Mystical Emotions in Brindaban Charles R. Brooks
- CONTRIBUTORS
- GLOSSARY
- INDEX