"Places in Motion: The Fluid
Identities of Temples, Images, and Pilgrims"
Colleagues,
I'm pleased to announce the publication of my book, Places in Motion:
The Fluid Identities of Temples, Images, and Pilgrims (OUP), which
should be of interest to the H-Buddhism community. Four of the chapters
deal explicitly with images and places in India, and I hope scholars in
the broader fields of Religious Studies and Comparative Religion will
also find it of interest.
It is available in both hardcover, ebook, and paperback.
http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199359660.do
>From the back cover:
Jacob Kinnard offers an in-depth examination of the complex dynamics of
religiously charged places. Focusing on several important shared and
contested pilgrimage places - Ground Zero and Devils Tower in the United
States, Ayodhya and Bodhgaya in India, Karbala in Iraq - he 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, but are sacred because we make them
sacred. As such, they are in perpetual motion, transforming themselves
from moment to moment and generation to generation. Places in Motion
moves comfortably across and between a variety of historical and
cultural settings as well as academic disciplines, providing a deft and
sensitive approach to the topic of sacred places, with awareness of
political, economic, and social realities as these exist in relation to
questions of identity. It is a lively and much needed critical advance
in analytical reflections on sacred space and pilgrimage.
"Jacob 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 Contents:
Acknowledgments
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
Cheers,
Jacob
Jacob N. Kinnard
Professor of Comparative Religions
Director, M.A. Program
Iliff School of Theology
2323 East Iliff Avenue
Denver, CO 80211
303-765-3164
jkinnard@iliff.edu
