This book breaks new ground by bringing together multidisciplinary approaches to examine contempo... more This book breaks new ground by bringing together multidisciplinary approaches to examine contemporary Indian Ocean worlds. It reconfigures the Indian Ocean as a space for conceptual and theoretical relationality based on social science and humanities scholarship, thus moving away from an area-based and geographical approach to Indian Ocean studies. Contributors from a variety of disciplines focus on keywords such as relationality, space/place, quotidian practices, and new networks of memory and maps to offer original insights to reimagine the Indian Ocean. While the volume as a whole considers older histories, mobilities, and relationships between places in Indian Ocean worlds, it is centrally concerned with new connectivities and layered mappings forged in the lived experiences of individuals and communities today. The chapters are steeped in ethnographic, multi-modal, and other humanities methodologies that examine different sources besides historical archives and textual materials, including everyday life, cities, museums, performances, the built environment, media, personal narratives, food, medical practices, or scientific explorations. An important contribution to several fields, this book will be of interest to academics of Indian Ocean studies, Afro-Asian linkages, inter-Asian exchanges, Afro-Arab crossroads, Asian studies, African studies, Anthropology, History, Geography, and International Relations.
Body, City, and Memory in a Global Religious Movement, 2008
This chapter examines the practical spirituality of Sai Centers in the context of voluntary assoc... more This chapter examines the practical spirituality of Sai Centers in the context of voluntary associations in urban Africa, the infrastructural crisis, informality, and shantytowns. It begins by recounting the journey made by Sathya Sai Baba to East Africa in 1968 and its significance for South Asian devotees in the newly emergent post-independence states. The chapter then focuses attention on the relationship of Sai devotion to the African city, and in particular, to Nairobi, in the new millennium. It emphasizes the somatic and material modes - architecture, food, dreams, or singing - through which devotees makes their home in the city. These present creative ways of being citizens and being located in space. The chapter then explores the somatic and performative regimes of devotional citizenship in Nairobi.Keywords: devotional citizenship; Nairobi; Sathya Sai Baba; somatic regimes
In the past two decades, Indian Ocean studies has expanded tremendously, with scholars from diffe... more In the past two decades, Indian Ocean studies has expanded tremendously, with scholars from different disciplines pushing the conceptual limits of the field as well as the spatial boundaries of its oceanscape by including diverse physical and nonphysical spaces, networks, and practices born out of the historical and contemporary connections between Africa,
This book breaks new ground by bringing together multidisciplinary approaches to examine contempo... more This book breaks new ground by bringing together multidisciplinary approaches to examine contemporary Indian Ocean worlds. It reconfigures the Indian Ocean as a space for conceptual and theoretical relationality based on social science and humanities scholarship, thus moving away from an area-based and geographical approach to Indian Ocean studies. Contributors from a variety of disciplines focus on keywords such as relationality, space/place, quotidian practices, and new networks of memory and maps to offer original insights to reimagine the Indian Ocean. While the volume as a whole considers older histories, mobilities, and relationships between places in Indian Ocean worlds, it is centrally concerned with new connectivities and layered mappings forged in the lived experiences of individuals and communities today. The chapters are steeped in ethnographic, multi-modal, and other humanities methodologies that examine different sources besides historical archives and textual materials, including everyday life, cities, museums, performances, the built environment, media, personal narratives, food, medical practices, or scientific explorations. An important contribution to several fields, this book will be of interest to academics of Indian Ocean studies, Afro-Asian linkages, inter-Asian exchanges, Afro-Arab crossroads, Asian studies, African studies, Anthropology, History, Geography, and International Relations.
Body, City, and Memory in a Global Religious Movement, 2008
This chapter examines the practical spirituality of Sai Centers in the context of voluntary assoc... more This chapter examines the practical spirituality of Sai Centers in the context of voluntary associations in urban Africa, the infrastructural crisis, informality, and shantytowns. It begins by recounting the journey made by Sathya Sai Baba to East Africa in 1968 and its significance for South Asian devotees in the newly emergent post-independence states. The chapter then focuses attention on the relationship of Sai devotion to the African city, and in particular, to Nairobi, in the new millennium. It emphasizes the somatic and material modes - architecture, food, dreams, or singing - through which devotees makes their home in the city. These present creative ways of being citizens and being located in space. The chapter then explores the somatic and performative regimes of devotional citizenship in Nairobi.Keywords: devotional citizenship; Nairobi; Sathya Sai Baba; somatic regimes
In the past two decades, Indian Ocean studies has expanded tremendously, with scholars from diffe... more In the past two decades, Indian Ocean studies has expanded tremendously, with scholars from different disciplines pushing the conceptual limits of the field as well as the spatial boundaries of its oceanscape by including diverse physical and nonphysical spaces, networks, and practices born out of the historical and contemporary connections between Africa,
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