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The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that public displays are performance events that carry a variety of meanings for the participants involved in such events. Given the multivocal nature of large-scale spectacles, such as street parades and national holidays, there is bound to be disagreement and therefore contestation over the correct interpretation of the events performed. When it comes to the political function of public display events, it becomes clear that they can be manipulated symbolically and semiotically to convey certain meanings intended by the orchestrators of the events being performed. In Bangladesh, a relatively new nation in the world order, the growing pains of defining what constitutes the essence of its citizenship becomes a priority. The public sphere thus becomes a nationalist arena for performing ethnolinguistic identity. Yet, due to the diversity of the population and its myriad of beliefs, the attempt to homogenize can and does lead to contestation, since not all agree on what constitutes the nation, its belief system, and its culture. Festivals thus become dialogical vehicles for enacting the disputed nature of the Bangladeshi national self. Keywords: Ekushey--independence--martyrdom--nationalism--New Year's Day--pahela baisakh--partition--performance, Nationalism can be imagined in many ways. It can be ideologically inculcated from childhood, as Don Handelman (1998, 162-91) has shown to be the case in Israel, where he found [...]

This article explores the shifting role of slaughter and meat consumption in Bhutan as a result of the recent religionization of Bhutanese politics and as a case of religious nationalism. It argues that there is a tension between customary meat consumption and traditional blood sacrifice and the Buddhist nonviolent ritual practice of tsethar that is propagated as a central part of modern Bhutanese nationalism and good citizenship. This tension has created a situation where animal welfare and vegetarianism are dominant in the public discourse while slaughter and meat consumption still continue--but as concealed and obscure practices. The article presents data from ethnographic fieldwork and other sources to demonstrate how this process has played out in practice. Keywords: nonviolence--tsethar--Buddhism--Bhutan--religious nationalism-slaughter, Although regional variations are found abundantly in the religious life of modern South Asia, Buddhism is widely regarded as a religion of minorities. While the conversion of some Dalit Hindus [...]

Merin Shobhana Xavier, Sacred Spaces and Transnational Networks in American Sufism: Bawa Muhaiyaddeen and Contemporary Shrine Cultures London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. 267 pages. Hardcover, $102.60; paperback, $35.96. ISBN: 9781350024458 (hardcover); [...]

We are pleased to present this latest issue of Asian Ethnology. It is the first of two planned for this year. In volume 76/2 (2017), we announced that the journal [...]

Steven J. Rosen and Kaisori Bellach, Avatar Art: Neo-Vedic Paintings Celebrating Life Los Angeles: The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 2016. 224 pages. Paperback, $15.95, ISBN: 978-91-7149-801-4. When I first encountered the [...]

Susan Ostigaard and Beathe Hofseth, Directors, Light Fly, Fly High Norway/India, 2013. 80 minutes, color. $89.00 (K-12, public libraries, and select groups); $350 (universities, colleges, and institutions). https://www.wmm.com. This film [...]

Wendy J. N. Lee, Director, Pad Tatra: A Green Odyssey 72 Minutes. Color. Los Angeles: Good Docs, 2013. $129.00 (NonInstitutional); $229.00 (Institutional). http://www.padyatrafilm.com/. IT HAS BEEN almost half a century [...]

Paul G. Hackett, Theos Bernard, The White Lama: Tibet, Yoga, and American Religious Life New York: Columbia University Press, 520 pages. Notes, bibliography, plates, index. Hardcover, US$26.00//18.00 £. ISBN 978-0-231-15887-9. [...]

Sadhana Naithani, The Story-Time of the British Empire: Colonial and Postcolonial Folkloristics Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2010.145 pages, preface, endnotes, bibliography, index. Cloth, us$50.00; isbn 978-1-60473-455-3. IN THIS short [...]

This article intends to raise questions related to nationalism in South Asia, while also addressing the rationale for this special issue. Is nationalism a monolithic construct based on a European precedent or is it something much larger that is developed pluralistically in a variety of contexts around the world? If the latter is true, which is our position, then how do we go about studying the various versions of global nationalism? We argue that good comparison is based on both similarity and difference. To make a case for multiple versions of nationalism, the articles included herein focus on the Indian Subcontinent. Each article looks at a particular country belonging to the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), the intergovernmental group representing the geopolitical union of states in South Asia, which was founded in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 1985. The overall purpose of this collection of articles is to highlight the varieties of nationalism found in the region, with the goal of interrogating the idea of a singular form of nationalism inherited by postcolonial societies from their European colonizers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alex Norman and Carole M. Cusack, eds., Religion, Pilgrimage, and Tourism Abingdon, Oxon, UK: Routledge, 2015. 1,618 pages. 4 volume set. Hardback $1,345.00. ISBN 978-1-13-801488-6. STUDIES OF PILGRIMAGE have been [...]

The article explores the history of the periodical, which is celebrating its 18 birthday in the year 2021. It reports the periodical is an open access, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the promotion of research on the peoples and cultures of Asia. It mentions work of few editors of the past editors too, including Peter Knecht and Matthias Eder.