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When a charismatic Sri Lankan holy man moved to Philadelphia in the early 1970s and set up a new branch of his movement, he began a process of adaptation to the North American context that has continued since his death. Within the new Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship, adherents in favor of a more liberal style of worship have clashed with a stricter official interpretation of the founder's views on Islamic requirements, while relations with the original Sri Lankan organization have also experienced frictions. The history of the fellowship is a case study in how the globalization of religion results in heterogeneous versions of a common faith. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 [...]