Objects, object-ness, and shadows of meanings: carving prayer beads and exploring their materiality alongside a Khaksari Sufi Murshid
Prayer beads, through processes of craftsmanship and trade, arrive at meanings, significations, and imaginative associations that are inscribed by religious-cultural codes or social networks. The shadows of meanings overwhelm their material existence as prayer beads despite their lives beginning bef...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
2018
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| In: |
Material religion
Year: 2018, Volume: 14, Issue: 3, Pages: 368-388 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Iran
/ Khāksār
/ Prayer cord
/ Sacred object
|
| RelBib Classification: | AG Religious life; material religion BJ Islam |
| Further subjects: | B
anthropology of materiality
B Islam B objectness B speculative realism B object-oriented ontology B Sufism B Rosary B Surplus B OOO |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) |
| Summary: | Prayer beads, through processes of craftsmanship and trade, arrive at meanings, significations, and imaginative associations that are inscribed by religious-cultural codes or social networks. The shadows of meanings overwhelm their material existence as prayer beads despite their lives beginning before their enactment within the socio-cultural and religious networks. Therefore, alongside an Iranian Sufi murshid, I follow the object-ness and the life of rosaries and prayer beads in an "apprenticeship ethnographic" journey. I address the material life of rosaries to explain how their object-ness contributes to their materiality and meaning formation that they gain in a Sufi order. An approach informed by speculative realism and object-oriented ontology (OOO) is chosen to examine what it means to study a religious object-in-itself. I follow the religiously loaded object and its spiritual traces by way of OOO to forgo the meanings and relationships that shadow the objects. |
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| ISSN: | 1751-8342 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Material religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1080/17432200.2018.1487765 |
