Showing posts with label nonfiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nonfiction. Show all posts

In Amma's Healing Room: Gender and Vernacular Islam in South India Review

In Amma's Healing Room: Gender and Vernacular Islam in South India
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In Amma's Healing Room: Gender and Vernacular Islam in South India ReviewSince there is only one review at the moment, a slightly negative one, I felt the need to write a more balanced review of this very interesting book.
"In Amma's Healing Room" is an ethnography centered around a Muslim spiritual healer in Hyderabad, India, referred to as "Amma" (mother), and her "healing room," or the room of her house where she sets up her healing practice and sees patients. Although the book is an academic, scholarly work that will be of primary interest to scholars interested in anthropology and south asian studies, it is written in a clear and fluid (jargon-free) style that makes it easily accessible to non-scholars as well. Those interested in Sufism may find the book particularly interesting, as Amma and her family are Sufis and her husband (Abba) is a "pir" or Sufi teacher. One of the many strengths of the book is its description of practices that take place around the periphery of what might generally be presented as the core of Sufism.
Another strength of the book is Prof Flueckiger's evident respect for Amma, her healing system, her clients, and the cultural and religious milieu. She does not resort to some of the more common models sometimes used in anthropology to "explain" the effects of religious healing rituals through cultural, symbolic and cognitive models. Rather, she attends to the performative aspects of Amma's healing practices and narratives, and to the connection Amma establishes with her patients, in discussing how Amma's healing "works."
The book is engaging throughout, and scholars and students interested in gender in Islam, feminist ethnography, and performance studies will find it of particular interest.In Amma's Healing Room: Gender and Vernacular Islam in South India Overview"[I]t is extremely salubrious to see the ways Islam works in thelives of ordinary people who are not politicized in their religious lives.... Noother book on South Asia has material like this." -- Ann GrodzinsGoldIn Amma's Healing Room is a compelling study of the life andthought of a female Muslim spiritual healer in Hyderabad, South India. JoyceBurkhalter Flueckiger describes Amma's practice as a form of vernacular Islamarising in a particular locality, one in which the boundaries between Islam,Hinduism, and Christianity are fluid. In the "healing room," Amma meets adiverse clientele that includes men and women, Muslim, Hindu, and Christian, ofvaried social backgrounds, who bring a wide range of physical, social, andpsychological afflictions. Flueckiger collaborated closely with Amma and relates toher at different moments as daughter, disciple, and researcher. The result is a workof insight and compassion that challenges widely held views of religion and genderin India and reveals the creativity of a tradition often portrayed by Muslims andnon-Muslims alike as singular and monolithic. (2008)

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Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before Review

Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before
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Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before ReviewHorwitz, who is a veteran in the travelogue/history genre, sets about to rescue Cook's threatened reputation from those who view him as the first "conquistordor" of the Pacific isles he alledgedly "discovered" in his three epic 18th century voyages. Horwitz, while giving ample voice to those inhabitants of these lands who look upon Cook as an unmitigated disaster for their peoples and cultures, and admitting the toxic influence of those Westerners who descended upon the Pacific in Cook's wake, potrays a much more liberal-minded explorer who appreciated the peoples and cultures he met and mingled with, more of an enlightenment figure than we have previously supposed. Indeed, Horwitz argues that one of the reasons that Cook is not celebrated or memorialized in Britain as lavishly as Nelson and Wellington, is that he was not a military hero, was more explorer than conqueror.
Horwitz pays Cook his due, pointing out the sheer difficulty and hardship of his navigations, and meanders around the Pacific in his steps, talking to all sorts of characters that he meets along the way, both about Cook, the past, and the present state of Pacific affairs. And for comic relief he brings along, quite by accident he tells us but one can't imagine making the trip without him, his Falstaffian pal Roger, with a bottle in both hands,and a jaundiced eye and bawdy quip when things threaten to get too serious. Fans of Horwitz, Cook, travel writing, or a yen for the Pacific isles will not be disappointed.Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before Overview

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Infinite Reality: Avatars, Eternal Life, New Worlds, and the Dawn of the Virtual Revolution Review

Infinite Reality: Avatars, Eternal Life, New Worlds, and the Dawn of the Virtual Revolution
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Infinite Reality: Avatars, Eternal Life, New Worlds, and the Dawn of the Virtual Revolution ReviewThis is the kind of book that blows your mind on a regular basis. The studies that Bailenson and Blascovich design and report on are difficult to stop thinking about. These authors look at technology as a way to understand who we are and who we will become, answering key philosophical and psychological questions along the way.
They have described their approach as Transformative Social Interaction, and if anything, this is an understatement. These researchers use the virtual world as a testbed to examine psychological issues in ways that simply were not possible before. And rather than this being reported to you through the lens of a journalist, this comes straight from the pioneers in the field.
And while its easy to imagine this kind of heady stuff being dense and difficult to read, or full of techie jargon, your imagination would be wrong. The book is a delight to read, with humor and insight and intellectual curiosity mixed in equal doses.
I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the human condition, in how technology is transforming our future, or in reading some of the most cutting-edge, fascinating psychology out there.Infinite Reality: Avatars, Eternal Life, New Worlds, and the Dawn of the Virtual Revolution Overview
How do The Matrix, Avatar, and Tron reveal the future of existence? can our brains recognize where "reality" ends and "virtual" begins? What would it mean to live eternally in a digital universe? Where will technology lead us in five, fifty, and five hundred years?

Two innovative scientists explore the mystery and reality of the virtual and examine the profound potential of emerging digital technologies

Welcome to the future . . .

The coming explosion of immersive digital technology, combined with recent progress in unlocking how the mind works, will soon revolutionize our lives in ways only science fiction has imagined. In Infinite Reality, Jeremy Bailenson (Stanford University) and Jim Blascovich (University of California, Santa Barbara)-two of virtual reality's pioneering authorities whose pathbreaking research has mapped how our brain behaves in digital worlds-take us on a mind-bending journey through the virtual universe.

Infinite Reality explores what emerging computer technologies and their radical applications will mean for the future of human life and society. Along the way, Bailenson and Blascovich examine the timeless philosophical questions of the self and "reality" that arise through the digital experience; explain how virtual reality's latest and future forms-including immersive video games and social-networking sites-will soon be seamlessly integrated into our lives; show the many surprising practical applications of virtual reality, from education and medicine to sex and warfare; and probe further-off possibilities like "total personality downloads" that would allow your great-great-grandchildren to have a conversation with "you" a century or more after your death.

Equally fascinating, farsighted, and profound, Infinite Reality is an essential guide to our virtual future, where the experience of being human will be deeply transformed.


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