{"title":"Peter Van Der Veer","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"modern-spirit-of-asia-book-peter-van-der-veer-9780691128153","title":"The Modern Spirit of Asia","description":"The Modern Spirit of Asia challenges the notion that modernity in China and India are derivative imitations of the West, arguing that these societies have transformed their ancient traditions in unique and distinctive ways. Peter van der Veer begins with nineteenth-century imperial history, exploring how Western concepts of spirituality, secularity, religion, and magic were used to translate the traditions of India and China. He traces how modern Western notions of religion and magic were incorporated into the respective nation-building projects of Chinese and Indian nationalist intellectuals, yet how modernity in China and India is by no means uniform. While religion is a centerpiece of Indian nationalism, it is viewed in China as an obstacle to progress that must be marginalized and controlled. The Modern Spirit of Asia moves deftly from Kandinsky's understanding of spirituality in art to Indian yoga and Chinese qi gong, from modern theories of secularism to histories of Christian conversion, from Orientalist constructions of religion to Chinese campaigns against magic and superstition, and from Muslim Kashmir to Muslim Xinjiang. Van der Veer, an outspoken proponent of the importance of comparative studies of religion and society, eloquently makes his case in this groundbreaking examination of the spiritual and the secular in China and India.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50207324668177,"sku":"CIN0691128154G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51005717119249,"sku":"NIN9780691128153","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0691128154.jpg?v=1751327227"},{"product_id":"religious-nationalism-book-peter-van-der-veer-9780520082564","title":"Religious Nationalism","description":"Religious nationalism is a subject of critical importance in much of the world today. Peter van der Veer's timely study on the relationship between religion and politics in India goes well beyond other books on this subject. He brings together several disciplines - anthropology, history, social theory, literary studies - to show how Indian religious identities have been shaped by pilgrimage, migration, language development, and more recently, print and visual media. Van der Veer's central focus is the lengthy dispute over the Babari mosque in Ayodhya, site of a bloody confrontation between Hindus and Muslims in December 1992. A thought-provoking range of other examples describes the historical construction of religious identities: cow protection societies and Sufi tombs, purdah and the political appropriation of images of the female body, Salman Rushdie and the role of the novel in nationalism, Mahatma Gandhi and Swami Vivekananda, the Khalsa movement among Sikhs, and nationalist archaeology and the televised Ramayana. Van der Veer offers a new perspective on the importance of religious organization and the role of ritual in the formation of nationalism. His work advances our understanding of contemporary India while also offering significant theoretical insights into one of the most troubling issues of this century.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50296430919953,"sku":"CIN0520082567VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50898854707473,"sku":"GOR003231132","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51415952163089,"sku":"CIN0520082567G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53521121345809,"sku":"NLS9780520082564","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0520082567.jpg?v=1751358493"},{"product_id":"imperial-encounters-book-peter-van-der-veer-9780691074788","title":"Imperial Encounters","description":"Picking up on Edward Said's claim that the historical experience of empire is common to both the colonizer and the colonized, Peter van der Veer takes the case of religion to examine the mutual impact of Britain's colonization of India on Indian and British culture. He shows that national culture in both India and Britain developed in relation to their shared colonial experience and that notions of religion and secularity were crucial in imagining the modern nation in both countries. In the process, van der Veer chronicles how these notions developed in the second half of the nineteenth century in relation to gender, race, language, spirituality, and science. Avoiding the pitfalls of both world systems theory and national historiography, this book problematizes oppositions between modern and traditional, secular and religious, progressive and reactionary. It shows that what often are assumed to be opposites are, in fact, profoundly entangled. In doing so, it upsets the convenient fiction that India is the land of eternal religion, existing outside of history, while Britain is the epitome of modern secularity and an agent of history. Van der Veer also accounts for the continuing role of religion in British culture and the strong part religion has played in the development of Indian civil society. This masterly work of scholarship brings into view the effects of the very close encounter between India and Britain--an intimate encounter that defined the character of both nations.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50357465317649,"sku":"CIN069107478XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51005642768657,"sku":"NIN9780691074788","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/069107478X.jpg?v=1751041471"},{"product_id":"nation-and-religion-book-peter-van-der-veer-9780691012322","title":"Nation and Religion","description":"Does modernity make religion politically irrelevant? Conventional scholarly and popular wisdom says that it does. The prevailing view assumes that the onset of western modernity--characterized by the rise of nationalism, the dominance of capitalism, and the emergence of powerful state institutions--favors secularism and relegates religion to the purely private realm. This collection of essays on nationalism and religion in Europe and Asia challenges that view. Contributors show that religion and politics are mixed together in complex and vitally important ways not just in the East, but in the West as well. The book focuses on four societies: India, Japan, Britain, and the Netherlands. It shows that religion and nationalism in these societies combined to produce such notions as the nation being chosen for a historical task (imperialism, for example), the possibility of national revival, and political leadership as a form of salvation. The volume also examines the qualities of religious discourse and practice that can be used for nationalist purposes, paying special attention to how religion can help to give meaning to sacrifice in national struggle. The book's comparative approach underscores that developments in colonizing and colonized countries, too often considered separately, are subtly interrelated. In addition to the editors, the contributors are Benedict R. Anderson, Talal Asad, Susan Bayly, Partha Chatterjee, Frans Groot, Harry Harootunian, Hugh McLeod, Barbara Metcalf, and Peter van Rooden.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50358983721233,"sku":"CIN0691012326G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51005640474897,"sku":"NIN9780691012322","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51867820196113,"sku":"CIN0691012326VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52649103098129,"sku":"GOR010173139","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0691012326.jpg?v=1750743802"},{"product_id":"conversion-to-modernities-book-peter-van-der-veer-9780415912747","title":"Conversion to Modernities","description":"Peter van der Veer has gathered together a groundbreaking collection of essays that suggests that conversion to forms of Christianity in the modern period is not only a conversion to modern forms of these religions, but also to religious forms of modernity. Religious perceptions of the self, of community, and of the state are transformed when Western discourses of modernity become dominant in the modern world. This volume seeks to relate Europe and its Others by exploring conversion both in modern Europe and in the colonized world.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50445916242193,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50445916668177,"sku":"GOR011862275","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52141777158417,"sku":"NLS9780415912747","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52735290376465,"sku":"NIN9780415912747","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0415912741.jpg?v=1750782099"},{"product_id":"gods-on-earth-book-peter-van-der-veer-9780367716882","title":"Gods on Earth","description":"A detailed historical anthropology of Ayodhya, which argues that religious values CAN reflect political and economic processes.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50449816879377,"sku":"GOR013955885","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51268542562577,"sku":"NIN9780367716882","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52432670228753,"sku":"NLS9780367716882","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0367716887.jpg?v=1751390352"},{"product_id":"value-of-comparison-book-peter-van-der-veer-9780822361589","title":"The Value of Comparison","description":"In The Value of Comparison Peter van der Veer makes a compelling case for using comparative approaches in the study of society and for the need to resist the simplified civilization narratives popular in public discourse and some social theory. He takes the quantitative social sciences and the broad social theories they rely on to task for their inability to question Western cultural presuppositions, demonstrating that anthropology's comparative approach provides a better means to understand societies. This capacity stems from anthropology's engagement with diversity, its fragmentary approach to studying social life, and its ability to translate difference between cultures. Through essays on topics as varied as iconoclasm, urban poverty, Muslim immigration, and social exclusion van der Veer highlights the ways that studying the particular and the unique allows for gaining a deeper knowledge of the whole without resorting to simple generalizations that elide and marginalize difference.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51008413991185,"sku":"NIN9780822361589","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0822361582.jpg?v=1761389030"},{"product_id":"gods-on-earth-book-peter-van-der-veer-9781845203023","title":"Gods on Earth","description":"A detailed historical anthropology of Ayodhya, which argues that religious values CAN reflect political and economic processes.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51289363317009,"sku":"NIN9781845203023","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52131517726993,"sku":"NLS9781845203023","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/184520302X.jpg?v=1751313933"},{"product_id":"conversion-to-modernities-book-peter-van-der-veer-9780415912730","title":"Conversion to Modernities","description":"Peter van der Veer has gathered together a groundbreaking collection of essays that suggests that conversion to forms of Christianity in the modern period is not only a conversion to modern forms of these religions, but also to religious forms of modernity. 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