Chapter 1 Foreword by Arjun Appadurai Chapter 2 Preface Chapter 3 1. Understanding the Vision and Practice of Swadhyaya Chapter 4 2. Active Devotion in Local Context: The Dynamics of Swadhyaya in Simar Chapter 5 3. Understanding Expanding Universes and Experiments: The Dynamics of Swadhyaya in Veraval and Beyond Chapter 6 4. From Matsyagandha to Ghar Mandir: The Work of Swadhyaya in Tribal Areas Chapter 7 5. The Educational Dynamics of Swadhyaya Chapter 8 6. Globalization of Swadhyaya Chapter 9 7. Self-Development and Social Transformations? Swadhyaya and Beyond
Ananta Kumar Giri is on the faculty of the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai, India.
Ananta Kumar Giri's fascinating work on Swadhyaya is one of the
most detailed ethnographies I have read on the burgeoning
indigenous movements to foster economic, social and ethical
development in South Asia and other parts of the world. Swadhyaya
espouses what Giri calls a 'practical spirituality' in which the
ethnographer engages in simultaneous participation and in an
'integrally involving criticism.' This movement on the one hand
combines a kind of neo-Vedic ideology that opens up a world not
just for Hindus but also for Muslims, Buddhists and other
religions. Giri discusses the movement in great detail,
sympathetically but without sentimentality, and does not ignore the
internal conflicts and leadership struggles that such a movement
inevitably faces. I recommend this book for anyone interested in
engaged ethnography and the new social movements that attempt to
combine socio-economic welfare intrinsically tied to ethical
concerns.
*Gananath Obeysekere, Princeton University*
Professor Giri's book provides an important and very interesting
analysis of one of the most interesting cases of modern social
movements and gives very important indications about the wide range
of such movements in the inter-civilizational comparative
framework.
*S N. Eisenstadt, Hebrew University Jerusalem*
With Self-Development and Social Transformations? Ananta Kumar Giri
adds yet another fascinating book to an already impressive range of
publications. It is at one and the same time a careful and detailed
study of the Indian Swadhyaya movement and an illuminating analysis
of the trajectory followed by a social imaginary as it becomes
transposed from the local to the transnational level. At the core
of the book, however, is that most interesting and urgent of
concerns in contemporary social movement studies, namely the
problem of subject formation.
*Piet Strydom, University College Cork, Ireland*
The book will prove a useful resource on graduate-level courses on
Hindu and other Asian religious movements.
*Religious Studies Review, June 2010*
At a time when individuals and societies are addicted to the
pursuit of narrow self-interest, here comes a welcome reminder of
an alternative path: the path of ethical and spiritual
self-cultivation in the service of others. We are greatly indebted
to Ananta Kumar Giri for his detailed study of this uplifting
social movement or network called Swadhyaya. As he shows, Swadhyaya
is a necessary complement to, and even has priority over, projects
focused on purely economic or technical advancement. Widely
renowned for his string of earlier publications, Giri with this
book emerges as a major voice in the contemporary global civic
discourse.
*Fred Dallmayr, University of Notre Dame*
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